Journey to the center of my tastebuds

Tomorrow morning I will be renting a car with four good friends and traveling seven hours north to San Sebastian, a small city on the northern coast of España.

I am paralyzed with excitement.

In case you didn’t know, San Sebastian is a sort of food-lover heaven located in Pais Vasco or as it’s better known in the States, The Basque Country. The region is world-renown for its food, beaches and the unwavering nationalism of the Basque people. From the bits and pieces I’ve learned from some people around Valencia, not all Basques are ETA supporting crazies. However, it seems that many of them feel that Pais Vasco and everything about it is the best in the world. Luckily for me, I’ve heard that they just might be right when it comes to their food.

The first thing I ever read about San Sebastian was an article on the gastronomic societies. Basically, these are men-only clubs that are devoted to cooking great food, eating said food, talking about other foods and drinking. Club members are in for life and the only way to get into a club is when a former member dies. Apparently the waiting list is ridiculously long. Without a doubt, this is a club I need to join. I’ve read that there are anywhere from 106 to 300 of these clubs, so if I start applying now, I may have a chance for membership within the next 10 years.

I will be in San Sebastian from Wednesday morning until Saturday night. I plan on eating as many pinxtos as possible and drinking nothing but sidra natural—a delicious type of alcoholic apple cider—and txakoli—a bubbly white wine like beverage. There is a good chance I may never return from this delicious location. If this happens, assume the best—I was an honorary inductee into one of the many gastronomic societies.

Yet another Spanish food festival

I grabbed a copy of the free paper El Micalet the other day while I was heading to the market to chitchat with cheese lady Carmen and purchase some goodies. After picking up some cheese and discussing the political probems of Pais Vasco with a pleasant old man at the cheese counter, I returned home, made up a plate for lunch and opened up the paper. The El Micalet is great because it comes out for the weekends and has a bunch of articles about things going on in Valencia. Normally I breeze through the thing since I don’t have the urge to intensively translate the gossip about Spain’s latest celebrity, but this issue had something better than just movie times and film star divorces; on page 16 there was an ad for the VIII Festa D’arróz al Forn!

D’arróz al Forn is the Valenciano for Arróz al horno which is the Spanish for Oven-baked rice—a delicious treat consisting of rice, pork ribs, pork meatballs, morcilla, garbanzos, potatoes, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, pepper, salt and stock. All the goodness is mixed together in a large clay pan topped off with some whole sausages, tomatoes and a head of garlic for effect, popped into an oven and served when done. The beauty of this festival was that the rice was made by the lovely people of Xátiva and brought out into the streets to be enjoyed by all. Best of all, a plate of rice and beer was absolutely free. Spain is too good to me.

(poster pic)

After arriving at the Xátiva train station I stopped at the tourism office to pick up a map. The woman working clearly wanted no part of my hackneyed Spanish. She spit out a few words before thrusting a map into my head and sending me on my way. Feeling a little dejected, I stumbled upon the beer truck and ordered myself a plastic glass of reassurance. The main avenue was lined with long plastic tables just waiting for heaping plates full of rice. Families and groups of friends started piling into the streets, carrying with them coolers full of beverages and a bags stuffed with breads, olives and wine. I started to feel a little lonely and realized why food festivals are better enjoyed with friends as I looked upon the happy Spaniards waiting for their fest. I hunkered down on a pleasant little bench, sipped my beer and contemplated the day ahead of me. I yearned for rice.


A few minutes later, two ladies walked up to me. One spoke to me in English as the other just looked on with a smile on her face. Being caught off guard, I mumbled a few words before realizing what was going on. The woman was asking me if I understood the person at the tourist office and we got around to talking. My Spanish was slowly waking up and the two asked me to join them and their friends. Delighted—minutes before I was sulking into my beer, watching old men pass around bottles of wine and tell jokes—I headed over to the table to be greeted by a slew of lovely women all telling me to sit down. I quickly obliged and got to chatting with the locals who would kindly guide me through the ways of the rice festival.


After a good hour of hanging out with my newfound friends, the feast was ready. With ticket in hand I made my way to the rice table with one of the lovely ladies to receive my plate of goodness. The line was filled with old ladies chatting about the “proper” way to make the dish. Once they overheard me asking my friend about the ingredients of a classic arroz al horno, they quickly filled my ear with a laundry list of ingredients and techniques. Old Spanish woman can be very insistent when it comes to authenticity. This is one thing I love about food festivals—everyone knows the proper authentic way to prepare a dish and no two people have the same recipe.

(While noting the lovely young lasses dishing out rice, note the lovelier ladies hungrily awaiting their grub.)

