* * * * *
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2014 / gerrydawes@aol.com YouTube / Facebook / Twitter / Pinterest. Sony RX100 III 20.1 MP / Zeiss 24-70mm f1.8-2.8.
Years ago in Salamanca with the legendary doyenne of bullfight aficionados, Alice Hall, at a classic place called El Candil, we had a dish of marujas*, delicate local greens that I was told came from cold water streams in the mountains around Salamanca. We were given a big bowl them dressed with what I thought was a way too garlicky vinagreta dressing. However, the memory of the potential of that dish had stuck with me all these years. (*Montia fontana L. Portulacáceas, also known as corujas, pamplina, mariquitas and my favorite, annual water miner's lettuce.)
I had been to Salamanca for just a single night in 2006, but I could not remember the name of the restaurant and had not encountered marujas. I returned in September 2014 with Chefs Ryan McIlwraith and Joel Ehrlich from San Francisco (now the spectacularly successful head chef and sous chef at Bellota and Barcino) with a specific mission: to eat at Cala Fornells. Cala Fornells was run by my old friend former television show host during the Franco ear, Juan Santamaría. Santamaría had long since been turned out of his television job and turned into a chef. He had made such an impression with his paella divida (several different types of arroces/paella in the same divided paella pan) and his Balearic Islands Minorcan-inspired cuisine, including an incredible caldereta de langosta (a seafood stew cooked with a whole lobster in it), that I was contracted by Food Arts magazine to do an article on him more than a decade earlier when his restaurant was in Madrid.
Alas, when I e-mailed his daughter Elisa about Juan and a reservation, she informed me by e-mail that Juan had died in September almost a year earlier. Partly in homage to Juan and partly to see if the restaurant had kept up his standards, I decided to take the chefs there anyway. It was not likely that they were going to encounter either the paella dividida or the caldereta de langosta anywhere else on this trip. I mean, really, a Balearic Islands Minorcan cuisine restaurant in a suburb one of the most castizo cities in Castilla y León. Fortunately, both dishes turned out to be as good as I had remembered and Ryan McIlwraith took the paella dividida idea to Bellota, the award-winning restaurant he opened in San Francisco, where the dish has been a big hit. (He also uses my gazpacho recipe from Sevilla.)
In the evening, we went to Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor looking for El Candil, where I hoped to find tostón (roast suckling pig with an especially crackling skin) and that once-encountered elusive dish of those spectacular greens. Without the name, I was unable to find the restaurant. Instead, we found a modern cuisine restaurant that impressed none of us.
In mid-December, I was back in Madrid with Kay. We had
dinner with Madrid Fusión Director Esmeralda Capel and her husband Juan Suárez
(a retired lawyer who is a great cook), my friend Harold Heckle of the
Associated Press Madrid bureau and his girlfriend at Sacha, a top restaurant
run by Sacha Hormaechea where famous chefs hang out (one night I was there with
Ferrán Adria, Juan Mari Arzak and José Andrés).
Among many excellent dishes that we were served during a dinner that to my chagrin was accompanied by wines I did not like at all, save one, was a salad of those mythic greens which Sacha called corujas. My interest in these rare and elusive greens was piqued once again.
Sony RX100 III 20.1 MP / Zeiss 24-70mm f1.8-2.8.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2014 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube / Pinterest.
Canon EOS 7D / Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS USM (38.4-168mm equivalent).
In the 1970s, I had crossed this Roman bridge in my vintage Volkswagen sedan (not a VW bug type), when there were signs saying that said all traffic over 16 tons had to use the Roman bridge instead of the new steel and concrete highway bridge to the east, because the Roman bridge was sure to be able to support heavier traffic, while the authorities were unsure that the new bridge could handle the weight. My Volkswagen was nowhere near 16 tons, but what the Hell, it’s was a Roman bridge, one of three major Roman bridges (Córdoba and Mérida being the others) in Spain that I had driven across in a car but are now pedestrian only.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2014 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube / Pinterest.
Because we had been on a five hundred-kilometer plus food
and wine road warrior trip that day, with fog and fatigue big factors, and had arrived so late in Salamanca, I asked the
hotel concierge if there might be a decent restaurant within walking
distance. He directed us to a restaurant around the corner from the
hotel. We expected a neighborhood restaurant of adequate cuisine,
but no miracles. Instead we found
Casaserra, one of the great surprise restaurants of Salamanca and not the least
of the surprises was at first off-putting, sly, cantankerous, but later
gregarious and charming, owner, Heli Casanueva
Serradilla, Heli from Heliodoro; “gift from the sun.” I would later dub Helicóptero because he never stopped
gyrating around the dining room.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2014 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube / Pinterest.
Canon G15 / Canon f/1.8 – f/2.8 5X 24-140mm IS USM.
