Mercado Central, Almeria, Superb Market Lunch with Self-purchased Ingredients Cooked for Us at Café – Bar Express

 

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Gambas rosas and small clams, purchased in the market and grilled a la plancha at at the Café – Bar Express in the Mercado Central de Almería, April 17, 2019. 

 

While touring the Alcazaba in Almería this morning, we ran into an American couple, Larry and Sue, from Sonoma, California and asked them to join us for lunch at the Café – Bar Express in the Mercado Central de Almería. 

 

 

Salmonetes (small red mullet).

 

At Bar Express, they will cook food purchased in the Mercado for a modest fee and serve it to you along with drinks, etc. Larry and I purchased succulent gambas rojas, almejas (small clams), salmonetes (small red mullet), raf tomatoes from nearby Cabo de Gata and a sweet onion. 

 

From a butcher shop next to the restaurant, I picked up 100 grams of Beher (Bernado Hernández from Guijuelo, Salamanca) jamón Ibérico de bellota (cured hams from free-range Ibérico pigs fattened by grazing on acorns). We were soon seated at a table for four, ordered bottles of good Estrella de Levante beer from Murcia, white wine for the ladies, mineral water (this time not Perrier!) and Larry and I began to cut up the onion and a pile of small raf tomatoes, which I dressed with Spanish Extra Virgen Olive Oil, vinagre de Jerez and sal gorda (sea salt).  

 

Soon our wait person brought us our gambas rosas and small clams grilled a la plancha, then the salmonetes. By this time the raf tomatoes and the onion slices were beginning to marinate and tasted great. 

 

 

Yet another market cooked meal that was the lunch of Champions! Exceptionally good.  We finished with fresh watermelon for dessert. The feast came out to about 15 Euros each.   The best food we have had in Almería so far!

 

Constructive comments are welcome and encouraged.

 

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Text and photographs copyright by Gerry Dawes©2021.  Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2021 on Facebook.  Publication without my written permission is not authorized.

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  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.

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36. Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

 
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. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .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.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

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