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Spain

London, briefly

The workshop ended on Friday, after a few more mouthfuls of food and poetry. We had readings several evenings during the week, the first from Tammy who read some of her travel poems; then a reading by all of us; then a reading of poems by others that we wanted to share, which included a few more Elizabeth Bishop poems, including The Moose. I read Maxine Kumin’s Custodian, David Cavanagh’s Montreal Blues, and Carolyn Forche’s For the Stranger.

Thursday lunch featured some of the most exquisite sausages, made by the local butcher (whose shop is, as you might have guessed, the location of the village post office).

On Thursday night, some more of those clever little squiddy things – this time stuffed with meat and cooked in tomato sauce – and a school of big happy sea bass swam our way, with a lucious veggie dish featuring aubergines, peppers and potatoes in a tomato sauce.

One of our number celebrated her fiftieth birthday that night, and there was cake – an ethereal tiramisu that I suspect made all but the celebrant wish it was our birthday too.

On Friday, there were more fab salads and tuna pastries

and a finale dinner of chicken and aubergine and zucchini and some potatoes in cream, followed by fresh fruit with warm custard.

Our last morning was a surprise as those of us who had not already left for the airport before 7.30 am were awakened by drums and flutes and some harmonious singing as the village wound its way to the church, pausing to sing to the saints on the wall plaques on the houses. As we had a plaque, we got a lovely serenade, which receded up the street. The event – the Mare de Deu d’Abril – marks the miraculous end of drought in the village in 1711.

And then before we knew it it was time to leave. A long but mercifully uneventful day hanging about Alicante airport, lunching on more noodle soup

and a bit of tuna

and one last flan,

and then up and away and back to a freshly scrubbed London where the rain had eased off by arrival time. Now readying myself for the journey back to Canada on Wednesday.

Questions of too much food

The week to date has been a blur of eating, drinking, reading, writing, talking, eating, drinking and so on. It’s been productive writing time for me, though I feel like every hour is filled, and manage to write only late at night when the muse is just about to fall asleep. We have had a couple of good brisk walks, including one yesterday to our lunch that was two hours there and two hours back. But we are all sensing that even a four hour daily walk might not be enough to counteract the scale of consumption.

Tammy is leading us to consider, poetically, questions of travel. We’ve spent a lot of time with the delightful book by Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel, and more with the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, whose Arrival at Santos kicked us off, and whose Questions of Travel have given us both the name of the course and a lot of food for thought.

Not as much food as Marisa has been offering, of course – her Valencian suppers are stupendous, and her lunch salads a little too inviting, particularly when augmented with fluffy tortilla or tuna pastries.

Tuesday morning’s session was in the orange grove,

with the penetrating perfume of orange blossom and constant buzz of bees, surrounded by lush globes of fruit whose juice we have been consuming at all hours of the day. As we left we discovered almond picking, a recreation I have been obsessively enjoying for two days straight, its rewards exquisite as we discovered on our mountain walk, when a pause and a couple of flat rocks coincided well with a pocketful of booty.

Yesterday was the mid-session break, and we began it with a private view of Relleu‘s museum, full of interesting and artfully arranged ethnological treasures to do with the history and traditions of the area: old bee-keeping equipment

caught my attention, and some beautiful wooden garden tools.

After our epic walk,

our lunch was a fabulous Paella Valenciana

in the village of Sella,

and we ate so much – including starters of croquetas (bacalau – salt cod, but very understated), champignons and a deliciously simple salad of lettuce, onions and tomatoes in lemon and olive oil – that we all felt the need to walk it off by returning over the mountain,

instead of catching the offered lift back. It rained and shone and gave us wonderful views over the terraced hills, through olive and almond groves, our path formidably bordered by wild flowers.

After a short rest, supper was at a tapas bar in Relleu, where we had some boquerones (but these ones were not anchovies, they told me sadly),

squid rings, pork and liver, some small squid-like/octopus-like critters, tortilla, ribs, bread, anchovy-stuffed olives, and an absurdly delicious coconut flan

(flan is the Spanish version of creme caramel, and it’s wonderful) followed by what I’d say is my favourite coffee in the world, cafe cortado, the slightly bigger and bolder Spanish first cousin to caffe macchiato, my other favourite coffee in the world.

And then made our way (phew, downhill) back home.

We are into our final couple of days here, which I’ve found very useful and pleasant, and of course extremely well catered. I just hope el Cheapo airline does not weigh its passengers for the return journey this weekend…

Kent, and then suddenly Spain

On Friday we decided to re-enact our historic walk (last year) in the Kent countryside, and so we did. We walked to Luddesdown

whose church was closed again. Nearby we saw again this old (? grain mill?) but last year it was autumn then and there were no such flowers in it.

And there was more brassica. A small purple forest of it.

And then on Saturday I hopped a plane to Spain to escape the rain. Lula has been vigilant, catching wild plastic pigs that might be threatening us (why else would they be flying away from us at regular intervals, she reasoned) and giving them a good shake to subdue them before presenting us with the corpse.

