Spain Trip Part 4: Spanish-Italian Fusion in the Countryside

Part 1: Brussels Layover

Part 2: Calçots Somewhere in Catalonia

Part 3: The House of Garlic Mayonnaise

Worked into a gastronomic furor by my string of scores, I boarded a train and traveled an hour north of Barcelona to the village of Seva, to visit my friend and former music student, Andrea Grimaldi. Andrea is an Italian immigrant, and is renowned among his generation of musicians in the area for his incredible cooking prowess. And even he pales in comparison to legendary Mama Grimaldi. I'll never forget the time I was lucky enough to fly into Barcelona shortly after Andrea had returned from his family home outside Rome, and he made me some veal parmigiana his mother had shipped off with him. It was so good, it hurt.

Here's what Andrea cooked:

Vongole:


...and, eventually, spaghetti alle vongole:

This is a traditional Catalan appetizer of escalibada, a medley of roast pepper and eggplant. Andrea can't help but turn it into something more resembling antipasto:



"Gambas" are usually translated as shrimp or prawns, but, really, they're sort of right in between:

Bread from Andrea's self-built wood burning oven:

Pears cooked in muscat wine:

I had a chance to take in some art:




That's the artist, on the right (Andrea's son, Pascal):


Continue to Part 5: Barcelona Holdouts

Spain Trip Part 3: The House of Garlic Mayonnaise

Part 1: Brussels Layover

Part 2: Calçots Somewhere in Catalonia

La Llar De L'all I Oli‎ (C/ Conquesta, 87, 08912 Badalona; 383-5307‎), which I hadn't visited in fifteen years, has remained my favorite restaurant in the world. You're about to see why.

It's located in Badalona, one village north of Barcelona. While there's a station for Badalona on the Barcelona metro system, it's better to take the regional Renfe train (e.g. from Plaza Catalunya), which is faster and leaves you much closer to the restaurant.

As befits a legend of this magnitude, the place is a bit hard to find. Whenever I first spot the sign for Calle Conquista, my heart races a little:


And here we are:

I'm not sure where they downloaded this Medieval Catalan font from, but it sure sets the right tone:

La Llar De L'all I Oli‎ translates as "The House of Garlic Mayonnaise". This stuff predates French aioli, and, as with the latter, the very best is made with no egg at all - simply garlic, olive oil, and unthinkable labor with mortar and pestle. It's extremely rare to find such hardcore all i oli, but La Llar De L'all I Oli‎ sets a small tub of it down in front of you, just like it's nothing. And they'll even bring more, if you ask:

In such a staunchly traditional Catalan restaurant (there's no Spanish menu...but don't worry, there are photos) you must order pa amb tomàquet. It's the simplest thing in the world: a thin slice of peasant bread, lightly toasted, and a tomato. Cut the tomato in half and rub the cut side aggressively into the bread. Slather with all i oli‎. And realize that anything else that happens on your trip (including the obscenely delicious food that's about to follow) is mere icing on the cake. You've now earned back your plane fare:

Their chickens (listed on the menu as "pollastre de pages") are free range, which is a whole other level here. These are brutish, meaty, unthinkably plump birds which could easily kick the bejesus out of both Bell and Evans. They are roasted on an old fashioned charcoal brazier by folks with a deep and ancient affinity for the cooking of food over fire. And the potatoes are waxy and naturally sweet. They gush flavor.

Let awed silence reign as you view these sacred images (you must click to expand each of them!). In a separate browser window, you may book your plane tickets:

All the grilled meats are fantastic; here are lamb chops (xai brasa)

One final bit of potato porn (soft focus for extra smuttiness):

Outstanding flan:

Great but not pictured: artichokes cooked on that same brazier. The coffee. Escalibada (traditional appetizer of roast peppers and eggplant). Any of the meats. And anything else.

