Aube's Travels

Andalusian Days (VII): Market Bar-Hopping, Tapas, and Heavy Hearts in Sevilla

aubereylescure — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 09:57:00 GMT

The Carmen dancer, cheeks rouged and brows charcoaled, spins slowly about herself as a guitar player raucously wails along to the rest of the band's percussive claps. The audience, in a trance, shudders in its seats as Carmen lifts her chin in rage and bursts into a hailstorm of frenzied heel taps, her footwork barely visible as she flutters over to her sparring lovers, who are busy waving quivering imaginary knives to each other's throats. Trini yawns; she's on her phone. We exchange a glance, inhale sharply, but still let a few chortles escape. Large-scale flamencos shows like this ones, housed in great "palaces" that seat hundreds of tourists, easily veer into the grandiose and melodramatic.

I sneak out of the theatre and fall into the arms of Manuel Fernandez, a dear friend from boarding school who lives and works in Sevilla juggling a career in digital engineering and a vocation as a brilliant flutist. My plea to him, as we plotted our reunion, was to take use somewhere where young people go. It is a Wednesday night in Seville, the June air tepid. "We'll go for a beer," Manuel says, "but I have final exams tomorrow." Julian and I acquiesce, we have an early morning the next day as well. We follow Manuel through the maze-like streets of the historic center, one of Europe's largest. A sudden turn will often abut into a small but bustling plaza, warm lights gleaming from the interior of tapas bars and tables from different establishments spilling and mingling on the street.

After days of lavish meals and fancy restaurants, I recognize with a pang of glee the bar that Manuel has decided to take us to:at the foot of Sevilla's "mushrooms", a gigantic modern structure sprawling over the Plaza de la Encarnacion, nestles the Cervezeria La Surena. It is one of Spain's national chains of cheap, order-at-the-counter fast casual beer bars popular for its five-euro buckets of icy beers and dirt cheap snacks. Like the 70-cent beer pint chain Cien Montaditos, these bars are everywhere in urban Spain, with as many as one every few blocks in the biggest cities. It is in one of them that I celebrated my twentieth birthday years ago, a study-abroader at the inception of a love story with Madrid. Manuel gets an order of chicken wings and I a newspaper cone of bite-size chorizos, tiny links of cured meat that unleash soft, salty, fatty flesh under the crunch of one's teeth. "Do they have wine here?" Julian asks, and Manuel laughs. "Maybe, man, but I've never seen anyone order wine at La Surena in my lifetime." It turns out they do sell wine--seven euros for a 350 mL bottle, quite a rip-off compared to the insane beer prices here. But Julian and I have developed vinophilic palates, and soon our small outdoor table is covered with beer buckets, wine glasses, and a mix-match of empty white and red wine bottles. It is only when a cleaning lady, mop in hand, zeroes in on our table that we realize that everyone else has left, and that Manuel will definitely not be going home to rest for his exam the next day.

So we run with the night, and end up at La Bicicleta, a dim, crammed bar where locals and study abroad students converge. Sitting on low couches, we knock back beer after wine after beer, the three of us only loosely bound to the nucleus of our table: Manuel recognizes two friends from his music conservatory at the next table; Julian, at one point in the night, migrates to another corner table to talk to fellow South Americans, and I find myself in an intense conversation with a Malaysian man named Chung, who moved to Sevilla while young and became friends with Manuel's music crowd. In the blurry progression into dawn, I note how typically Spanish the bar is: not a muted, segregated NYC cocktail bar, but no as wild and rowdy as a jam-packed pub. Instead, the drinks are cheap, the population fluid, and over a few hours it seemed that all tables had played musical seats, everybody mingling and talking. This, in my mind, is a great night out, perhaps even a cinematic ideal: boozy, social, garrulous, great conversations with old friends and many seredipidous new acquaintances. Around 4 am, Julian and I walk along the deserted streets towards the hotel, still talking, sitting on the sidewalk to digest the weight of a story, finally finding our way to the Plaza where our hotel is awaiting us for a few hours of sleep.

Rolling off my bed the next morning, I let the pounding hangover settle in, and hide my sickly complexion behind wide sunglasses. I have a sneaking suspicion, even though it is only nine in the morning, that drinking shall soon recommence. When in a large Andalusian city like Seville, and even more so Granada, it'd be foolish not to partake in one of the most ingenious Spanish culinary customs: tapear, which more or less consists of bar hopping and sampling housemade tapas in the process. For a no-frills experience, look no further than to the ubiquitous neighborhood bars that are indistinguishable from one another all across Spain, with their harsh white lighting and peppery faux-marble countertops. Most of the time, in Andalucia, plates of tapas come free with any drink ordered, and the most debauched and raucous of bars allow for incessant finger-wiping on paper napkins torn from small plastic dispensers and crumpled onto the floor, which are intermittently swept to prevent patrons from standing waist-deep in napkin-waste.

_{Fino sherry and jamon at a stand-only counter in Sevilla}

_{With beautiful Marta in her neighboorhood market}

In Sevilla, if you are looking for a budget-friendly route to go tapear, stray from the many small plazas and their tempting outdoor cafes and head to small neighborhood food markets, where butchers and charcuterie and cheese stalls will often have a standing-room only metal counters where you can order a cold sherry and some jamón. This is precisely where I find myself with Marta, a lanky native Sevillana with a beautiful, soulful face and a sultry voice. She sings Brazilian songs in bars at night to earn bread for her two young children after losing her Brazilian husband two years ago. There is a spring in her step, but also deep melancholy and contemplation whenever she breaks into song, walking along the cobblestone streets. Marta lives in a working class neighborhood on the edge of the historic center, and shows us around her favorite market spots: snails stewed with a spicy tomato base at a cafe at the foot of an ancient church, pork belly arepas, Chinese stir-fry, all within the perimeter of a fresh market where she picks up ingredients for our home cooked meal. Because I am so hungover, I make more random and elderly friends than I have the whole trip: at one point, as we stop by a crowded tapas bar for a glass of wine, I plop down at a table occupied by only a large, old man because I am too frail to stand. Soon enough, I meet his wife, who was shopping at the market, and all of his other friends at the neighboring tables. Turns out this old Sevillano couple are also avid gamblers and Las Vegas fanatics, and have traveled all over the US in their lifetime. Marta peels me away from my new crew, as lunch awaits. On the way to her apartment, we stop by a little bakery to buy fresh bread for the meal. Her children are at their grandmother's, and she sings out as she points to their photographs along the wall: "beautiful little mixed children". She hums as her fingers trace the photograph or her husband: "a beautiful, beautiful musician".

We make gazpacho with tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, and half a carrot and one apple to add a little sweetness. After filtering the cold soup, we fill a big bowl with ice cubes and pour the gazpacho inside to chill as we prepare another Spanish staple, spinach with garbanzo beans. While the spinach and chickpeas boil and soften, Marta blends bread and olive oil in the mixer and adds the creamy paste to the pan, along with cumin and sea salt. As she stirs, I cut up asymetric chunks of potatoes that I then pour into a large bowl of beaten eggs. The whole is then fried in a deep pan to make tortilla, Spain's world-famous potato omelette. After covering the pan and letting the tortilla sizzle, we count the minutes until it is firm enough to be removed from the pan but still runny on the inside. With Julian and Trinidad, we carry over the plates sit at a makeshift table in her living room. Marta pours us ice tea. We get seconds of each dish. "A gin and tonic around the corner?" Marta asks. I admire the view from the small balcony in her room, which overlooks a plaza where children are jubilantly running after a soccer ball. Marta looks a little tired, or a little sad. We all are; it is our last day and we have barely skimmed the surface of Sevilla's beauty, meanwhile everything seems to be coming together: at ease with the world, forging bonds, and now, heartbreakingly, we bid farewell.

_{Tuna tartare toast at El Traga, Seville}

But, of course, the eating and drinking does not cease. A foray into the land of fine dining, in contrast with the delightful simplicity of a homecooked meal, has the advantage of stunning the eater into an incredulous stupor: such is our last hurray at El Traga, a newly-opened tapas bar serving modernist Andalusian cuisine with an open-view into the kitchen. The original tavern of the same name was a neighborhood emblem in the later half of the twentieth century, and was owned by chef Jesus Rosendo's father--an original mural remains, a wink to the family history. The meat and fish-heavy creative fare comes in bite-size quantities, but with no lack of creativity. Although Trini protests that "tuna is coming out of her nose" after our trip along the coast, we cannot refuse the temptation of rare red tuna with sesame oil, cherry tomatoe,s and payoyo cheese on bread, as well as an exhilarating plate of salmon on julienned vegetables where the salmon is smoked in the client's plate, right as it is being served, with the help of a smoke fuse inserted into a glass plate cover over the food. For a third course, we have what is perhaps one of the top contenders for the best croquetas of the trip, gamey duck croquettes with smooth bechamel, followed by a tapas of heavenly tender sous-vide presa iberica (acorn-fed pork shoulder), a great porcine alternative to waygu, with sweet potato crisps and sea salt.

_{Presa Iberica and sweet potatoes at El Traga, Seville}

Today is my last day in Andalucia, so perhaps it is my own projection that makes me see heavy hearts everywhere. Or perhaps it is my debilitating hangover, incurable even after Julian convinces me to chug an entire bottle of detestable pool-blue powerade. So today I am floating. In a cloud of post-fiesta recovery, in pre-emptive nostalgia, in the high of a trip which scope will only be comprehensible much, much later in life.

