A Weekend in Barcelona
For Carly’s birthday, we decided it’d be a fun time to pull a whirlwind trip to Barcelona out of the Crazy™ hat. Since Carly’s cooking class doesn’t finish until 7:15pm, it makes it pretty hard to get out of here by train, so we opted for the car rental route.
About 5 minutes walk from here there’s a gas station that doubles as a Hertz dealer, so we rented a trusty Renault Clio (which I picked up on Friday afternoon), ready for a 5am departure on Saturday morning (which also happened to be Carly’s birthday).
Just to get it out of the way, a lot of people seem to knock the French for their engineering, but I have to say that I absolutely loved the interior layout and controls of the car. Everything was nicely designed, and aside from not being able to figure out how the stupid cruise control worked, I highly enjoyed it. It was a diesel, and it did 650Km on half a tank. That doesn’t really help you out cost-wise when you’re paying €1.41 / litre for diesel, but whatever.
I thought road signage was bad in Vancouver, it’s worse over here. Directions from Google Maps are like you’re trying to play an urgent game of bingo, where the consequences aren’t that you simply lose, but rather you end up on some freeway heading to Switzerland instead of Spain. Any given “direction” might say something like:
Keep right at the fork, follow signs for A9/E15/E80/ Narbonne/Toulouse/Barcelonne and merge onto A9/E15/E80
or
Take the exit toward Barcelona Rondes/AP-2/AP-7/C-32/C-31/N-II
Yeah. Great. Thanks for that. Also, for the record, road tolls are not cheap. From Agde to Barcelona, a drive of about 3 – 3.5 hours, there are three separate tolls totalling €23.73 (approx CAD$33) each way.
At any rate, we arrived in Barcelona after only 1 wrong turn, 2 roundabouts that we drove around a couple extra times, and only 1 five-lane one-way on which I turned into oncoming traffic. Fortunately they had a red light, and Carly burst into a mini freak-out-laughing-weezing fit (I like to call this The Burrus Maneuver) which, although not overly useful in a crisis situation, did indicate to me I must have done something wrong. It helped that the five lanes of traffic I was driving toward all started honking at me.
We were a bit ambitious with our planning, as we’d booked a 9:30am walking / food / market tour, and still had to find parking and walk to Plaça de Catalunya.
The tour was somewhere between “meah” and “so-so”. The most awesome part was that it’s not until after you finish booking, and paying (online) that they tell you that you MUST print your tickets, MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST. Of course, we don’t have a printer here, and had no way of printing them before we arrived, so we got reamed out by some guy at the tour company talking to us like we were stupid illiterate children. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I explained to him the situation (oh, and I had all the confirmation numbers written down, plus I had the tickets on my iPhone, on my screen to show him), he still spoke to me in the sort of derogatory “can’t you read, it says right here you must print the tickets” kind of tone. Live and learn.
And so we wandered La Rambla, and La Boqueria. It was too bad that we were there a Saturday and Sunday since La Boqueria isn’t open on the latter. We both would have loved to spend more time in that market, it was outstanding. Every kind of fresh meat and fish, cured sausage, candy, vegetables, fresh juices – the list is endless.
We didn’t realize that we accidentally arrived in Barcelona during the weekend of the La Mercè Festival. They were setting up stages all over the city, with dancers, concerts, human towers, and tourists. Loads and loads of tourists.
For lunch we tried to find an out of the way (read: not crammed full of tourists) restaurant to have some paella for lunch, which was pretty decent (but I don’t think that any paella can really compare to the stuff served up by Pacharan in Phnom Penh, Cambodia of all places). The restaurant we dined in was fairly narrow. There were 2 cops not 20 feet from us near the entrance ordering some lunch as we were finishing up, and at some point during the time we were sitting there, the girl sitting right behind Carly had her bag nabbed – with 2 cops standing right there. We had a total flashback to Tel Aviv, remembering how awful that feeling is.
As with most places we travel, we tried to find a cool place to stay, and good places to eat. We found both.
Carly got in touch with the owner of Barcino 147, which could be one of the coolest places to stay in all of Barcelona. Cool, but not cheap. Usually they require a 2 night minimum, but they let us stay just the one night. Fantastic rooms, comfortable bed, secure, great kitchen, outstanding art, and amazing hosts. Without the help we got from Antonio, we would never have found Ciudad Condal, which was an absolutely amazing tapas restaurant. I can say unequivocally that it does not matter how long you have to wait to get in. One hour, two hours, it doesn’t matter. Try to catch people getting up from the bar and leaving (there aren’t reservations for those seats) – sit down, have a beer or two, a litre of sangria – and eat tapas for hours. We headed there for dinner around 9pm on Saturday night. There was a line up out the door. I waited about 20 minutes to get my name on the waiting list, right when Carly snagged two seats up at the bar, right in front of platefuls of tapas – where we sat and remained for the next 3+ hours. Half way through our evening we were joined by a gynecologist from Poland and his son (currently in medical school) taking a vacation together. We shared a plate of calamari and enjoyed some good conversation.
Sunday was all about walking around, taking the metro (which, as one could expect, makes Vancouver’s Skytrain look pathetic and antiquated in its lack of coverage), doing whatever we wanted, checking out Sagrada Família (of which no photos I can take can possibly do it justice). We were there at an awkward time of day – the sun in a weird place, and there were cranes all over, and a giant banner of the pope strung up along the building – so even attempting photos was depressing. For pictures that do it justice, you might want to look on Flickr.
Did I mention that parking for the 31 hours we were here cost us €61.10 or approximately CAD$85? Ouch.
A La Cuisine – Week Two
My favourite thing to learn this week was the puff pastry! It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be and it turned out wonderfully. It took all of Monday’s class to go over our week’s plan, learn about and taste some new micro-greens and make the puff pastry. Finally, on Tuesday, we were ready to make our Pissaladiere Tarte. This tart is made in the Pissaladiera way, which basically means it’s a Southern France dish. Pissaladiera is a pizza-like dish made in the Nice, Marseilles and Toulouse area. It is traditionally a white pizza (no tomatoes are used) with no cheese, but topped with sauteed onions, olives, garlic and anchovies.
Our puff pastry tart was topped with caramelized onions, oven dried tomatoes, marinated olives, balsamic and olive oil dressed herbs and salad greens, and a crunchy, sweet walnut tuile. Tuiles are fun and easy to make! We tried lots of different shapes using various stencils.
Monday & Tuesday’s Puff Pastry Tart:
This was the week of fish or poissons. It was great to learn how to fillet a fish, try fish I’d never tried, and prepare fish in different ways. Fish is such a healthy protein. However, by Friday, I was done with seafood and certainly will need a break for a week or so! It isn’t so adventurous to say that the Salmon was my favourite, but if I’m being honest, it really was. My second favourite fish of the week would be the Sea Bream, thirdly the Sea Bass, and please don’t judge me when I admit I couldn’t bring myself to taste the Turbot come Friday’s class. I have given the turbot a new name; from this day forward he will be called ugly fish. You’ll see him in the final gallery.
The Jerusalem artichokes, or Topinambour, looked like pieces of ginger. We peeled them, boiled them and then made a puree. They were almost like a mashed potato when we were finished and they received mixed reviews. Some people enjoyed the texture and flavour, and the Danish girl LOVED it (I think she loves everything we make!), but many people weren’t won over. I would be in this last group, but was happy to try something new. Apparently they were eaten a lot in Europe during the war and now they are making a come-back in the gourmet world.
Wednesday’s Sea Bass (Loup) with Creamy Jerusalem Artichokes:
I loved the ratatouille we made! So fresh, and the Mediterranean flavours were divine. We diced and diced to get all the vegetables the same size. We used zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, onion, fennel, cherry tomatoes, olives, anchovies, thyme, garlic, bay leaf, salt, pepper and of course, olive oil. The first five ingredients were all sauteed separately to ensure each vegetable was cooked just so. In my case, I accidentally put the zucchini and eggplant together. I thought I’d seen Chef combine these two for sauteing, but I was wrong. He saw some other students combine all of their chopped, raw, vegetables and had made them sort them all out again! I decided to quickly toss my combined zucchini and eggplant into the pan to cook before he noticed and made me sort them! Unfortunately, he came by while I was cooking these and said “I think we have a problem”. I lowered by head in shame and just said “I know”.
Oh well! They tasted great and if I were to make Ratatouille again (unless I end up cooking in a Gastronomic restaurant), I’ll probably cook these all together anyways!
The tomatoes, olives, anchovies, whole garlic clove, thyme stems and bay leaf were just stirred in at the end to infuse flavour. We did not include the clove, thyme stems or bay leaf in the plated Ratatouille. I loved the presentation of this dish and the saltiness the anchovies and olives added was a win!
Thursday’s Sea Bream (Daurade) with Mediterranean Ratatouille:
Friday was a busy busy cooking class as Chef wanted to complete two dishes instead of one to make up for some lost time during our first week.
We had lots of little side things on the go too! I’m not sure what the crab stock will be used for, but I’m sure I’ll find out next week. We also made a sorbet that tasted like cucumber. There wasn’t any cucumber in it, but we used one of the micro-greens that tasted like cucumber. I was also put in charge of making a creme anglaise with garlic for our Turbot. It makes me a little nervous to get put in charge of extra dishes but I guess it is a good sign Chef thinks I’m competent enough! Earlier in the week I made up a simple syrup and took charge of making a strawberry sorbet. The scariest part is when Chef will say “okay, so you just make a simple syrup and then…..” or “so, let’s start with a creme anglaise and then…” My brain stops there in wonder about what a simple syrup or creme anglaise is to begin with, let alone the rest of the directions! But, I clarify a few things, try to repeat back to him what he’s just asked me to do, ask around to some of the other more experienced students, and try my best! Oh how I wish my brain did conversions quickly! What is all this grams and kilos for my sugar, water etc. Forget it if you think there are any measuring devices in our kitchen!
Just so you know, a simple syrup is just bringing equal parts of water and sugar to a boil, but I’m sure you all knew that already.
The eggplant fries took quite awhile to coat, but turned out well. We breaded them with crushed hazelnuts mixed with flour and some seasoning. The transparent wrap you’ll see is oven safe (up to 220 Celcius I believe). It was finicky to work with, but a neat idea. We put the raw Turbot fillet inside it on a bed of blanched carrots with some of my garlic creme anglaise and then cooked it. My cooking partner, Chris, was very happy to take home our Turbot to eat when I declined! I mean, seriously, the word Turbot comes from the Old Swedish tornbut, meaning thorn butt. Can you really blame me for passing this up?
Friday’s Gift-Wrapped Turbot and Salmon with Eggplant Fries:
Tomorrow is Monday and I can’t wait to see what’s on our menu for this week! I’ve decided to continue the French cooking class all the way through the third month, rather than leave it in exchange for the month of Pastry, however, I’ll do Pastry as well as French cooking in the third month by dropping the French language class in the morning. This means 6-7 hours of cooking from mid November to mid December. Yahoo!
