The adventure continues ...

panAnd so now what--no more posts since we have left BCN? Hardly. We are off in different directions now, me in the desert southwest and Jenn in Seattle. I just attended Fotofest in Houston. Inspiring to see so much great work, but after one day-long workshop and four straight days of reviews, it was a bit enervating.

I am now in Austin, visiting long-lost friend Jeffrey Radicce, who is hunkering down studying esoteric energy market factors to both day-trade more effectively and develop a healthy paranoia about our collective future. I will soon to head to the West Texas town of El Paso and Big Bend. I have also stopped shaving, much to Jenn's distress. However, it is only an attempt to go mainstream.
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I cannot make a photo blog on the road, as I don't have a digital camera. However, I do have a recording device to make a small road journal with the iPod. Here are a few clips from our adventures last night.

At Candy's house. Candy is from NOLA and hosted a crawfish boil. In this missive I explain the iTalk device and Jeffrey accuses his roommate Ron of using up all the fuel for the previous night's fire.
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In this one, we commit several pounds of crawfish into a boiling, spicy, tasty demise.
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At the end of the night, there was still much crustacean left over, skittering around in a cardboard box. Ron's girlfriend Michelle and I take the box nextdoor, as they seemed to be having a party too. Suspicious move with surprising results.
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There will be more reports from the road. AND, since we still cannot help but miss BCN, and to sew up the haute food discussion really, really tight, I hereby amend the Ca Sento menu thusly. Thanks to Jeff, it is now complete, so file it for your records:
*the mystery lamb dish was: cordero relleno con endivia glaseada y jugo de su cocción
*sepia is cuttlefish, not whitefish (I curse myself, I thought I knew that one too)
*also, the prolific fish author is Alan Davidson

You'll also see a few leftover Barcelona photos in a future post, cos you cannot get enough.

--ALAN

New and improved menu translations!!!! (If you're following closely, you may have too much time on your hands.)

A few amendments to the last post, as my last post before leaving...

Jenn's attempt at translating the already conceptual menu was admirable. We had a little more help from Jeff (we will miss, miss, miss you Jeff) on it. Today we bid adieu to him at the famed Quatre Gats, absinthe-fueled hangout of Picasso and the modernistas. Good way to seal up this trip:

* Boqueron: That boqueron may have been the best I had here.
* Ditto the gamba. Huge, and the tomalley in the head was sweet.
* Percebes in beet soup and onion foam. That's right, foam is everywhere. Have seen it translated alternately as "aire" (air) and in this case "jugo" (juice). Weirdly, haven't seen it as "espuma" which is foam in Castellano. And what are percebes? Goose-necked barnacles: they look like claws, but they are crustaceans. From fish expert Alan Jackson: "It is a crustacean, although not looking remotely like a prawn or crab. It consists of what might be called a tube, as thick as a finger, covered by a dark and scaley skin. At the end is a sort of 'hoof,' white bony pads from between which the creature's feet emerge. . . .To eat, pinch the outer skin near the hoofs and prise it off with your fingernailsrevealinggn a stalk-like protuberance which you bit off whole." Um, thanks, I'll still have another.
* Ventresca de atun con jugo de pimiento y jengibre: nice back-end cut of tuna, and there's that foam again. This time of red pepper and ginger.
* Bogavante con ravioli de aceituna negra: lobster with black olive ravioli.
* Lubina a la brasa con iceberg y jugo de moluscos: sea bass cooked in coals with iceberg lettuce and mollusc foam.
* Fideos melosos con col y sepia: moist short noodles with cabbage, and sepia is a whitefish (not knowing this, for a recipe I once requested it from a spice vendor).
* Cordero relleno: I messed this one up. I don't think there was gnocchi involved...but on the other hand, this was super high-concept food maybe there was, but it would have been all squished in between the rolled up lamb.

And there it is. Perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about Catalan haute grub. Except that I just bought Ferran Adria's food lab's book of food science. As in, how you make foam. I have my airplane reading.

Last note: the charming doctor who treated Jenn is Jose A. Tous. If you are in Barcelona and need a sensible diagnosis, as well as patata bravas recommendations, call him. Thanks, Doctor.