_{My beloved partners in gluttunous crimes, Julian and Trinidad, on our final day}

Andalusian Days (VI): How Much do You Know About Extra Virgin Olive Oil?

aubereylescure — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 09:20:00 GMT

“We’ve had two weeks of rain and strong winds,” Diego says, kicking into the red soil covered by loose mounds of fallen leaves and shrunken olives. “Crazy winds. The flowers were in bloom then, and pollen flying everywhere. You’d step into the groves, and instantly become coated in yellow.”

Stormy as they may be, these are optimal weather conditions for the pollination of the olive trees, which are just beginning to sprout clusters of green buds. The twenty hectares of Hacienda Merrha sprawl over the gentle slopes of the Campina de los Alcores, the highest plateau on the horizon, and the elevation can be felt through the fortifying gusts of wind rustling through the leaves. Around the estate, late spring flowers are just awakening, and butterflies flutter over bushes of golden buds and lavenders. This is the heart of Basilippo’s operation, a small-scale familiar enterprise of world-renowned extra virgin olive oil pressed and bottled on-site. Diego’s cousin, Juana, is in charge of Basilippo’s direction after her husband Juan, the founder and soul of Basilippo, passed away a year ago. The family carried on with resilience, steadfast in their dedication to produce quality extra virgin olive oil and educate the public on the benefits of the mediterranean diet. Each member contributes something--even the elderly Uncle Juan, who lives on the residence and likes, I am told, to recite Alberti’s poems to the olive trees.

GREEN vs. BLACK OLIVES: MATTER OF DEGREE

A prerequisite to an olive oil education is the understanding of the growth trajectory of the fruit itself. Young olives first develop their pit, then the flesh of the fruit begins to thicken and mature around the pit, and finally the oil that is object of such lust begins to suffuse the fruit.

Noticing that all of the young olives are green, I reveal the depth of my ignorance with a naive inquiry:

“Do you grow only green olives, or do you have black olives as well?”

“Only green,” Diego replies, “But green and black olives are, in fact, the same fruit. The olives turn black when they are more mature, but we harvest them much before here.”

“In Provence, where I am from, black olives are very popular.”

Juana sighs and shakes her head. “Different cultures around the mediterranean basin have very different ideas about what constitutes a good olive. Here, we do not like to use black olives because although they produce a lot of oil due to their age, the fruit also amasses a lot of water, and that dilutes the oil pressed from the olive.”

The traditional harvest of olive trees calls for a rather violent beating of the branches in order to shake a rain of olives onto the ground. Nowadays, the process consists of a more gentle, mechanized combing of the tree, and the olives are gathered in nets spread over the soil. Depending on how late into the season the olives are harvested, their oil content progresses from pure but scarce to more abundant but watered down. The price of the former can easily become astronomical, and Diego explains that as a small company the family tries to optimize the balance for the best quality of oil they can harvest at a still-marketable price. Almost every bottle produced here passes the certification of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), a label I do not quite grasp the meaning of at first. I ask Diego if the denomination concerns the species or quality of the olive, thinking that perhaps there existed such a class as “virgin olives”, or if it was a lack of industrial processing that qualified the oil as virginal.

WHAT DOES "EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL" REALLY MEAN?

“That’s a good question,” Diego says, “because a huge problem with olive oil fraud is that few people outside the industry know what EVOO really means. It is actually a very clinical label, and has little to do with the provenance of the olive and processing method. To get certified, a sample of olive oil is sent to a lab for chemical analysis and tested for the purity of the product. If it passes the chemical round, the oil is then sent to a panel of experts who taste and judge it for defects. A good EVOO needs to taste and smell like fruits, herbs, or vegetables. If it has all three, even better. Defective ones may taste like stones, dirt, or vinegar. If the defects are slight, the oil may still be labeled as ‘virgin’, but the worst ones are sent to process in chemical plants and become refined olive oil. These oils are then mixed with some fresh olive juice, and sold on the market as ‘olive oil’”.

“And the standard is the same globally?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Then why are there so many cases of fraudulent olive oils? How can they get certified?”

“These oil producers and marketers are doing something completely illegal, but often get away with it because of consumers’ lack of education about what makes a good olive oil. Since consumers do not know enough to report a second-rate oil disguised as EVOO, and there are so many brands and manufacturers worldwide, it is hard for inspectors to oversee the veracity of every batch without a more propagated olive oil culture.”

With new determination to, at the very least, become familiar enough with EVOO to avoid getting duped at supermarkets, I follow Diego and Juana into the processing mill. From Phoenician times to the nineteen-eighties, most olive oil was extracted from an open grinding process, where a mule would circle around an elevated platform, pulling a stone grinder that would smash the olives to a pulp. “This may seem very folkloric to you,” Diego says, “the mule, the stone, the ‘traditional’ artisanal process--but, in reality, that method of pressing leads to both the oxidation of the oil and the contamination of the pulp with insects, old oil on instruments, and, worst of all, donkey manure.”

Gulp. How the cold-press process works nowadays, in a sterilized and highly conditioned environment, ensures the integrity of the olive oil as it migrates from tree to bottle. The olives, once picked, are washed and grinded into a paste along with the pits, which boasts precious nutritional qualities. Various systems of centrifuges then separate elements of different weights, extracting the oil away from the flesh, water, and pit particles. The solid and water material leftover from the process are saved to be used again as combustible fuel.

FOR GOOD OLIVE OIL, TEMPERATURE IS KEY

An essential knowledge for anyone who cooks with olive oil is that temperature is the paramount factor in maintaining the quality of the product. A great olive oil can be soiled if stored or used improperly due to its vulnerability to light and heat. The precautions, for producers like Basilippo, begin with the harvest itself--if the summer is too hot during some years, the collection of olives is done in the night. Then, as a constant, the processing of the oil follows a cold extraction method, where the temperature in the room never exceeds twenty-five degrees.

For olive oil owners at home, this means that the environment the oil is stored in should always be below twenty-seven degrees. A rule of thumb, Diego says, is to keep your oil where you keep your wine--somewhere cool, dry, and far away from sunlight, which will make the olive oil go rancid. When picking up an olive oil at a market, make sure to always choose brands with dark bottles, as transparent ones will almost certainly let light compromise the oil. When cooking, keep in mind that although EVOO is the healthiest oil for deep frying, the heat will induce the oil to lose its aromas. This is why EVOO truly shines in Andalusian cuisine, where the oppressing climate is compensated by chilled soups and cold salads, dishes ideal for bringing out the flavor of the oil.

SNIFF LIKE AN EXPERT: GO FOR GREEN, AVOID VINEGAR

Train yourself to recognize quality olive oil with one word in mind: green. No, that is not the color of the oil--in fact, the color of the oil is completely inconsequential to determining its quality. Take a little container of oil, covered to prevent oxidation, and hold the bottom in the palm of your hands so that the slight heat of your skin unleashes the aromas of the oil. Now take a whiff: a good oil will smell “green”, or crisp, citrusy, like tomatoes or apples. If those notes are too subtle for the uninitiated nose to pick up, then there is a much easier cheat for recognizing bad olive oil: Diego gives me another container, filled with a big-name brand oil marketed as EVOO in supermarkets, and asks me to describe the smell. I can’t really, except that it does not smell like green apples, and is dominantly acidic, almost like-- “Yes! Vinegar!” exclaims Diego. “A bad oil will smell sour, like it has already been mixed with vinegar.”

_{Salmorejo with boiled egg and cured ham}

COOL OFF WITH COLD ANDALUCIAN DISHES WHERE OLIVE OIL IS THE STAR

But today, we forget about the impostor oils and set out to learn how to make delicious dishes in which EVOO is integral. Out in the courtyard, Juana has set up a cooking station with a basket of fresh vegetables, country bread, and small bowls of cured jamon and boiled eggs. From the garlic and the peppers, I can already guess that we are making a typical Andalusian cold soup, the salmorejo. All one needs for it, really, is a good mixer and quality ingredients. We cut up a dozen of red tomatoes, a small cucumber, garlic, a small green onion, and some green peppers. Then, Juana pours about 150 ml of liquid gold--her very own Basilippo olive oil--onto the cut-up vegetables in the mixer. She adds generous chunks of day-old country bread, and a squeeze of lemon. “Some people like to use vinegar instead,” she says. “But as you know now, as olive oil producers, we are not big fans of the flavor of vinegar.”

The mixer whirs, and the ingredients are soon blended into a smooth, salmon-colored concoction. Salmorejo is fairly similar to its famous cousin, gazpacho, except richer and creamier from the marriage of the pureed bread thickened and emulsified with olive oil. To serve, the salmorejo is chilled for a few hours or overnight in the fridge, then topped with another drizzle of olive oil and crumbled egg and cured jamon.

Another extremely simple and ubiquitous starter of the region is patatas alinadas, or cold potato salad. Very dissimilar from the tubs of mayo that comprise another famous spanish potato salad, the ensalada rusa, patatas alinadas focus on crispness and bite. Potatoes are boiled then allowed to cool to room temperature, which is ideal for oil absorption. Green onion and green pepper are diced finely and mixed with the potatoes, along with coarsely chopped parsley, lemon juice, sea salt, and, of course, a hearty dose of olive oil.

_{Chocolate ice cream with orange-infused olive oil}

IN SPAIN, TRACKING YOUR OLIVE OIL INTAKE IS A FUTILE EFFORT...