All is warm and peaceful at Almassera Vella. Marisa and Christopher would like you please to come on down!

Lots of lemons.

And it is orange season. We are being willingly drowned in fresh orange juice.

Marisa’s lentil soup was just what we needed after our travels.

And lunch yesterday was a beautiful sight; so many lovely cheeses! And an elegant Russian Salad with tuna.

Spain 7: markets, Barcelona, adios

Two were left behind with awful colds when we set off for Barcelona, and another was on her way to visit the hospital en route. But wait! While crossing the road to the train station I realised my hip had gone out, and rather than wait to see if it righted itself while doing a walking tour of the city markets, I turned tail and joined the fallen for a day of rest. The hip gradually recovered, and thanks to some strange fizzy Spanish anti-inflammatories, I was upright again by nightfall.

Lucky thing too, because Sunday was a free day, and we transferred to the excellently located Residencia Campus del Mar in Barcelona, where we were handed tickets for the Touristic Bus and set free until Monday morning. We took full advantage and circled the town in our yellow headphones, disembarking at the Miro museum an hour before it closed (early on a Sunday afternoon), so after a sprint round there we hopped back on and then wandered up the Rambla until we found somewhere to eat on a side street. Gazpacho, tortilla and paella did the job nicely and thus fortified we ploughed on to Sagrada Familia and Park Guell.

It was cooling off enough to dare riding the top of the bus, which we did until we reached Parc del Palau Reial de Pedralbes, where we made a tactical error by thinking we could sprint across the city to our hotel at Barceloneta faster by metro.

Not quite. It was so late that, nearly home, we stopped for a small but substandard Chinese meal before rousing the security guard – busy spraying flies in his office – and turning in for our last night in Spain.

We gathered at the bus in the morning, a couple of fallen comrades left to rest up, another taken to seek medical help for a mysterious swollen lip that appeared to be an allergic reaction. The rest of us had an excellent talk from communications and quality director Jordi Tolra about the markets of Barcelona, which number 46 (40 of them food markets) and which aim to allow the citizens to be within walking distance of at least one of them.

Would that other cities could follow this policy! Some of them had even made what seem to me unholy alliances with supermarkets – the one where we had our lecture, Santa Caterina (a former monastery which had been, before the monastery, an ancient food market), had a small supermarket within its walls. Tolra explained that the markets are gathered under one umbrella organisation, which is part of the city government, but that the stall-holders themselves are independent, but joined together by trade associations which organise them by food type. These associations, he said, are a long tradition in Catalonia, which was once an independent state with its own king and culture; after it was annexed by Spain, it kept its culture alive by creating Catalan associations, and trade assocations were the first of these.

The markets have received a lot of money which is used for renovation and modernisation of the buildings, to bring them into line with contemporary needs (logistical, technological, environmental).

A few of us who’d missed the Saturday tour were taken round and shown the foundations of the monastery, the seniors’ housing next door, built at the same time as the refurbishment, and the loading areas where a couple of the market’s delivery vans were parked. Hearing that all the stall holders bought their produce at the same wholesale market disillusioned us a bit. There were, our guide said, a few stall holders who sold their own produce, but they were in the minority, and there were hardly any organic stalls either.

While carefully negotiating a hefty lunch from the organic tapas stand at the well thronged Boqueria market, I mulled over what we’d heard.

So if the food markets are buying their produce at the same place as supermarkets, where does the difference lie? I guess the sales are distributed to more and smaller sellers, who have less overhead and perhaps employ (en masse) more people with better expertise in their area. But Tolra was definite on the point that he wanted to drive traffic away from supermarkets and into the city markets: families that packed the kids into the car and drove to a supermarket for the day should be bringing them here instead. His vision of family entertainment was more wholesome than supermarket kiddieland, though: his programs aim to educate school children and offspring of visiting shoppers on food and nutrition, to counteract ‘hamburger culture’ and to bring kids into contact with food producers and sellers as well as teachers and nutritionists.

It’s an interesting and busy area, and the markets have some impressive communication programs going. How successful the markets of the future will be will depend on whether the political winds continue to blow kindly and generously in the direction Tolra hopes to keep sailing.

Spain 6: wine and Bulli

We arrived at Viticultors Espelt, a winery in Girona that opened in 2000, and decanted the able-bodied for tour and tasting, while a pair of sufferers and their translators headed to hospital in search of antibiotics for respiratory tract infections.

We were presented with jolly orange sun-hats in which we set off in hot windy sunshine for a look at the vineyards.