Upon completion of my rice (it was delicious) the ladies at my table whisked off to purchase dessert from a pastry shop that’s been feeding the city since 1915. To my delight they returned with a tray of freshly prepared goodies and began handing out samples of some of the tastiest sweets I’ve had. There were coffee meringues, toasted egg yolk tarts, creampuffs with walnuts and crystallized sugar and one thing that tasted like a gourmet Peep. Que delicious.


Once the sweets were done I did as the Spaniards do and drank some coffee. However, in accordance with the lifestyle this coffee took 45 minutes to ingest. My new amigas showed me pictures from their friends wedding and swapped some stories about their drunken escapades. About this time the band started playing (think a party band, complete with smoke machines, light show, small lead singer in tight pants and choreographed dance moves) and we high-tailed it to the beer truck for some dancing juice. After several cervezas, everyone decided the beer truck was a sufficient location for the fiesta and we danced in place, talked about Manhattan and bought a few more rounds.

The rest of the day was a filled with me expressing my love for Spanish food festivals and drinking to our health. I ended up getting a ride back to Valencia and was invited back to Xátiva multiple times for dinner and drinks. A bunch of the girls are planning on heading to New York next summer so I gave out my information in order to meet up with them in the States. I’m hoping I can get some more arróz out of the deal but I’ll have to wait and see.

A love letter to good bread

A special dedication to stone-ground flour, water, yeast, honey, salt and all the bakers who go to work at 1 in the morning and the kneaders who start their days at 4am.
I just received news via email that the bakery I worked in before I came to Spain has officially closed its doors. That’s it; the Great Harvest on Vestal Parkway is dunyuns.

I’m not going to lie; I am a little upset. I don’t understand how or why I became so enamored with food, but there was something about that bakery job that fed my cravings for working with the stuff. I was able to make cookies, brownies, muffins and delicious, delicious bread on a daily basis. This is in addition to the goof-balls I worked with, my great bosses and all the stupid stunts we pulled daily. I got pretty wasted with everyone at that store on more than one occasion and some pretty ridiculous things have gone down, I’m kind of bummed that it is all over.

I’m going to use this post to make a humble dedication to everyone I worked with at the bakery. Some people were ridiculous in a good way and others were ridiculous in a frighteningly horrible, but incredibly amusing sort of way. Everyone put up with my nonsense, my music selection, and my ability to ramble on about useless things so thanks to you all.

A special salute goes to my bosses Rick and Jen. The two decided to close the doors (to my heart) and are heading back West. Jen (literally) has a bun in the oven now so I hope all goes well with the tootle and I’m crossing my fingers they name him or her after me—I think Justin for a the boy and Yostina for the girl.

Thanks to everyone and I look forward to seeing all of you bakery-ites sometime in the future. Continue to eat delicious loafs, avoid sliced bread like the plague, get your co-workers to grow mustaches and don’t go to Panera…ever!



The stuff of my dreams.

El Feria de vinos, cavas, licores y alimentos tradicionales de Valencia

Last week there was a week long celebration of Valencian alcohol and food. Needless to say I was drooling. This food festival was similar to the one I went to in Requena, but a lot bigger. There were over 100 stands with much more selection and only the whole shin-dig was only1 0 minutes from my house. ¡Vale!

First off, I want to put an end to the notion that Europeans—not in the U.K., I’m talking the Spaniards, Italians, French—don’t get as drunk as stupid Americans. I saw some sloppy, sloppy Spaniards. There were broken glasses, songs and even a few seagull sightings!

(To clarify: Seagulling is the action of feeding your family, friends or enemies by hand. It usually involves food but can be applied to beverages as well. A full seagull involves noises—a la the animal—but a seagull is a seagull even without the CAW!)

Anyways, people were getting wasted. Not only tipsy, but absolutely wasted. There was a group next to us of 7 or 8 thirty-somethings seagulling bottles of Moscatel--a sweet Valencian after dinner wine. I don’t blame them; the stands were dolling out samples of delicious wines and liquor like water and once you got hungry, there were more stands with cheese, meats and sweets. By the end of the night all of my friends had sufficiently sampled as much as possible and ending up singing old American pop songs, having drinking contests with the locals and getting free bottles from the closing stands. Absolutely delicious.

I should have some more photos of the event but after a while I was more interested in sampling as much as possible than taking pictures. Also, the free bottles didn’t help.

Some Fotos:

The drunken masses.



The cheeses



The meats



The Arrop I Talladetes. A traditional Valencian dessert made by submerging cooked strips of pumpkin in a boiled, syrupy goo. It tastes as weird as it looks, and it looks pretty gross.

Attack of the Killer Figs

After pleasing my hunger for meats, I turned my attention to goal number 2 of my trip: dates, figs and other goodies. I was sure that goal number 1—to eat a goat whole roasted under ground—was impossible, so once I met my guide MoMo in the old city of Fes, I set out to find my fruits.