Juan and Diego seem to forget that I am supposed to eat lunch at Diego’s brother’s restaurant, Mas que Tapas, in the nearby town el Viso del Alcor. They bring out cold white wine, slices of manchego cheese drizzled with vanilla-infused olive oil, and chocolate ice cream in a bath of spicy, orange-infused olive oil. By now I know that pleading for the food parade to cease is futile, and embrace the entire bottle of extra virgin olive oil that must have trickled into my body by now.

Diego chuckles: “Eduardo loves to use our oil in his cuisine, so you haven’t seen the end of it yet.”

Edu, said brother, a gentle giant with a shy, pinched smile, greets us in the small kitchen of Mas que Tapas, a simply decorated restaurant with, as its name suggests, a creative menu rooted on but transcendent of traditional tapas. Edu is a professional chef who completed his apprenticeship in Seville, Catalonia, and London, but dreamt of opening his own restaurant in his natal village, el Viso del Alcor, a few kilometers out of Seville. Perhaps he could have had greater access to a diverse tourist clientele there, but Edu prides himself on rolling out a new menu every season, bringing inventive cuisine straight to the doorstep of his fellow villagers, and retaining items that are most popular with the local regulars.

_{Tuna tataki with homemade mayonnaise and olive oil at Más que Tapas}

_{Shaved foie gras with red wine reduction at Más que Tapas}

_{Fried pork cheeks with avocado hummus at Más que Tapas}

Today, he starts us off with lighted crusted olives stuffed with anchovies and fried in olive oil, followed by a martini glass of red tuna tataki in fragrant, spicy Basilippo olive oil and homemade light mayonnaise. The next tapas is a decadent plate of shaved foie gras drizzled with a delightfully jam-like red wine reduction and coarse sea salt. The rich unctuosity of the foie gras is balanced by the clear, palate-cleansing qualities of the next dish, steamed white bacalao on a bed of zucchini pasta topped with a spoonful of black tapenade. The winner of the parade, lightly breaded pork cheeks cooked sous-vide to maintain a milky tenderness and quickly tempura-ed in olive oil, sit atop a creamy green bed of avocado hummus. Lastly, a molten chocolate cake with an oozy center is served with a refreshing scoop of donut-flavored ice cream.

Edu is counting down the days to the unveiling of his summertime menu, which he has spent the past few weeks experimenting with. “Everytime,” he says, “I’m nervous to hear how the townspeople respond to new creations I rotate out.”

It is an amazing feeling to have patrons ask again and again for an unexpected success, and the most popular, like the tuna tataki, stay on the menu for good. It wasn’t always easy to popularize the concept of innovative cuisine in the town, but after seven years of operation, Edu says it is the neighbors who have allowed his dream to flourish. Any diner can eat a meal of many courses here for less than twenty euros per person, and in exchange support a small town miracle of refined gastronomy. There is no denying the quality and sophistication of the tapas here, and the family’s obvious commitment to the stardom of ingredients could be compared to any refined taperia in Spain’s large cities. No need to seek fame in metropoles for Diego, Juana, and Edu: the magical golden oil grows from the heartland, and its repute travels along the arteries of country roads, finding its way to creamy soups and zesty salads in every household, keeping millennia of mediterranean mystique alive.

Andalusian Days (V): Rural Mystique and Country Cooking around Sevilla

aubereylescure — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 08:28:00 GMT

9 am

Julian and I stand at the edge of a dirt field as a tractor roils up trails of brown clouds. We must look conspicuous to the farmer driving the tractor, two strangers observing him intently on a deserted expanse of flat fields. Muffled music from radio or television escape the cafe-bar our car is parked by, at a junction of two country roads. Adjacent to it is a courtyard with plastic tables and chairs, empty. Sun rays filter through the woven partition that quarters the property off from the fields, slanting onto stillness.

The tractor climbs out of the field and parks not far from us. The farmer, a youngish man with dark hair, steps onto a ledge outside the door of the tractor, shoots us a look, and stretches.

It’s like stalking a lion in its habitat--waiting to see if we have trespassed, or if our presence has been noted but ignored, and if the camera can approach.

“Julian! Aube! Where are you?” we are yanked back by Trini’s cry, and look back wistfully at the farmer, who climbs back into his tractor. We may see another, but we are not sure. All around us are flat, immense fields, endless fields, with few other signs of humans in sight. Only great storks abound, perched high in their nests on lone, skinny trees.

Wild rice. It grows in abundance in the outskirts of Sevilla, along the Guadalquivir river, amounting to over half of Spain’s national rice production. Early June is not yet the season for tender green sprouts, and we drive through endless fields of scorched earth, labored over and over by tractors turning over the soil to prepare for planting season.

Once the rice cultivation begins, the area transforms into vast marshlands, stewing in the inland heat of Sevilla. Isla Mayor, the village where most farming families nearby live, captured Spain’s imagination with the 2014 movie “Isla Mínima” (Marshland), perhaps the same way Louisiana swamps gained a menacing mystique with Cary Fukunaga’s “True Detective”. The movie resembles the series in both aesthetics and casting, and more nakedly so in plot: a pair of cops, one lanky and bearded, the other snippy and balding, investigate the murder of a teenage girl during the annual town celebrations of the “forgotten” village. Moody, panoramic shots of the mysterious marshes conjure an isolation lost in the beauty of the marshland. We climb onto the truck of Isla Mayor’s environmental official, an old man darkened and spotted by the sun. “Don’t worry about that,” he snips as I attempt to buckle my seat belt.

12 pm

We cruise on straight roads that line one field after another. A clump of low, blocky houses come into view, dwarfed by an industrial complex for grain storage and processing. Isla Mayor proper, with its one main street flanked by closed storefronts, resembles a deserted border town. It is here, surprisingly, that you will find one of the finest rural restaurants of the Sevilla region, Estero. The restaurant’s interior comprises of a large wooden bar and a spartan side room with aged furniture. By the entrance, a wall of fame with photographs of famous visitors, perhaps local politicians and celebrities.

Estero, by unapologetically drawing eaters into the desolate heart of the marshes, establishes its identity as a restaurant of the terroir, a strictly traditional affair of country cooking using the surrounding estuaries’ fish, ducks, red crabs, and wild rice. The elderly chef with hawkish features, Enrique Santollo, directs me through the preparation of arroz caldoso, or “soupy rice”, stewed in great clay pots in two famous iterations--duck and crab. Onion and peppers are first sauteed in olive oil, then the duck and crab added to the pot and simmered in a thick, savory soup with wine and stock. The crab rice is lighter to allow for the subtler taste of crab flesh, while the duck rice is a brown, gamey, intensely salty marvel. With cold white wine and toasts topped with thick slices of cured white fish drizzled with olive oil, as well as sunny eggs atop of bed of fried baby shrimps and peppers, this is a rural feast at its heartiest.

_{Fried eggs and baby shrimps at Estero}

_{Soupy rice with red crab and meatballs at Estero}

_{Soupy rice with duck at Estero}

On my way out, I spy plates of sliced tomatoes bathing in golden olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, awaiting departure as appetizers to other tables. The simplicity of the other dishes here neatly draw out the privilege it is to witness the lengthy and expert stewing process of the famous soupy rice, with its myriad meat juices, wines, and herbs.

_{Tomatoes with olive oil and sea salt at Estero}

4 pm

The orange orchards at the Ave Maria farm, sprawling around a hill where a red-tiled villa stands, form a rural utopia of rich dark soil and perfumed air. Out by the patio, a placid turquoise pool and tables under the shade of centenarian trees. Pitchers of fresh squeezed orange juice clinkering with ice, large wooden bowls piled high with mandarines, clementines, navel oranges, pomelos, and Ave Maria Farm’s specialty—bitter oranges, also christened by adoring Brits as “Seville oranges”. So bitter they are that these oranges are slated to meet one fate only—transformation into translucent, angelic marmalade, thin strips of orange zests suspended in almost liquid gelatin.

The art of marmalade involving these oranges, mostly elaborated in the isles across the English Channel, holds weightlessness and transparency as the utmost standard of a quality spread. Forget about thick, sweet, clumpy jams—these jars, when held up against the immaculate blue sky, allow the light to gleam through like glowing jars of sunshine.

José, who oversees the farm with his wife, Amadora, cuts us thick, luscious slices of country bread that we spread with butter or, for the adventurous, olive oil. The marmalade, when topped onto the bed of butter or oil, forms a shiny and clear coat; the only indications of its citrusness the zesty orange peel confetti, sparsely laid out, adding a faint hint of bitterness to balance the sweetness of the marmalade. When drizzled with olive oil, the country bread absorbs a spiciness that also combines extraordinarily with the spread.

An afternoon tea, a picnic in the shade, a goûter by the pool—sitting there, basking in the intimate idyll of the moment, there is a peace reminiscent of childhood afternoons in the south of France, returning from school amidst the buzz of cicadas and sitting on the shaded terrace that overlooked olive groves and distant hills, gluttonously plunging my museau into a glass of cold milk into which I dipped petit ecolier cookies or tartines drooping under the weight of a mound of nutella. The beauty of the estate and spirit of sheer gourmandize—enjoyment of one fruit, one ingredient, one heavenly nectar adoringly scooped, schmeared, savored, a paradise that unfurls only in the late afternoon heat, presaging the nascent anticipation of savory smells from the kitchen as dinner simmers on the stove. Joy and tranquility radiating from this one scene; a luminous painting with strokes of warm, sunny Andalusian colors. If one can lapse into sentimentality because life has so scarcely resembled, say, a Sorollan scene or pure summer and insouciance, it is now.