--ALAN

Ferran mania

alan eating razor clams in le boqueria.

We saw him!!!! The Ferran Adria. World's most famous, respected chef, inventor of foam as cuisine. The man practically has his three Michelin stars permanently tattooed on his ass. We wanted to look at a cookbook from his restaurant El Bulli, the one that's booked through our retirement; we were denied. It's that good.

Here's what happened: We were having our last lunch in Barcelona at Pinotxo in el Boqueria when he showed up, with camera crew, to pay his respects to the owner. Pinotxo's owner, a man of big smiles and wry humor, yelled out in Spanish, "Ferran Adria is my enemy!" We feel like we can truly go home now.

In other news, Alan has written a rare post, appropriately on the subject of the food we have eaten.

--JENN

This trip is winding down fast, and I’ve been cited for not contributing to the blog as much as I ought. So I hope to kick down a few posts in rapid succession:

First, a note about food. I often find it self-indulgent when travelers talk about food, but here I go. I studied in Sevilla in college for a term, and discovered I love Spanish food. And that was mainly just tapas: tortilla española (potato omelette), aceitunas (olives), patatas bravas (fried potatoes with/under spicy mayo sauce), croquetas (ham and cheese croquettes), and boquerones. Especially boquerones. And these are just little fish, which when salted are anchoas (anchovies), when marinated are boquerones. You might have to be predisposed to pickled fish to like it, but they are totally delicious.

I haven’t had nearly as many as I thought I might on this trip. To do that would be to ignore everything else on order. And mind you, Catalan food isn’t really all about tapas. It’s about elemental, fresh, incredible peasant food: vegetable mash with bacon (trinxat), noodles cooked in broth with langostines and calamari (fideua), seafood in many contexts, garbanzos and spinach with bacon or black sausage, and so on. Simple but great.

Jenn and I ate at a few of the very special places that Catalunya is breeding, many of them disciples of Ferran Adria. Comerç 24, Ca Sento in Valencia, and the other night with Jenn’s literary agent Peter, at Cinc Sentits. I don’t have a critical enough palette, or perhaps opinion, to say which meal was best. There were mindblowing (small, well-designed, extremely fresh) dishes at each. Allow me to just transcribe as much of the *smaller tasting menu we had at Ca Sento (there may be small omissions and mistakes, I wrote in a hurry). This is in Castellano, unfortunately for most of you, but Jenn has kindly offered her translations in italics.

• Boquerón marinado en agua de tomate y crema de parmesan Fresh, plump tasty little marinated fish over this chilled creamy parmesan soup and some tomato water. Drooltastic!
• Gamba de litoral hervida Big old prawn. That was it. Just a prawn, but extremely fresh and perfectly prepared. Sucking out the soft, viscous contents of the head was encouraged.
• Percebes con sopa de remolacha y jugo de cebolla Onion soup was involved, but that really doesn't do it justice. How about onion soup of the gods!
• Ventresca de atún con jugo de pimiento y jengibre Tuna with pepper juice and something else.
• Bogavante con ravioli de aceituna negra Raviollis with black olive. Bogavante? I looked it up in the dictionary and the translation came back "Stroke," which is what you'll have if you eat this way all the time.
• Lubina a la brasa con iceberg y jugo de moluscos At this point I was so deep into my foodgasm, I can't remember what this was!
• Fideos melosos con col y sepia Fideos is descibed above by Alan, though needless to say superior.
• Cordero relleno con gnocchi Just when you thought you'd eaten enough (as in all the plates above), they serve you tender little lamb chunks and gnocchi.

--ALAN

Jenn again. On a less tasty note, I have spent much of my last days here coughing and blowing my nose. My laptop keyboard really should be quarantined. It may be the second-hand smoke or the vast reduction in my daily vegetable intake, but it just seems my immune system isn't working too well. I've had about four colds since I've been here (like one every other week), and some other problems which I won't get into, but let's just say it'd make for good performance art.