It’s a new estate, only aquired three years ago, and the winemakers are busy learning about their terroir, by experimenting with different harvests, agings and blendings. In this baking climate, the plantings are done strategically, matching the varietal to sun exposure, and using stronger vines like grenache to protect more fragile ones like syrah from the wind that blows in from the sea, visible from the hilltop we were standing on. The terraces along the hillside are being restored by dry stone walling, three km achieved in two years, by two people working full time. Global warming is playing its part here, and the harvests are coming earlier each year: traditionally done in mid September, they are now taking place in mid to late August. Such is the heat, the harvest takes place between 4am and 11am, otherwise the grapes would start fermenting in their skins as soon as they were picked.

As we walked back for our tasting, we passed a charming but unremarkable farmhouse, which the winemaker told us was by night a very exclusive and popular disco, Ranch Frank, started by Salvador Dali and his American girlfriend.

We dashed through the tasting – Mareny 2006 (Sauvignon Blanc and Muscat), Quinze Roures 2006 (Grenaches gris and blanc); some nice full-bodied reds, Saulo 2006 (Grenache and Carinyena) and Terres Negres 2004 (Carinyena and Cabernet); and finished off with Airam 1998, a sweet wine made in very limited quantities from Grenache grapes, using the Solera (“fractional blending”) method, which is also used for sherry. It’s aged in half full barriques using a complicated method of adding partially aged wines to the new (in a process I’d be reminded of when we learned about balsamico tradizionale) all of which allows controlled oxidation to leave its mark.

The bus with its slowly reviving occupants arrived and whisked us off to a lively seafront town called Roses,

where we had an excellent tapas lunch – sweet shots of gazpacho; mussels both in a cold vinaigrette and hot stuffed; a gorgeous but too-small school of anchovies in garlic oil; quail eggs;

calimari; octopus; patatas bravas;

and then some noodle-style paella with, of course, allioli, and strawberries and ice cream to finish, all washed down with lots of sangria.

A lucky thing we’d eaten well as we weren’t offered so much as a speck of foam at El Bulli where all hands were busy preparing for supper.

A spectacular and slightly terrifying cliff-side drive from Roses, the much revered restaurant is only open six months a year, and they begin taking reservations from October.

The numbers involved are revealing… of something. In order to assure newcomers a place in the experience (which is around 30-35 small and ever-changing dishes for 185 euros per head plus wine and taxes) they have a policy of booking half the total 8,000 seasonal seats in repeat business and half new diners. There are 1,700 items on the book-like wine list, representing some 19,000 bottles in their cellars, and so the sommelier recommends you consult online before they start pouring into one of the 60 different wine glasses and 5 types of decanters. They have an electronic menu which you can use to filter your wine selections through your 30 food items if you want to complicate your life further; and of course there is a water list to choose from too.

The staff (67) outnumber the diners (50) but are not all paid employees, since there are 45 trainees (4 this year will be selected from 4000 applicants).

Ferran Adria stepped out of the kitchen long enough to engage in a bit of verbal ping pong about what is art (El Bulli is officially known this year as Pavilion G in the German art festival Documenta) and revealed he spends about 30 percent of his time talking to media and conferences.

After one last look at the dandy view from El Bulli’s courtyard, we hopped back on our bus and arrived at Mataro, which Carlo explained was another word for Mourvedre, very appropriate. It was a nice hotel in a bad location – across the road from what I heard was not a great beach, and a couple of kms from town, so taxis were needed for any expeditions. After we tried the first night’s hotel restaurant fare, we concluded these would henceforth have to include supper. Gazpacho in a wine glass? Phooey.

Spain 5: olive oil, peaches and lots of fish

With one down (massive cava hangover) and a few more beginning to falter (3 head colds, 1 sore back), we set off for Reus (birthplace of Antoni Gaudi!) where we had a tasting of DOP Siurana olive oil (made from small arbequina olives) at the beautiful art nouveau (modernisme) building housing the Consell Regulador de la Do Suriana:

and heard about various other geographically designated products, including rice, hazelnuts, potatoes and tangerines.

Next stop Cambrils, at the Cooperativa de Cambrils y Borges, where we observed the packaging of peaches, destined entirely (or maybe 90%, depending on who you asked) for external markets. Not an organic or artisanal coop, but a very busy one. We visited the agricultural museum which is part of its headquarters, and had a lunch of salad, spaghetti (Spanish local specialty?) and fried fish.

Off we sped to the docks, where we watched a fish market in action. Instead of an auction, like the one we’d seen in Puglia, here the prices are pre-determined, and buyers gather round a conveyor belt where they drop identifying tags on boxes of fish, and then pay the going rate at the end. Anything not sold off the boats in this way goes to the bigger markets at Valencia and Barcelona. We heard about the EU’s method of conserving fish stocks (they buy back the boats and licenses of small fishermen, removing them permanently from the sea — unfortunately as we’d learned elsewhere the slack is being taken up by large scale trawlers). We stepped onto a fishing boat to see the cleaning and sorting involved. The men were hand-sorting the takings from their dragger nets, which scour across the sand and bring up all manner of crabs, crustaceans and smaller sea life. Larger enterprises would chuck these back in the water, dead, but here they were hand-sorted and sold.