8 pm

_{Andalusian gardens at the Hotel Cortijo Torre de la Reina}

The aura of mystery that surrounds the Andalusian countryside inspired Federico García Lorca’s rural trilogy, which includes the much celebrated Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding)--plays intent on exploring hidden folklore, pagan traditions, and agricultural livelihoods of the region. It is true that there are hidden treasures everywhere, splendid yet lonely secrets locked away behind walls and rows of tall cypresses. Torre de la Reina, a plain, quiet town bisected by a single artery devoid of buzzing commerce, is the seat of a royal countryside estate, the Hotel Cortijo Torre de la Reina, with an ancient tower dating back to the 1200s, when it served as a caliphal defense fortress for the Moors. After its reconquest by the Catholic Kings, the property became a hunting outpost for the Spanish royalty, with medieval dungeons, steep staircases descending into unknown depths, and hectares of hidden courtyards and gardens teeming with lily ponds, fountains, roses, lilac, and heavy, blooming clumps of bougainvillea.

We are the only guests in the hotel, and do not see a living soul other than an occasional gardener and the estate’s two hunting dogs, Concord and Tura. They gambol and howl, dragging bloody bird carcasses across the courtyard.

_{Gardens of the Hotel Cortijo Torre de la Reina}

We prepare dinner with a seventy-two year old chef, a woman who lives across the street and was hired thirty years ago to clean and help around the kitchen, and subsequently became a reputed cook heading the estate’s restaurant, which serves typical home-made Andalusian cuisine. Tonight, we make a creamy white soup called ajo blanco, a mixture of almonds, olive oil, bread, garlic, and a dash of vinegar, served chilled. The main course is a roasted chicken sitting atop a bed of potatoes, carrots, celery, and sliced apples, doused generously with white wine and olive oil, then wrapped six of seven times in tin foil and roasted in the oven for over two hours. The meat, simmering in the spices and its own juices without losing a drop of moisture, falls away from the bone with extraordinary tenderness. For dessert, the orange flan with sliced cake at the base. We eat in an otherwise empty dining hall, royals flags and crests ornating the walls, a white moon shining outside the French doors.

_{Creamy, chilled ajo blanco soup in traditional china}

Noella, the chef’s granddaughter and a girl with laughing long-lashed eyes and a blue-and-white maid dress, brings us bottles of red and white wines and charcuterie. Since there is no other staff on the premises, she’d agreed to come fill in as a waitress for the night to help her grandmother.

After Noella leaves the room, Trini leans in: “there’s something peculiar about these rural hotels, especially when you are the only guest. I once stayed at one with two women reporters, and a tall, pale man with the looks of Dracula checked us in, but then said he’d be spending the night elsewhere. The hotel was also centuries old, with hidden rooms and dusty paintings, in the middle of a silent countryside, miles away from other houses. Just imagine. We barely closed an eye that night.”

When Noella returns, Trinidad asks her, half-jokingly, if she’s ever seen a ghost on the premises.

“No,” the girl smiles sweetly, before slinking away with our empty plates. “Not so far.”

Andalusian Days (IV): Sherry School in Jerez de la Frontera

aubereylescure — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 23:59:00 GMT

_{Bodega Diez Meritos, Jerez}

Shakespeare himself once said it: ditch wine, drink sherry. Or perhaps it was more to the effect of: knave! Drop from thy hand that gaudy goblet of insipid wine, and drink sherry.

Easier said than done. Sherry, to be sure, is an acquired taste, but with hefty doses of practice it became one that I acquired in about twenty-four hours. In popular imagination, sherry is a misunderstood spirit: sticky, sweet, syrupy, opaque, British (a stereotype engendered by the Brit’s lack of native good wine, and Francis Drake’s timely delivery of thousands of barrels of sherry pillaged from Andalucia), good only as aperitif or dessert wine, to be sipped by fireplaces in moody weather, in short, utterly unglamorous and grandmotherly. It is, for the most part, everything but.

Sherry, or jerez in Spanish, encompasses an extraordinary range of wines ranging from the translucent and crisp fino to the chokingly sugary Pedro Ximenez (PX), and its various iterations can be served as refreshing table wine or overpowering digestif. In Andalucia, sherry is consumed in liver-shredding quantities both during annual ferias (city carnivals) and, quotidianly, as an accompaniment to any meal, at any time of the day. Its genius lies in its strength, complexity, and simultaneous weightlessness. Not counting sherries of the dessert variety like Cream and Pedro Ximenez, even some of the more fortified strains of sherry, bone dry and served fresh, will cool you right off in the Andalusian heat while warming your innards with a fiery trail.

Like almost every other local product I’ve encountered in Andalucia, sherry falls under the legal protection of regionally controlled appellation and can only be called jerez if it is from the town of Jerez de la Frontera, slightly more northern and inland than Cadiz. “De la Frontera”, or “of the frontier”, is a suffix to many a city around Cadiz, and if you connect the dots on the map you would find yourself retracing the border between the Moorish empire and Catholic kingdom. Jerez, as a city, is composed and proud, self-contained in its modest urbanity yet obsessive about its sherry industry and, even more so, of its fine horses that mix Arabian and Andalusian blood that have earned the city a global reputation as an equestrian capital. Metal and bronze sculptures of splendid horses, standing on hind legs with muscles bulging, greet visitors at roundabouts and in hotel lobbies. Pride aside, Jerez lacks the exhibitionist beauty of Sevilla and carries about its business with surprising severity: steps away from the charms of its historic center, its streets are somewhat washed-up, unembellished, and an austere authority reigns over the low buildings. Mid-afternoon, walking through blocks and blocks of bodegas, everything is still, silent, mysterious.

The viniculture of the region long transcends its Arab and Spanish occupiers, and the peculiar climate, soil, and light of the region have been exploited for winemaking since the Roman times. The earth around the Sherry Triangle, a chalky white soil called the albariza, absorbs enough humidity to feed the grapes even during times of extreme heat, and produces the palomino grape used for most sherries (the two other grapes are the Pedro Ximenez, rumored to be named for the German Peter Siemens, and moscatel, a variety also popular for sweet Malagueño wine). Though I was preening for a plein air vineyard tour amidst hills of grapes and rural estates, sherry-tasting in Jerez proved to center on all the opposite characteristics: dark, cool, spartan urban bodegas sprawling over entire blocks, where sherry is stored in rows of barrels and left to age. The architecture of the bodegas is most peculiar and strikingly uniform throughout the city: from the outside, they almost look like the siheyuans of Beijing with their white walls and slanted roofs with black tiles. We knock on the heavy door of the Bodega Diez Meritos, and hear footsteps approaching. Once inside, secret Andalucian gardens bloom into view: rick, peach yellow walls, arched doorways, stone pillars blackened by the years, orange trees in cobblestoned courtyards.

In the shadowy vaulted caves of the bodega, we walk along interminable rows of stacked barrels, with the oldest closest to the floor and the youngest to the ceiling. Sherry, however, is not defined by a particular year, as it is matured by solera, a tireless process of agglomeration and balance by mixing intervals of different ages of sherry, until all complex variants are averaged into singular smooth concoction, albeit without failing to contribute their original little kick of flavor.

Thankfully, the variety on the sherry spectrum is manageable to learn as it roughly follows the progression from dry to sweet and pale to dark. Fino is the closest to white wine, driest of dry, protected from oxidation by a thin gray layer of yeast flor that forms in the barrel, and fortified to around 15% alcohol. Manzanilla, a close cousin, owes its extreme delicateness and salty touch to the sea wind of Sanlucar de Barrameda. Amontillado, the next notch up in intensity, is a slightly more aged fino that owes its darker hue to slow oxidation but remains very dry, albeit nuttier and more complex. Oloroso, named for the rather pungent scent it yields, is the richest and strongest type of sherry, fully and lengthily oxidized to reach about 20% in alcohol content. Traditionally, sherry does not allow for blends in grape varieties, but an innovation by British winemaker Harvey’s in the late 1880s mixed Oloroso with sweeter wines from Pedro Ximenez and moscatel grapes, and produced the “cream”, an enjoyable crowdpleaser solidly in the dessert realm that is, contrary to its name, neither milky nor creamy. Palo Cortado, the most elegant and evasive of sherries, begins on the Amontillado track but develops the darker qualities of an Oloroso due to serendipitous biological processes, and transforms into beautiful amber gold with hints of salt and caramel. Finally, for those with a dedicated sweet tooth and reliable dental insurance, the Pedro Ximenez, made almost entirely from very sundried, very mature, and very sugary PX grapes, is an unctuous elixir with notes of chocolate and spice. Unlike the much smoother Cream, it contains such a high sugar concentration that drinking it feels like sipping syrup, and I had to put down the glass when overtaken by a coughing fit from a throat scorched by sugar.

A great virtue of sherry, other than getting you very drunk with sneaky stealth, is its potent excellence as a cooking ingredient. Every type of sherry, from a light hint of fino to an intense PX reduction, can complement range of meats and fishes and lend the resulting dish a curious complexity. La Carbona, an absolute jewel of a family-run restaurant housed in a great traditional bodega hall with high vaulted ceilings, welcomes us for a sherry-themed feast: a deluge of dishes both cooked and paired with sherry. Javier Muñoz junior is the talented young chef behind the stove, while Javier senior mans the bar and asks for our preferences for the first-round of pre-dinner drinks. Amateurly sherried-out from my tasting at the bodega, I timidly ask for a glass of white wine, which I now imagine will go down like water in comparison to sherry. Javier Sr. narrows his eyes, and chuckles as if correcting an unthinkable mistake stemming from my poor Spanish : “White wine? You mean a fino?”