MoMo assured me that the dates from the street vendors were safe to eat, but he promised to find me a good vendor with fresh product. Whether or not this was just his way to give his friends business I am still unsure, but once MoMo brought me to this stand I was content.


After explaining to me the difference in date varieties, MoMo asked me how much I wanted. I purchased 100 Dirhams—about 10 Euro—or assorted treats and the vender started giving me free samples of his items. I was ecstatic. After eating handful of freebies, people in my group started to warm up to the idea of the street vendor. Despite a few incredulous “Justin, are you really eating that???” a few of my friends proceeded to purchase their own satchels of delight. While I don’t blame them—the dates were absolutely delicious, plump, sugary and full of flavor—I do want to point out that I came to Morocco with the intent of getting dysentery. I wouldn’t have followed me.

On the way back to the hotel I bought some street candies. A box full of colorful sweets cost me only 10 Dirham. There were colorful turron, sesame candies and an almond brittle thing. Although I’d never tried any of these before, they all had a familiar taste. After unsuccessfully haggling for a huge brick of sesame candy I headed back to the hotel.

The night went well and I had no stomach problems. Also, the next morning, most everyone seemed fine. Unfortunately, by the end of that day people were going down like flies. Morocco is a funny place; you learn about every bowel movement your friends have. You congratulate them when things are normal, and you understand their pain when things are—literally—in the toilet.

People had tummy troubles until 5 days after we returned to Spain. A few turned a blaming eye to me, but before they could open their mouths I reminded them of the dangerous of following the lead of the guy who wants dysentery. Either way, mostly everyone is better now. I’ve been fine the whole time, and while I consider myself lucky, I like to think that I’ve been training my stomach of steel for the trip for all of my life. I look forward to my next trip to Africa although I know it won’t be for a long time. As for now, I’m eating some of the deadly figs and contemplating the closest places I need to go for whole roasted goat.

Tangine (Slight Return)

My trip to Morocco was busy, busy, busy... I didn’t stay in the same hotel or camp for more than one night and spent lots of time traveling the country in a cramped van or bumpy jeep. I slept in the Sahara desert, I rode a camel named Zeus, I saw a couple of sunrises and many sunsets, I ate lots of tagine and I may have gotten a lot of people really sick.

Before even getting on the plane from Madrid to Morocco I was ready for the worst. I told myself I would return to Spain with dysentery or some other horrible food illness. Figuring that if I planned it ahead of time, I wouldn’t feel so bad spending a few days in the bathroom. There were over 30 of us venturing into Africa and I told every one of them about all the food I planned on eating, whether it was safe to eat or not.

Numerous times our guide Miguel told us to avoid all food not served in the restaurants or hotels we were eating in. He also told us to stay away from the tap water. Apparently, drinking faucet water in Morocco is the equivalent to giving your bowels shock therapy. Needless to say, I stuck to the bottled variety. Most of the food I ate was prepared in the planned eateries, but although tagine is great, it’s easy to get sick of after shoving it down at every meal.


Tangine is the name of both a cooking vessels and the dish cooked within it. It’s basically a big hodgepodge of meat, root veggies, spices and (hopefully) some raisins, dates and citrus. After my trip, I can rightfully say that not all tangines are created equal. They all look delicious, but many of them lack in the oomph department. Most of the places we ate prepared the dish very blandly. Sure there was braised chicken in there, a few tasty carrots, meaty potatoes and savory spices I’ve never heard of before, but the end result was…bland.

There was a predictable rhythm to the meals in Morocco--a light soup made from chickpeas, potatoes, eggs or a combination of the three, olives and bread, tangine and desert. While I thought the soup could have been really good if the cooks added a bit of punch to them, every soup I tried (and I sampled many) all had that blah flavor with a strong aftertaste of boring. Thankfully, the olives were usually AMAZING and the bread never failed to please. Some of the restaurants would serve us tasty little plates of eggplant, sweet braised carrots, potatoes or other delightful chomps before bringing out the tangine. Afterwards, there was always a juicy plate of oranges and bananas. I have no idea why we always had oranges and bananas, I guess the Berbers have figured out a way to make luscious, tropical fruits bloom in the middle of the Sahara.

After a few nights of disappointment I finally had my tangine taste buds satisfied. After boring soup, yummy olives and tasty bread, our server brought out the typical clay tangine and placed it on the center of the table. Hearing myself start to sigh and stopped once the waiter removed the lid. This tangine was the one! Chicken and sumptuous juices in the bottom, veggies piled on top and an array or raisins, dates and lemon buried throughout. It was oh so lovely. The stewed dried fruits really add a great touch to the savory meat and potato combination and the acidic lemons added the zest I was dying for. My mouth was happy.