Concerned that an international, multi-leg flight might just spell out the End of Jenn, Alan finally convinced me to go to a doctor. Did I say go? No, the doctor came to me! Que rico! And what a nice, man he was. Used to the brusque, 5-minute, HMO American doctor visit, I was suprised when he sat down for a long discussion about my asthma and long-term plan for treating it and a bunch of other things before telling me I just have a very bad cold. And here we are:

Equipped with nasal spray, pain-killers, asthma medicine, and other fun stuff, I'll be boarding the flight with Alan early tomorrow morning. I've downloaded a lesson on Fear from one of my favorite Web sites Zencast.org to help me sleep. Adios, Ferran and disciples! Adios Barcelona! Adios, germs!

--JENN

Of calcots and castellers

In the tradition of saving the best for last, today we attended the 7th Annual Calcotada, hosted by the Castellers of Vilafranca. We owe this honor to our new friends in Barcelona: Lluis, himself a Casteller since 1987, and fellow freelancer Jenn B., who is stylish enough to also spell her name with two n's. It was far and away one of the most memorable experiences we've had over the past couple of months.

What, pray tell, is a Calcotada?
Well, how nice of you to ask! It is an event where one eats many, many, many calcots (cal-chot--rhymes with snot)!

Bless you! What's a calcot? They look rather nasty!
According to this Web site:
Calcot, a word derived from calco, which means "stocking" in Catalan, is an apt name for these fat, long-legged onions, a specialty of this region for over half a millennium. (The second "c" in the word should have an accent mark, indicating that it is pronounced like an "s.") As legend has it, they were discovered in the 14th Century by a farmer named Xat Benaigues, who one summer, inadvertently left some spring onions in a dark, cool place, wrapped in damp burlap. He replanted them in the fall, banked deeply in a mound of soil, and by the start of winter, they had swelled into something never seen before: the calcot. They are milder than spring onions, and fatter. Calcots are typically grilled over a fire and dipped in nutty tomato sauce, called romescu. They are the chief attraction in so-called calcotada festivals, which are held in towns throughout Catalonia from late November through March.

They do look nasty, but rest assured, they taste heavenly. You must peel back the charred outer layer to reach the soft, melty center. That is dipped into the sauce, then down the hatch, like this:

They're especially good when you're sitting next to an angelic, French-speaking child named Elise, as our friend Marc is in this photograph. Oh, and note the grown-up bib. Very important to wear the bib.

So what's the deal with these Castellers?
Well, that's where things get really interesting! Castellers build human towers that can be as many as four or five stories high. Every August groups gather in Vilafranca (a 40 minute train ride from Barcelona) to compete. Other towns also host competitions and events. The Castellers of Vilafranca, which our friend Luis belongs to, is among one of the best in the world! This photograph from the group's Web site explains better than I can.

There are many more excellent photographs to be seen here.

So this Lluis, is he in the tower?
He most certainly is! He is the gentleman wearing a red bandana, green shirt, white pants, and black belt, which conveniently provides some back support. We also met a man at the Casteller's club house/practice space who proudly pointed to his daughter, who was near the top of the tower! We appreciate that this is not just a guy thing. At the top of the tower is usually a young child. If you had a hard time spotting Lluis above, he's the fellow on the left below. Jenn B. is standing between Marc and Alan. Jenn and Lluis actually met during a Casteller event in Barcelona. Very romantic.

Romance? More like a good way to get killed! Don't they have lawyers in Catalonia?
Yes, sometimes the child falls. Sometimes they all fall. But serious injuries are rare and Lluis assures me that without risk there would be no adrenaline and without adrenaline there would be no human tower, because what bored person would ever want to do such a thing! And yes, they have insurance! And no, this would never be allowed in the uptight, litigious U.S.A.

Long, plump onions. Tall, thin human towers. Torre Agbar. Is there some kind of Catalan penis obsession going on here?
We weren't really going to comment on that. But yes, yes there is.

So did you happen to see one of these things in action?
If only! But, after all those onions to say nothing of the sausage, lamb, cava, wine, and cake, nobody seemed to want to build a tower. Go figure. We did, however, see this very nice depiction of the tower near the cathedral.

What's up with the the Q&A format?
So many Calcots, so little creativity.

