* * * * *
Excerpt from Homage to Iberia: More Spanish Travels and Reflections
A work in progress by Gerry Dawes©2020
One
of Spain’s best fish dishes is urta a la roteña, a delicious red sea bream
rockfish baked whole with a sauce made with tomatoes, red and green bell
peppers, garlic, Spanish extra virgen olive oil, a bay leaf, dry fino or
manzanilla sherry such as Maruja Manzanilla de Sanlúcar de Barrameda,
Restaurante Mirador de Doñana, Sanlúcar
de Barrameda. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2018.
Urta a la roteña with Maruja Manzanilla de Sanlúcar de
Barrameda, Restaurante Mirador de Doñana, Sanlúcar de
Barrameda. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2018.
While I was in
Rota in 1968 and 1969, when I did go out to eat it was in the bars frequented by my fellow
Navymen. I stuck to hamburgers, pizza and pastas with red sauce, with the
occasional foray after a night in the “American” bars into old town Rota to a
bakery with no sign that, if you knew it where to find the place, would sell
you a sliced sandwich made with a hot roll fresh from the oven and a generous
slab of cooked ham and Manchego-type cheese for the equivalent of about a half
dollar. This bakery would also have a
long-term impact on me, because it was the place I took the lovely backpacker I
had just met, Diana Valenti from Michigan, on our first date after her shift at
the Bar Toyko. Over one of those ham-and-cheese sandwiches we began a
relationship that would result in marriage and last for 28 years.
Rota, Spain, 1969. Photo
by Gerry Dawes©2020.
Well before meeting Diana, I would begin
my long affair with the food of Spain.
The village of Rota is known for one of Spain’s best fish dishes urta
a la roteña, a delicious red sea bream rockfish baked whole with a sauce
made with tomatoes, red and green bell peppers, garlic, Spanish extra virgen
olive oil, a bay leaf, dry fino or manzanilla sherry on a bed of sliced
potatoes in a cazuela (earthenware casserole dish).
Urta
a la roteña, red sea bream rockfish baked in a cazuela
(earthenware casserole dish) at a restaurant in Cádiz. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2018.
But, after getting a whiff of the port in Rota, which during
my Navy hitch there smelled like raw sewage had been dumped into it--but has since
remedied that problem--I never ate fish or shellfish there. Subsquently,
though I never ate this exceptional dish in Rota, I had read of urta a la roteña
and had it several times in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in el Puerto de Santa
Maria and across the bay in Cádiz. In
fact, if I see it on menu in one of the coastal towns in Cádiz province I often
order urta a la roteña, still after five decades of enjoying the best
food Spain has to offer is high on my list of the best fish dishes I have ever
eaten.
Urtas de Conil in the Mercado Muncipal de Cádiz. Conil is a seaside town 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Cádiz. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2018.
* * * * *
Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?
Poem
by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse
Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt
Huntington,in the courtyard of the Hispanic
Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York
City.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
About Gerry Dawes
My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine
enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless
crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce
Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's
culinary life." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel
Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019
Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York (streaming live and archived at www.pawlingpublicradio.org and at www.beatofthevalley.com.)
Dawes
was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía
(National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on
Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural
tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's
Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava
Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004,
was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles
& Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the
2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature
in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about
Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià.
".
. .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià
in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow
narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish
correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food
journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a
self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again
brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane
Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher,
Food Arts, October 2009.
Pilot for a reality television series
on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
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