Heli indeed turned out to be a gift from the sun, or at least this evening, from the moon. With his simpático waiter-son Jorge, joining periodically and acting as an antidote to his father, Heli hovered near our table nearly all evening (it was a Monday night), entertaining us with his running repertoire of Helidodoro-ismos. We had had a simple early-to-bed dinner: a surprisingly good for winter ensalada de lechuga, tomate y cebolla (classic lettuce, tomato and onion salad dressed with Spanish extra virgin olive oil and vinegar), pimientos de piquillo rellenos de bacalao (bacalao-stuffed red piquillo peppers) and revueltos con setas y gambas (scrambled eggs with mushrooms and shrimp), irrigated with a fine bottle of José Pariente Verdejo white wine from Rueda.
In the course of his non-stop banter, I asked Heliodoro
about the corujas I had had in Madrid at Restaurante Sacha. He
informed me that in Salamanca, these tender green leaf shoots from mountain
streams are called marujas and claimed he was the only one in Salamanca
who had them. Soon he brought us a bowl of the marvelous tiny shoots,
sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and properly dressed with a garlicky aliño
(vinaigrette). I was ecstatic. I had finally re-encountered
this scarcest of regional dishes of Spain and one of its most sublime, if
least-known dishes.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2014 / gerrydawes@aol.com / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube / Pinterest.
Canon G15 / Canon f/1.8 – f/2.8 5X 24-140mm IS USM.
The next morning Kay and I walked over the Roman bridge and up to the Plaza Mayor, where we had a very good breakfast of coffee, chocolate con churros, a kind of flan with shrimp, a great tortilla española with potatoes and onions, and spinach and mejillones aliñados (mussels with chopped onion, bell pepper and fresh tomatoes in a vinaigrette) at the excellent cafe, La Marina de Salamanca. Like I said, breakfast.
with potatoes and onions, and spinach and mussels in a vinaigrette at La Marina de Salamanca, December 23, 2014.
Canon 5D Mark III / Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS USM.
After breakfast, we left the Plaza Mayor and went across the street to the Mercado Municipal de Salamanca, where I found two big boxes of marujas at the fruit-and-vegetable stand of Cándido González. I asked if the marujas would keep a couple of days, Cándido said they would and I promptly brought a half kilo for nine Euros to take south to Sevilla for Manolo and Mari Carmen’s Christmas celebration.
Canon 5D Mark III / Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS USM.
Two days later, on Christmas Day at the home of Manolo and Mari Carmen Esquivias, where some 30 members of Mari Carmen’s family gathered (we went to Manolo’s 92-year old mother Alegria’s place on Christmas Eve), I made a vinagreta with Oro de Bailen Extra Virgen Olive Oil, Sherry vinegar, white wine vinegar, coarse sea salt and chopped fresh garlic. I popped the seeds from the pomegranate, washed and dried the marujas and put them in a big glass bowl. I decided I would serve each person a made-on-the-spot bowl of marujas con granos de granada aliñadas. I served a bowl of marujas to each person individually, sprinkled on a ration of pomegranate seeds and added a spoonful of properly garlicky vinagreta.
The dish was a big hit. None of the guests had ever tasted marujas either. From that half kilo, we had a little left to bring to Cádiz to make two more small salads for Kay and me. I vowed that it would not be another decade before I had this dish again, but that will surely require another trip to Salamanca and another walk across the Roman bridge up to the Plaza Mayor and the Salamanca market. Maybe this time I will take the Helicoptero up to the market.
* * * * *
Note: After I had written this portion of the chapter on Western Spain, a Facebook friend Spain expert Gijs van Hensbergen, author of Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon, In the Kitchens of Castile and Antoni Gaudí, sent me this: "In Segovia they are called perifollo (which is the Spanish name for chervil, not the same plant)--a whole range of names and fineness of leaf. Now (May) is the right time but the danger is to wash them well especially. if there have been sheep grazing on higher land. Some people advise that a few drops of bleach in a bucket will kill anything the sheep pass on, but I'm not a great fan of this method. The vinegar is to cut through the incredible iron taste of truly fresh perifollo - an explosion that cuts through the 'fat' of roast lamb. A total luxury - like a luxury water cress - where I worked in Segovia 30 years ago a wonderful old character with dun-coloured shepherds’ blanket would come into the restaurant with these at noon having walked up into the sierra at night and collected his crop not far from the famous Hemingway bridge in the Sierras de Guadarrama."
* * * * *
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?
"The Best Gastronomy blogs selected from thousands of Food blogs, Culture blogs and Food Science blogs in our index using search and social metrics. We’ve carefully selected these websites because they are actively working to educate, inspire, and empower their readers with frequent updates and high-quality information."
36. Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel
About Gerry Dawes
Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment