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