Unable to withstand the pressure, I forfeit: “yes, thank you.”

Thus armed with my sixth or seventh drink, I hover over Javier Jr.’s cook station as he steams large prawns with fino sherry and curry powder and fries up soft boiled artichokes with olive oil, fino, and sea salt. Javier, self-proclaimedly unfit for school, was whisked away up north to Santander by a family friend as a young man and cut his teeth in the Michelin-starred El Serbal. Nowadays, he is offering a “market-based” cuisine at La Carbona that he describes as simple and traditional, which it may seem at first sight, but the expertise with which the meat and fish are handled clearly point to sophistication and inventiveness. Most days of the week, Javier Sr. visits the local fisheries and butchers early in the morning to pick out the best cuts, and Jr. works with the bounty of the day, often creating seasonal dishes unlisted in the menu.

_{Artichokes fried in olive oil and sherry with curried prawns}

For 32 euros per person, with food and wine pairing both included and traditional ingredients of the finest quality, La Carboná’s sherry tasting menu is dizzying in both its succulence and alcohol content. The artichoke and shrimp we just cooked materializes trifold on our table, accompanied with Amontillado sherry. Another starter on the tasting menu is a stacked pastry of mackerel marinated in sherry vinegar, liver, onions, and apples, married with a Palo Cortado. Next arrives more serious fish: two perfectly seared chunks of the daily catch sitting atop a bed of spinach tagliatelle and puréed peas, trailed by a glass of fino. The great surprise of the night is an enormous cut of cantabrian steak, grilled to perfection, buttery and tender, so rare in parts it tastes like tartare, paired with rich oloroso. For dessert, goat cheese ice cream with raspberry coulis and fino, with a cream sherry of medium intensity.

_{Fish pastry with vigegar-marinated daily catch, liver, onions, and apples}

_{Deluxe Cantabrian steak}

_{Seared white fish with spinach tagliatelle and pea puree}

All in all, that’s a lot of sherry, even for an intrigued beginner. I struggle to finish each glass in time for the next pairing to arrive, and have nursed no less than ten or eleven drinks by the time the dessert plates were cleared. Ultimately, years of collegiate training rose to the occasion and I exit La Carbona bipedal and upright, carrying with me a newfound resolve to, at least, keep on developing a palate for sherry. For the moment, however, I am desirous of a break, foolishly thinking in my drunkenness that I can resume a regime of white wine in the coming days, forgetting that I am in Andalucia and that, inevitably, a chilled glass of tangy sherry would find its way to me.

Andalusian Days (III): From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, a Road Trip Along the Tuna Trail

aubereylescure — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 06:11:00 GMT

_{Espetos grilled at the chiringuito Rocamar in Malaga}

Stop 1: Malaga

Antonio, an ex-fisherman who is trying to teach me the art of skewering sardines, is quickly losing his patience as I demolish one fish after another. “Watch! It’s like this!”, he shouts, effortlessly weaving through stacks of sardines like a granny crocheting her thousandth bonnet. I grope the fish, trying to locate the spine. “It’s just a little fish!” Antonio insists, “don’t be scared of it. Stop! This one is no good!”

He rips the mutilated sardine from my skewer and flings it into a bucket of defective specimen. Trinidad and Julian look on with pity, probably glad they are not in my place. We are at the chiringuito Rocamar, a beachside restaurant by the traditionally working-class neighborhood of Huelin in Malaga. Chiringuitos grill and fry just about any seafood you can name, but are best know for espetos, a Malagan specialty of skewered sardines grilled on an outdoor fire and seasoned with sea salt, sea wind, and a squeeze of lemon, as has been done since the Phoenician times.

An ex-teacher’s pet, I am seconds away from tears. The skewer is a flat, pointed metal strip as wide as a thumb, and the sardines are easily shredded to pieces if not properly woven through. The skewer needs to make an incision near the dorsal fin, find the spine, slide under it, then re-emerge from the fish’s belly. It’s as easy as ramming a surfboard between my lungs and hoping I come out ready to win a Miss World pageant.

After an eternity of practicing through innumerable sardines who wished they hadn’t died in vain, I manage to present one respectable espeto to my maestro. It earns a nod. “Good,” Antonio said. “Great student! Learned so fast!” The praise rings ironic, and I eye him suspiciously. He takes my espeto and puts it with others in a fridge. I wonder if it has been marked specially to be kept away from other customers. But now we move to the grill, which looks like a small fishing boat installed on a single pod that spins the boat from its center. A large barrage of woodfire is built along the length of the boat, and the espetos are erected like a wall of vertically stacked fish against the fire. The flames are never allowed to devour the flesh of the fish, so the boat must be spun so that the sardines always have their back to the sea wind. The result is lightly charred, juicy fish. While I retire to the dinner table on the beach, Antonio continues to labor, gauging the wind, guiding the boat.

Now at a safe distance, I observe my maestro: leathery face whipped by years out at sea, crooked yellow teeth, silver hair, crisp blue shirt and khakis. No sweat stains under his arms after hours of working by the fire, while my face is still burning from the ingenious decision of trying to identify whether any of the espetos were mine. But the sun is setting, and the air cooling. Rocamar is filling up for dinner time, and enormous platters of fried seafood are carried out from the kitchen. Antonio is building fortresses of sardines on his boat-grill. Diners snap pictures, impressed. I smile, like a smug tourist, gleeful of my tangential association with local lore, and crunch into the spine of a steaming sardine.

_{White dunes by Tarifa, on the way to Cadiz province}

Stop 2: Punta Paloma, Tarifa

At 8 am, denoted as “EARLY START” on the itinerary, we stuff the trunk with suitcases, drone bags, Trini’s hot pink crocodile skin luggage set, and drive out of Malaga by way of giant shopping malls and stadium-sized parking lots. Somewhere along Marbella, the Spanish St. Tropez where stars vacation, I fall asleep. Waking up in a pool of drool, I am sad to learn that I’ve missed the Strait of Gibraltar, to which I’ve always attributed great significance as the closest point to North Africa. Turns out it’s not. We park somewhere outside of Tarifa and climb atop majestic white sand dunes that overlook a placid bay, and, on the opposite shore, the Rif mountains of Morocco. Although they seem only an Olympian swim away, the currents are treacherous and often deadly. Here, and only here, the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic.

Stop 3: Salt mines, Chiclana de la Frontera

For lunch there is sea salt and seaweed. The Salina Santa Maria de Jesus, a large estuary in the Bay of Cadiz, mines small amounts of virgin artisanal salt that is later sold and served in a domed wooden restaurant at the center of the salt fields. Incidentally, large quantities of seaweed have taken hold of certain waterbeds in the estuary, and have been diligently worked into the menu. The family of obese brown sheep that freely roam the property, thankfully, have not. Imma, a charming blonde with light blue eyes and braces, reveals other secrets of the property: in some quadrangles fleur de sel appears overnight due to the high contrast between daytime and nighttime temperatures, and is scraped off the surface in the morning by seasonal salt miners. Other quadrangles, in the summer, become outdoors mud bath spas, where bathers can spy on herds of flamingos dwelling nearby. We get our hands dirty in the algae and bite into fresh scoops of green kelp, a testament to the sacrificial lengths I’m willing to go to for the camera.

_{Making new friends at the salt mine}

Once indoors, my palate is quickly refreshed by some extra dry Sauvignon Blanc, and we set off on our seaweed marathon. It vastly exceeds our cautiously optimistic expectations. Imma metamorphoses into an enchanting hostess with pearl earrings and a black dress, and brings us our first course: seafood pancakes fried in olive oil with shrimp and sea asparagus, a shrub that grows next to the estuary beds and is intensely salty. Next a light beet soup with more sea asparagus and shredded white fish, followed by the obligatory croqueta plate, but this time with seaweed, and divine scrambled eggs lost in mounts of fish, seaweed, and sweet Pedro Ximenez sherry reduction.

_{Scrambled eggs with fish, seaweed, and sherry reduction}

_{Penne with pesto and seaweed}

This is just the beginning--out come fat plates of penne with pesto and seaweed, seaweed-wrapped whole bream, garbanzo bean stew with seaweed, green rice with seaweed, and for dessert, bacalao sashimi on avocado. The meal tastes, quite literally, like we are eating the sea, and I sprinkle so many individual forkfuls with an extra pinch of virgin salt that I must’ve clogged half of my arteries. The dishes are inventive but hearty, plated like a no-frills home-cooked meal. No surprise, since the chef is not some young gastronomy aspirant but Imma’s mother-in-law. Outside the window panes, the obese sheep lie down like country dogs, lazily following the course of the meal through semi-shut eyes. On the walls, salt-themed proverbs, quotes, poems. One, by the poet Rafael Alberti, speaks loudest of all:

What a joy, at dawn,

To travel in the carriages

Piled high with salty snow,

Towards the small white houses!

I will forsake seamanship, mother,

To be a saltman.

Stop 4: Barbate

One kind of creature has ruled over the seas surrounding the fishing towns around Barbate since Phoenician times--wild bluefin tuna, enormous beasts that easily surpass 450 pounds in maturity and are caught in deep water fish traps called the almadraba. This method of capture intercepts the traditional migratory route of bluefin tuna, who swim out of the Mediterranean to seek the cooler waters of the Atlantic every May. After months of orgying in the warm, soupy Mediterranean basin, the tuna are well enrobed with the holiday weight that renders them particularly fatty and desirable to fishermen. To minimize the freshly caught fish’s shipping distance, tuna factories have mushroomed all around the Bay of Cadiz to process the tuna locally. We make a pitstop at HERPAC, a salting, smoking, and conservation plant that specializes in treating wild bluefin tuna caught between the months of May and July.

_{Wind-dried tuna slices at HERPAC}

After donning particularly hideous plastic caps and flapping coats, we fill our lungs with the concentrated stench of fish and witness the artisanal process of readying tuna for the cans. The beasts are stored for no more than 48 hours in a congelation tunel, then wheeled out to the “dirty room” to be hand-cut and “snored”--the sound made when the saws cut through the tough flesh of the fish. The tuna is quartered based on the fat content of its body parts: leanest starting from the top and the center, fattest towards the belly and the exterior. Men in yellow overalls carry enormous, deep red tuna fillets with both arms. At this point, the fish can be smoked, cured, or cooked in large vats and then trimmed to fit into cans with olive and sunflower oil. The fattiest pieces sometimes require up to 2 years to cure. A small gift shop and tasting room awaits us with “sea jamon”, a tough, thinly-sliced wind-dried tuna, and semi-cured sashimi with cubes of cheese. I learn with regret that most of the stock does not travel too far away from Spain, as Spaniards alone generate massive demand for the majestic fish. Piling back into the car smelling like thousand-year unshowered Poseidons, we set off for the coastal route north to Cadiz, paralleling the trail of the bluefin tuna that got away.

Stop 5: Trafalgar

The lighthouse of Trafalgar emerges out of left field like a giant arm extending into the Atlantic waters. We make a stop at a nearby beach to get something to drink. Cape Trafalgar is the famous site of a 1805 battle between the British Royal Navy and a French and Spanish fleet that claimed the life of fearsome British officer Horatio Nelson. Today, there are no resorts in sight, only a campground at the entrance of the access road. We sit in the kitschy garden of an Australian outback-themed tiki bar where enormous polished tree branches serve as benches. Trini orders a coffee, I a white wine, and Julian a strawberry milkshake. For breakfast we have grilled toasts with red lard that comes in little jam packets. Walking by the kitchen, I smell grease and freshly sizzled burgers. Outside, at a neighboring table, a man with long, oily blond hair and a cowboy hat is sipping a glass of wine, a big black dog at his feet. A German man in sandals sits down with him for a while, then leaves. They speak in English, but the cowboy’s English is accented. They must have met at the camp nearby. Who is this cowboy, alone with his dog at Cape Trafalgar, drinking wine at a tiki bar? The wind blows wildly. The dog sighs, and rests its jaws on its paws.

_{The lighthouse of Trafalgar}

Stop 6: Sancti Petri

We reach our final seaside stop before the journey takes us deeper inland to the agricultural flatlands on the outskirts of Sevilla. Sancti Petri, once a small tuna fishing village, now houses a large complex of luxury resorts and leisure centers lining one of the largest and most pristine beaches on the Cadiz peninsula. We check into the Barcelo, a 5-star hotel that looks like a gargantuan red city of Pueblo architecture amid tropical gardens. Sandy and sunbaked after the past few days on the road, I sit down alone on my giant personal terrace, scrutinizing the ocean on the horizon. There are few hours to recharge before our visit to the star attraction in this mecca of tuna, the Atunante restaurant housed within the hotel. Perhaps fittingly at the opposite end of the spectrum to the chiringuito that started the trip, Atunante specializes in red tuna-themed fine dining in a sumptuously decorated room with dim lights, no more than twelve tables, and a confusing amount of cutlery. We are told that every course will contain tuna, even dessert.

_{A massive tuna steak at Atunante}

Unable to decide between red or white wine, we get both to accompany the light tomato butter balls and crostini that start our meal. There may be tuna in the butter. We are ready for it. The plates begin to arrive, each presented playfully--tuna foie, “jamon” and cured tuna in nondescript metal cans atop a bed of salad, miniature ice cream cones filled with salmon and tuna sashimi with soy sauce and seaweed salad, coal-colored croquettes with warm, soft tuna flesh and mayonnaise...Through the glass walls, the golden sheen of sunset light beckons spectators, and Julian and I sneak out of the hotel and sprint, (me in heels), to the beach, just in time to catch the sun setting, impeccably west, onto the Atlantic. When we return, three different cuts of tuna steak, lined up from leaniest to fattiest, await us with coarse sea salt and seared taro. The real main course, however, is an enormous lateral slice of golden crusted tuna, thick, lightly sweating pearls of fat. Another round of bottles of red and white. A slice of chocolate, nuts, and tuna tart with ice cream and crumbled goat cheese. Thankfully, my room is a thirty second walk from the restaurant, so I refrain from asking to be rolled home on a luggage cart.

After crashing onto my king-sized bed, dizzy from the wine, I see ghosts of the majestic fish, silver beasts as big as myself, swimming in muscular clouds past the Strait of Gibraltar, into the cold currents of the Atlantic. I see Antonio’s face, lacerated by years of fishing, and Alberti’s verse on salty snow wheeled at dawn towards the white towns of Andalucia. Though I can still hear the waves in the distance, I am already nostalgic for the sea.

Andalusian Days(II): Blood, Fat, and Brains in a Traditional White Village

aubereylescure — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 01:42:00 GMT

The white-washed villages of Andalucia, known as the pueblos blancos, can be glimpsed all over the coastline, some upon steep hills, some overlooking the sea. By the rocky peaks of the Sierra Tejeda range that lies between Granada and Malaga, with steep, dramatic cliff-faces on one side and the Mediterranean sea shimmering between two distant slopes on another, nestles one such village, named Canillas de Aceituno.

Canillas’ main square is a tiny slanted quadrangle with two cafes, the city hall, a pharmacy, a bank, and benches populated by grandpas of postcard aesthetic. A middle-aged man in a green polo and glasses waves to us clumsily. He introduces himself as Vincente Campos, forgetting to mention that he is the mayor. He seems relieved to learn that I can understand Spanish.

The old men stare with vague curiosity as we pass by. When I say “Buenos dias”, their faces shift slightly, as if awakened, and then comes a wave of nods and hoarse replies. Today, they prefer the benches down in the main square, where cameras and foreigners can be espied, to the beautiful ceramic benches installed on the overlook at the village’s highest point. It is here that the visibly proud mayor first brings us. The miniature Andalucian garden yields panoramic views over mountains and valleys of such dark, rich green that they seem draped over with moss colored velvet. Isolated white villas sit over layered terraces of olive and almond trees and shrubby vegetation of cactus, eucalyptus, and wild laurel. In the distance, a hazy sea rises skyward.

Mayor Vincente, as is soon apparent, knows everyone in the town. Every car that crawls through the narrow streets slows when passing by him, and he gives the hood an affectionate tap after exchanging rapid-fire greetings and handshakes with the drivers. “You actually know all two thousand residents here?”, I ask, and he smiles and nods. “Yes. Well, almost.” It would be very odd if a stranger who is not a tourist surfaces. At one point through our walk, a woman waves to him conspiratorially for a word, and I overhear her asking with concern who a dirty white van parked in that square belongs to. In a place like this, the apparition of an unknown car is a mystery to be solved.

The visit from our trio--foursome if you count Angelica, Julian’s drone that became somewhat of giant pet fly during the trip--does not cause the type of stir you would imagine, because the whole village seems to know who we are and our mission to sample Canillas’ culinary specialty--the chivo lechal, or suckling goat. The most authentic restaurant that oven-roasts chivo lechal--there are only three in the whole town--is La Sociedad, a tavernesque inn that used to be a gathering place for the town’s richest residents in the 1940s. The chivo is awaiting us there, already skinned, cleaned, and quartered in a metal pan. The preparation is extremely simple--with the guidance of a sous-chef, I pour a hefty dose of olive oil over the meat, then sprinkle on salt, pepper, chopped garlic and parsley, and a squeeze of lemon. That is all. The heavy pan is then deposited into a strange, enormous wood fire oven, where a central disk can be spinned around with a handle outside the oven as the chivo slow roasts with burning olive wood. As that process takes over two hours, we head back out with the mayor to wander around the village.

“Canillas is also famous for morcilla, from this place right here,” the mayor says as we pass by a tiny butcher’s shop where a short grandma is scrutinizing rows of sausages. He does not expect that I stop dead in our walk, and, voice quivering, ask: “Did you just say morcilla?” He did. I fear that he thinks I am merely dramatic in doling out niceties, and describe the gory details of my enamoration for that, deep, rich, overwhelming taste, the pungent afterthought of blood, the salt, the hint of spice… “Well!” he laughs, “Let’s have you try some here, then. The one here is made with nothing but onions, blood, and fat.” (No lady can wish for a more delicate combination to advertise their dainty taste, I tell you.)

“Good morning, good day!” the mayor cries out to the woman behind the counter.

“Mayor,” she replies, eyeing the camera with surprise, obviously not expecting that the butcher shop would be featured in the visit.

“Where’s malacara? We’re here to try something.”

“Malacara!” she yells. “He’s in the back. Try? What do you want to try?”

“For her, some blood sausage. Tell him to warm it up.”

“Do you hear me?” she yells again. “The mayor! He wants morcilla, warmed up! Come out here!”

Malacara finally emerges, wiping his hands on a bloody apron. His nickname, which roughly translates into “bad face”, may have been earned by his slightly crossed eyes. There is a picture of a baby on the wall, a tiny newborn holding an enormous link of raw sausages that he is attempting to stuff into his mouth.

Malacara slices up a cold, pasty morcilla and a sizzling one oozing hot red fat. I enter an altered state of consciousness while chewing on the soft onion and salty, dark flesh of the sausage. Perhaps moved by the sight of such sheer ecstasy, Malacara packs up four entire bags full of links of morcilla, freshly cured, fiery red chorizo, and tubs of blood sausage lard. One for each of the three visitors, and another for the mayor. We thank him profusely and lengthily as I, forgetting my manners, eat another six or seven slices of blood sausage on the plate Malacara set on the counter for tasting.

_{Croqueta with morcilla (blood sausage) from the local butcher's at La Sociedad}

The mayor herds us around a renovated old lavatory where town women came to wash clothes (“the original Facebook/gossip mill”, comments Trini), onto hidden overlooks, then through narrow staircases snaking past whitewashed walls. Elected on the ticket of the Partido Popular, he has been working hard to redress the EU 3 million debt accumulated by the past mayoral administration, and has been investing in projects such as playgrounds, football fields, and revamped miradors. “I ran for mayor because my friends and I--we did not agree with how things were being done at the village. So we put together a campaign and I won, because this is a very small town.” We walk past billowing sheets drying against a vast vista of green valleys. Out of nowhere, he says: “the future of this town--it’s tourism. There’s no other way.” He explains that after a popular Danish singer and his partner bought a house in a town and composed many songs in Canillas, more and more Danes have been purchasing second homes in the quaint village, and some villas are rented out for rural vacations. But economic livelihood would require more of an influx, and for now many homes in the town center sit empty after their elderly residents passed away. These homes are easy to detect, as they are the only ones without lush baskets of flowers exploding from balconies and windowsills.

A nearly empty bus carries a handful of villagers back from Malaga, where residents go to attend formal business. The trip is an hour each way. Canillas is remote, but not so remote; its history parallels that of Spain. Fifty years ago the town was on the republican side of the Spanish Civil War, and occupied by Italian fascists and nationalist troops. Dozens of villagers lost lives fighting or executed. Republican soldiers hid in the mountains, operating as guerilla maquis. Then there are the ancient, foundational facts, such as that village was first settled by Arabs during the reign of the Moorish empire. The church here used to be a mosque. Now, it houses a treasured statue of the village’s patron saint, virgen Maria de la cabeza. On the wall of stores and restaurants in the village, there are framed pictures of the very same statue.

When we first learned that the mayor of Canillas would personally greet and receive us, Trini told us the plot of the 1953 Spanish classic “Welcome, Mr. Marshall”. “It’s just too funny,” she said. “It’s a movie about a small village that learns that a group of important American officials, abstractly believed to include a certain Mr. Marshall, is going to pay their town a visit. So, under the hands-on supervision of the mayor, they prepare for weeks, scrub the whole place clean, hang folkloric decorations, set up this great reception with flowers, civilized children, banners. Everyone dreams of what they will ask from Mr. Marshall. The big day comes; all the village gathers out on the square waiting for Mr. Marshall, proud, puffed, dressed up head to toe in Andalusian attire. Then, finally, there comes this huge motorcade--everyone claps, claps, claps, but the cars never stop. In the end, Mr. Marshall’s motorcade drives straight through.”

At one of the two little bars overlooking the central square, the mayor orders local moscatel--sweet, fortified wine del terreno--and some tapitas of chorizo from Malacara’s (“not tapas, baby tapas”, he promises). He cannot drink because he is on antibiotics, but invites us all for another round at La Sociedad as we await the chivo lechal to make its grand entrance. Here there are other surprises: croquettes with delicious morcilla (guess where from) mixed into the bechamel, their crust expertly thin and the interior oozy and savory, and delightful “sushi canillero”, or raw anchovies cured on the spot in vinegar and olive oil and sprinkled with large chunks of garlic and parsley.

Hot chorizo slider and Malagueño wine (strong!) at a cafe on the main plaza of Canillas de Aceituno

Boquerones al vinagre (vinegar-cured anchovies) at La Sociedad

The red wine flows, and with great fanfare the now unrecognizable chivo is rolled out on a cart and dissected into red-hot, tender, golden crusted chunks. The goat meat is, without question, incomparably soft and milky, and pairs exquisitely with pockets of roasted garlic and sea salt.

The famous oven-roasted suckling goat at La Sociedad

Fried kidneys and other innards are served along the goat at La Sociedad

A woman walks across the small plaza carrying a hefty Virgin Mary figurine about half her height, in anticipation of Corpus Christi celebrations the next day, and an old man criss-crosses the other way with twelve packs of beer, in anticipation the Champion’s League final tonight.

Owner Manuel Aguilera comes out to the terrace to check on our progress, and remarks that I have snagged myself a sirloin. As a reward, the symmetrically parted goat skull is presented to me, and I scoop the creature’s brains out from contractual pressure. The brains taste creamy, though slightly unsettling. A life-size cardboard cutout of Manuel greets guests in La Sociedad’s foyer and his face adorns every menu, so I am very proud that the big boss witnesses my brain-ingesting bravery (after all the blood and fat, why stop). When we order two whiskey tarts for dessert, Manuel looks up judgingly. “Two whiskey tarts?” he says. “No. One whiskey tart. Then I give you something.” The something turns out to be lemon sorbet in white chocolate soup. No one complains.

Photos: Andalucia

aubereylescure — Sun, 5 Jun 2016 13:10:00 GMT

Andalusian Days (I): Malaga, nouveau-glitz on the Costa del Sol

aubereylescure — Sun, 5 Jun 2016 07:45:00 GMT

As the cathedral bells strike ten, the streets of Málaga are settling into to the cadence of daily life. School children in uniforms cruise in rowdy packs; nuns in black habits and clogs squeak open heavy church doors; souvenir vendors roll out racks of postcards, flip flops, and beach towels displaying the ubiquitous silhouettes of ruffle-skirted flamenco dancers. The aroma of espresso seeps out from the the entrances of cafes, merging with a myriad scents of buttery pastries, oranges, grilled bread, olive oil, lush flora of bougainvillea, jaracanda, and roses in bloom. And to think that, back in the windowless D.C. office where I spent the last year working my first post-grad job, ten am is the time I start to debate whether it's acceptable to have lunch at eleven. Here the day has barely begun.

For those on the hunt for food, mornings in Andalucia are the golden time for a visit to the market. Such is the aim of our makeshift team, a lean trio consisting of Julian, a young videographer from Bogota with dreadlocks and ruddy cheeks, Trinidad, an infatigable Malagan tasked to be our guide, chauffeuse, translator, PR rep, liaison to local tourism boards, and, it turns out, jokester, nick-namer, and fable-teller, and me, a French/Chinese/American specimen flown in to test the wildest limits of what the human liver and stomach can handle.

Simone, a young German who adopted Malaga as her new home in 2008 and delightful tour guide from Spain Food Sherpas , shows us towards the central wet market, el Mercado de Atarazanas. The building is housed in an old shipyard renovated with impressive cast-iron architecture designed after Les Salles in Paris.

The main doorway into the market is a 14th century marble Nazareth arch, a nod to Andalucia’s history of Moorish occupation. Dangling legs of jamón Iberico crowd above counters stuffed full of sausages, chorizos, salchichons, and pot after pot of cremas, which are different kinds of lard flavored with all imaginable kinds of meats, cheeses, spices, and herbs. The most famous, a close variant of chorizo or salami cream, is the Zurrapa, a mixture of cold fat and pulled pork dyed red by paprika and spread onto bread for a typical Andalus breakfast.

The uninitiated visitor’s awe before vats of fat is a sight most tickling to Andalucians, who embrace all parts of their pigs as the “good kind of cholesterol”. The quality of Jamón Iberico, for example, can be tested by whether a strip of fat dissolves when smeared onto one’s skin. Simone waves to a man slicing a leg of jamón with the swinging motions of an absorbed cellist, and he hands us a piece resting on his thin saw-like knife. “The key to eating jamón,” Simone adds, “is to always serve it at room temperature. Let it sweat a little.” And be not tempted to tear off the fat, a sacrilege I soon renounce in the face of popular outrage. High-end jamón comes from free-range pigs fed on a diet of acorns, and the roaming beasts are practically awarded medals postmortem based on whether they developed marbling within their muscles that adds creaminess to the most paper-thin slice of cured meat. Given my current rate of intake, my porcine self would be in good standing for the gold.

_{Meat and cheese stall at the Mercado de Atarazanas}

_{Assorted charcuterie and, um, water at El Pimpi}

To the left of the mercado’s entrance is the family run Cafe-Bar Mercado Artazanas, which serves up fresh pitchers of cold gazpacho and fried boquerones (anchovies) pre-marinated in garlic, parsley, lemon, and vinegar. Fried seafood is a staple of coastal Andalucia, but it yields a surprisingly light mouthfeel as a result of a quick tempura-style dip into piping hot olive oil instead of conventional deep-frying. “This way, the ingredient is sealed on the outside and steamed on the inside,” explains Simone. The cuisine here also retains strong Arabian and Jewish influences discernable through the use of dried fruits, nuts, and delectable wild sugarcane molasses drizzled onto salty strips of eggplants freshly fried by the brothers running the cafe-bar.