Jenn S is nice and all, but is Alan ever going to post on this blog again?
That is a very good question! He has been asked many times, but he seems to be very busy doing other less important things like working on his book proposal. However, I have been told that a blog post is imminent so do check back.

--JENN

Surreal life!

We've had some rather surreal experiences in the past couple days.

First, we were at MACBA (Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona) looking at a collection of conceptual art. Most of it was pretty darn conceptual, though we couldn't get enough of a piece called "Good Boy Bad Boy" by Bruce Nauman and John Baldessari's video where he sings (badly, we might add) Sol Lewitt's "Sentences on Conceptual Art." (Thanks to our pal Rachel Elson, who saw the show while visiting and highly recommended it!)

As we're making our way through the exhibition, I notice that we are being closely watched/shadowed even by some rather rough-looking body-guard types. We figure out they're protecting a very nicely dressed group of what looks to be politicians or dignitaries, but we don't recognize any of the faces. The body guards, the anonymous-yet-famous group: this strikes us as better conceptual art than some of the pieces we're seeing! It was as though the exhibition were manifesting its concepts in reality.

Upon further investigation, we learned we were viewing art in the company of former International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch! If he needed guarding it was probably because the guy was all wrapped up in the fascist regime of former dictator Franco. Suffice to say, people don't like Franco around here.

The following day we decide to dine at Origins 99.9%, an establishment that celebrates pure Catalan cuisine. (The .01% is for the beverages.) When we get there, however, a film crew has set up in the narrow street where the restaurant is located. We manage to squeeze past them and enter the restaurant. Rather than the ordinary view of people walking by, we were treated to the same exact scene over and over again. Two actors walk down the alleyway. Cue to shoppers, all very attractive, to start walking. Cue to guy who walks over to look at the menu next to where we were sitting. It was like the movie Groundhog's Day only for lunch, which was delicious incidentally.


While not exactly surreal, Spring has finally arrived in Barcelona. After so many days of rain and cold, it's been glorious to feel the sun! We celebrated by taking a train to nearby Sitges for lunch and a stroll on the beach.

Self-portraiture of the poor and vainglorious

Traveling as a pair has meant doing some creative photography in order to get pictures in which both of us appear! We've got a tripod, a timer, and in the above case (our new favorite) a mirror. In Valencia (below) I had to make a mad dash to get into the frame.

-JENN

Where do we go? Where do we go now?

There are certain cultural touchstones that serve as reminders that you are not in Kansas anymore. I imagine they're different for everyone. For me, I feel very aware I'm in a foreign place when I'm in public restrooms, any restroom really. The flusher is different, the toilet paper is dryer. Add to the list--which also includes seeing un-neutered dogs and cats, walking down narrow stone sidewalks, and breathing in second hand smoke every time I step outside my apartment--karaoke.

Those who know me are aware that I'm a bit of a sucker for the public sing-along. I fell for Alan while our friend Andrew was crooning "The Rainbow Connection" in perfect voce Kermit at The Mint in San Francisco. I received a standing ovation for my rendition of "Stand By Your Man" during my fabulous Bachelorette party. Last October, you might have spotted me wearing my plantinum blonde party wig and a combat helmet, singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." So I knew that American-born comedian Rachel Arieff's Anti-Karaoke night was a must-attend event as soon as Alan pointed out the flyer, which pictures Gene Simmons.

The above photo and below description, both from Arieff's Web site, should convey the flavor of the event:
ANTI-KARAOKE has no limits. Nor does it have TV screens for reading the lyrics. TV screens are for dicks. At ANTI-KARAOKE, we read the lyrics printed on paper from a music stand ... just like Napoleon, Mozart and Picasso used to do when they did karaoke. Punk rock!

ANTI-KARAOKE mixes high-quality, authentic-sounding versions of street anthems by the Misfits and the Ramones with the hits of Duran Duran, Ronnie James Dio, and Tom Jones. Imagine singing to Def Leppard or Public Enemy in costume or not, with or without a wig, with pants (like Sinatra) or without pants (like Iggy Pop). This is what we offer in our evening of underground karaoke in Barcelona’s hippest, most awesomely-conveniently-centrally-located club ...