_{Eggplant with molasses, gazpacho, and fried anchovies in the cafe-bar Mercado de Atarazanas}

The market’s true spectacle takes place in the fish section, which is not hard to locate if you follow the pungent stench of seafood so fresh it is not kept on ice but merely splashed with cold water every few minutes. “You smell it, and you hear it,” says Simone, and indeed one’s ears are assaulted with a discordant concerto of competing baritones, each deeper, throatier, and louder than the next. Like trained opera singers, the fish vendors belt out the names of the day’s fresh catches so impressively that I began to suspect the existence of hidden megaphones--but no, no, Simone assures me, only the most worthy with the most well-honed voices can run the fish stalls: “I’d have to marry one of the men to score a stall, because they are passed down from generation to generation and guarded jealously. The young man over there just took over from his eighty-five year-old grandfather. But the best is a sister in the family--she can be elbow deep in fish, but her makeup will still be perfect.”

The cacophonous gaiety of the fish market captures a vibrancy that has not always existed outside the mercado walls, but is now palpable throughout the bustling plazas and cobblestone boardwalks. Malaga is infused with the kind of vigor typical of cities undergoing an economic and cultural renaissance: the 2003 opening of the Museo Picasso spurred intensive renovations of the historic center, where newly inaugurated pedestrian streets are hosed down daily and paved with stones so shiny that they faintly betray passerbys’ reflections. In the late twentieth century, though vaguely known as Picasso’s birthplace, Malaga was far off the radar of the hordes of European tourists who preferred nearby Torremolinos to an industrial town more focused on aggrandizing its port’s deep-water docking capabilities than embellishing its beaches and marinas for visitors. Now, after a veritable rebirth, Malaga has become one of the most important economic centers in Spain, hosting, among other things, a new Pompidou center, a Thyssen museum, an annual film festival, and one of Europe’s most important botanical gardens. Flush with tourist cash, the city's gastronomic scene has reinvented its traditions and boasts of excellent but approachable taperias where young chefs strive, perhaps harder than those in more cosmopolitan cities like Madrid and Barcelona, to elevate Andalucian cuisine to both local and world-class renown.

Antonio, for one, never intended to open a restaurant. He owns an artisanal arts and craft shop named La Recova, an unassuming storefront tucked away on a side street not far from the city’s main square. The local lore goes that, during the city’s annual feria in August, a carnivalesque drinking marathon, Malagueños spilling out from the square stumbled into the store for some shade and hydration. “Can you give us some water?” They asked Antonio.

Antonio shrugged and said: “Sure.”

“And now, while you are at it, can you also give us some food?” The party-goers implored.

Not a man of too many words, Antonio replied: “okay”, and fried up some hangover cures that were received with such gratitude that word spread and the little shop soon metamorphosed into a busy cafeteria.

Since then, La Recova has cleared some space at the center of a room filled with metal-wire sculptures and vintage bird cages, and set up a few tables with checkered plastic covers and woven straw chairs. The house specialty are cremas--served with a large slice of warm, grilled bread, they come as smoky, spreadable salami, cream of fried meat crust, and pulled paprika pork with herbs and vinegar. As an accompaniment, a mean vermut is served straight from the barrel with orange, lemon, soda, and a cinnamon stick.

_{Lards and jams at La Recova}

Fortified by the icy vermouth and toasts of lard, we march on to La Cosmopolita, a chic but earthy cafe-bar run by Chef Dani Carnero, who proposes a “special menu” that is as unpredictable as the sudden storm clouds that race over Malaga. The restaurant, gracefully decorated with typical ceramic tiles and pastoral olive green paint, positions its cuisine midway between traditional and contemporary, and specializes in a concept that may be scandalous to tapas fiends--dishes that can be eaten with a spoon. To console finger-foodies, La Cosmopolita also fries up excellent croquetas filled with savory chicken or oxtail stew. Today the specials are pasta alla carbonara in the form of shaved white asparagus with bacony cream sauce and salmon eggs, and hearty seared kidneys in sherry sauce with tiny fried shrimps in a bed of shrimp butter. Chef Dani, a boisterous forty-something with a tan complexion and silver hair, twirls by our table to collect our cooing compliments, then returns to direct his rag-tag crew of delightfully eccentric staff, which include an espresso specialist with glistening braces and a coquettish old waiter who apologizes for occupying the women’s bathroom for too long--he had to spritz on cologne and comb his hair, he explains, and the men’s bathroom’s mirror just isn’t large enough.

_{Kidneys and shrimps with sherry & butter at La Cosmopolita}

A few streets down, a more modern and elaborate gastronomical revolution is unfolding in the minimalistic dining room of Uvedoble, where Chef Willy Orellana delivers a menu with the ambition of representing “Andalucia in the 21st century”. Local products and traditional recipes are re-worked into creative bites like the fast-food themed minikebab of gambas al pil-pil, in which shrimps are oven-baked in a clay pot with garlic and cayenne in a bath of olive oil, then stuffed into a tortilla with a creamy mayonnaise sauce. Though the minikebab is Chef Willy’s proudest creation, the unbeatable customer favorite is the otherworldly fideos negros con calamaritos--thin, crunchy fideos pasta blackened with squid ink and topped with seared baby squids and aioli. A couple of old ladies dressed to attend a royal wedding waddle in and eye us suspiciously before firing off a bevy of orders, clearly not rookies in the gourmet neo-fast-food game, and soon are carefully biting into the tin-foiled kebabs while perfectly preserving the integrity of their lipstick.

_{Squid ink fideos with calamari and aioli at Uvedoble}

To see where the city’s trendiest youngsters are eating, one has to head to the Mercado Merced, Malaga’s brand new gastromarket, a concept still novel to many Spaniards of the South but a longtime runaway success in Madrid. The sleek stalls at Mercado Merced consist of a highly curated collection of first rate products ranging from fine wines to fist-sized oysters to sushi to nationally recognized Malagan goat cheese. Spanish classics like paella, tortilla, and croquetas are presented with refined twists (say, mushroom and truffle croquettes in Panko crumbs) and tip-top techniques (croquettes are hand rolled, tempura-ed, and ooze light, quasi-liquid filling). Beltrán, a long-lashed charmer who shows us around the market in an impeccable blue suit, empathetically insists on pairing a round of drinks with every bite sampled: Cruzcampo beer to ready the palate, Andalucian red wine with croquettes, vermut martinis with oysters, and gin and tonics, because, well, this is Spain. We settle at Lemon, the market’s cocktail bar, where Nuria ( the “hottest girl in Malaga”, per Beltrán), crafts each drink after inquiring about the customer’s flavor preferences, adding more or less lemon, cardamom, strawberries or blueberries to level the taste.

_{With Beltrán, vermut martini in hand, at the Mercado Merced}

_{A gin and tonic with lemon and cardamom at Lemon, with Malagan jasmine}

Amidst all the gorging, a grand reckoning occurs when Beltrán and Trinidad discover their mutual allegiance to Atletico Madrid, which was scheduled to play against its nemesis Real Madrid in the Champion’s League’s final the next night. Beaming with delight, they embrace and exchange sonorous kisses on the cheeks. Perhaps encouraged by the gin and tonic, Trini promises to dance on a table if Atletico Madrid wins.

“That’s the way!”, Beltrán affirms enthusiastically. “You’ll find me up there. And you, beautiful,” he turns to Nuria, “please tell me you are cheering for the Atletico.”

Nuria flashes a toothy smile, and shakes her head: “Born a Real Madrid fan, will die a Real Madrid fan.”

“Impossible!”, Beltrán wails, aghast with mock-horror (or perhaps real horror):“The perfect woman does not exist after all!” To dilute the pain, he orders another round of gin and tonics.

On the AstroTurf greens outside, glamorously dressed Malagueños are beginning to occupy lounge furniture, and Nuria abandons us to care for other patrons. She has bartended in Ibiza and Mykonos before, so cocktail hour in Malaga may seem like child's play. And yet, perhaps not for long--after the waves of French retiree tour groups, a younger, suaver clientele is trickling, even pouring, into Malaga. The capital of the Costa del Sol is now claiming its place under the sun as the poshest city in Andalucia, and, in a country haunted by an extended economic slump, there is a different shine in the eyes of Malagueños.

Along the marina, flashy beach lounges are serving pitchers of sangria to tourists in sporty sandals. It may all seem like bourgeois glamour, but signs of a different life cannot be so easily erased. Out of the city center, the grittier working class neighborhoods of Malaga remain--blocks of salmon colored housing projects soiled by passing decades, indistinguishable from those of other Spanish cities. But few visitors will venture past the industrial port, where a newly built promenade is domed by great wavy beams reminiscent of a whale’s spine. The coarse sand of the municipal beach, la Malagueta, is dirty from fresh residue of parties past--cigarette butts and empty boxes, plastic cups, mini vodka bottles. Young people come here at night to drink, smoke, sit in circles. Trash amasses faster than it can be cleared, an unsweepable urban reality.

Some years ago in Malaga, fellow study abroaders and I had spent a hazy October weekend drinking on the rooftop of our hostel, feeding coins into cigarette vending machines in cafe-bars, and lazing on the city’s main beach with bottles of lukewarm wine dotting the edges of our towels. Clearly, the young, stupid, and romantic are still here, with each year bringing a new crop that feeds on the indolent yet feverous energy of Malaga.

Beyond the line of buoys, a colossal cruise ship sails towards us from the horizon like a mystic beast, perhaps from a distant port in France or Italy, bearing in its bowels the human cargo that has become Malaga’s new gold. Commercialism or not, the city's uncertain beauty deserves to be admired. We wade into the Mediterranean. As the evening cools the water’s edge, the waves roll ashore gently, carrying the promises of a nascent summer.