Yeah, it's crazy like that. Alas, held in the basement a bar means that attending the event for too long gives you a taste for what it must feel like to be an ashtray. With my chest infection not quite cleared up, this morning was rough. (I'm not mentioning the gin and tonics. What gin and tonics?)

But can I just say there's something profoundly sublime about watching a bunch of drunk Spaniards who clearly didn't excell in English sing Guns and Roses "Sweet Child of Mine" at top volume while dancing around a tiny stage? I can. There is.

We're going to try to squeeze in one last Anti-Karaoke night next Monday and I'm thinking, if I just start with the drinking a little earlier I might work up the courage to show Barcelona how we do it in San Francisco.

-JENN

Surprise, surprise

One of the greatest pleasures of being in a place not your own is the way that it can upend your expectations. Take Valencia. Third largest city in Spain, right on the Mediterranean, home to one of several Holy Grails plus St. Vincent's arm lopped off and displayed on a pretty white pillow. Once a year they have this crazy festival during which they torch huge plaster, wood, and paper sculptures (sound familiar?). Even so, I was expecting a run-of-the-mill European destination--plazas, monuments, cathedrals, palaces, cobblestones, a dirty river through the middle, plus a slew of ugly apartment buildings built between 1955 and 1975 (give or take). And it had all of those things--except the river was diverted and replaced with a lovely park and in the park was this magnificent creation:


Paging sci-fi movie location scouts! Designed by architect and Valencia homeboy Santiago Calatrava, La Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciencies is a brand-new futuristic city within the city of Valencia. It houses a fine arts performance space (the big helmet-looking building on the right, which is still under construction), a "hemisferic" (the center eyeball) IMAX and planetarium, interactive science museum (far left), and beyond that a massive indoor/outdoor oceonographic center.

Now there are plenty of unkind things one can say about futuristic architecture: It doesn't age well, it's utopian, impractical. But walking around that place, all I could think about was the surreal, dream-like state the place evokes (perhaps less so during high tourist season). The forms are futuristic but, with all those sinewy arches and curved surfaces, also incredibly organic. The stark white concrete is balanced out by serene pools of water and the green park in which the mini-city sits. And there's something incredibly reassuring about a super high-tech public restroom; it just seems cleaner. Besides, a complex dedicated to the arts and science should itself reflect the exploratory, experimental nature of those endeavors. This complex does that.

Because I am, alas, sick again and because the place was so huge as to merit several days worth of visiting and we only had a day, we chose only to go to the Oceonografic center. Worth it! You literally descend into the aquarium sections, as though going underwater, resurface for birds and dolphins and seals, then back down for more underwater. These amazing tunnels provide you with panoramic underwater views that I couldn't get enough of, though it definitely helped to have my iPod so I could drown out the hordes of screaming school children that were tearing through these things with pretty music.

Not so much a surprise, but an incredible treat was a meal at Ca'Sento. This family-owned restaurant in a seedy neighborhood near Valencia's port is nothing that those descriptors evoke. It has a Michelin Star, just a few tables, and an army of waiters to meet your every need The seven-course meal we had was a complete palate-spinner. Fresh, fresh, fresh (just-clubbed, I like to say) seafood, the ubiquitous gourmet Spanish foam, surprising combinations (like bocarones on a chilled Parmesan soup with a hint of tomato juice essence). It was dinner raised to the level of fine art. I shall ask Alan to write up a more articulate description. But suffice to say, droooool.

The surprises continue. Back in Barcelona, recovering from what appears to be a cold or a sinus infection or bronchitis or I don't know what but thank goodness I can just pop into a pharmacy and get cheap antibiotics, I was bemoaning the fact that it's my next-to-last weekend here and I'm having to spend it inside doing as little as possible. And then it paraded on my rain. From around the corner came a stream of audio and visual delights. Costumes, marching bands, soon stretching down the entire length of the street. From my balcony, I had a perfect vantage point.

I suspect this has something to do with Carnaval!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but I cannot be sure. What I can say it was a great treat and something I would have missed had I been out, say, doing something cultural.

--JENN