One of the perqs of a meal at La Llar De L'all I Oli is the fact that the Renfe station is located right on the beach (and it's a nicer beach than any in Barcelona proper). I like to go stretch out on the sand while contemplating the meal:

Continue to Part 4: Spanish-Italian Fusion in the Countryside

Spain Trip Part 2: Calçots Somewhere in Catalonia

Part 1: Brussels Layover

The main reason for my trip was that I've never had calçots, a Catalan tradition and world-renowned foodway. After some twenty trips to Catalonia (a semi-autonomous region in Spain with its own language; best known city is Barcelona), I'm around five percent Catalan, so my friends there finally decided to resolve this shameful deficiency by dragging me out into the countryside (calçots are traditionally eaten outdoors and out of town) and feeding me a multitude of charry onion shoots.

I'm not sure exactly where we were, but calçoterias are apparently all pretty much the same. A bad one wouldn't last long. We drove a couple of hours to get here, but the trip's more about a traditional weekend afternoon getaway than about pursuing a particularly good venue.

Below, a musician friend elegantly models his stylish tie-on calçot bib. He's blessed with the most sensational name a drummer could ask for: Pau (pronounced "Pow") Bombardo. I'm not kidding. Pau is not often seen in daylight; notice how his eyes have crinkled into bleary slits:

Meet bassist Nono Fernandez (alas, seated) and pianist Ignasi Terraza. We all hope that Nono will one day form a nine piece group titled "The Nono Nonet".

Ok, time to eat. The bringing forth of the calçots is such a weighty, ritualized process (repeated a great many times to accommodate my ravenous group) that it requires several angles of perspective:






A closeup:

You rip out the relatively uncharred inner portion, and swab generously in Romesco sauce:

The remarkable thing about eating calçots is that this most Catalan of meals is also the least Catalan of meals. Catalans are a fastidious lot; they sit up straight at the table, eating daintily - and never, ever with their hands. Catalans consider me a barbarous wild man for doing things like eating pizza while driving. But with calçots, and only with calçots, they eat with their hands, which become blackened from the char. You might even, gasp, get up and walk around during the meal. In general, all conventions are jubilantly cast aside. I kept flashing back to the episode of Star Trek explaining how Vulcans get totally emotional for 24 hours every seven years.

This chaotic tableau would be unimaginable for any other sort of Catalan meal:

When you've had your fill of charry onion shoots, inside you go for the rest of the meal, eaten with cutlery, clean hands, and all other conventions fully restated. The vibe in these places is bourgeois hunting lodge:

The table naturally includes all i oli, the Catalan garlic mayonnaise (which preceded French allioli). There'll be much more about all i oli in a subsequent installment:

Butifarra blanca, butifarra negra, y mongetes secas (fatless meat sausage, blood sausage, and white beans):

Listen to the correct pronunciation via the 5 second movie below. You'll notice that Catalan sounds nothing like Spanish:

Artichokes and skinny lamb chops cooked over the same charcoal as the calçots:

..and, finally, individually plastic-wrapped fruit (Catalans have a keen flair for anticlimax):

Continue to Part 3: The House of Garlic Mayonnaise

Spain Trip Part 1: Brussels Layover

I used to travel to Spain several times per year to play music. During my decade of Chowhound madness, I didn't touch my trombone, much less travel for gigs. But I recently returned for the first time in many years, and I'll share the photos in several installments. Today: Belgium.

Please click the photos to expand them, as they're not really meant to be viewed at this size.

When I booked my flight, I was given a choice between a two-hour layover in Brussels and a twelve-hour layover in Brussels. It was a no-brainer: obviously, I chose twelve hours in The Holy Land. I've long worshipped at the alter of Belgian beer (I wrote about it early, long before all the popularity), and feel equally reverential about the country's stupendous mussels, chocolate, and French fries (which should really be called Belgian fries!). Screw France; Belgian is the more ancient cuisine, and they do French better than the French (there are more Michelin starred restaurants per capita in Belgium than in France).

Unfortunately, my eagerness to hang in The Holy Land made me overlook the logistical realities. My flight would depart NYC at 7:30pm, and arrive in Brussels at 7am local time, or 1am my time, at which point I'd not be much in the mood for a spree. But, hoping sheer adrenalin might stoke a few hours of mirth before the inevitable crumbling, I threw luggage into a storage locker at the airport, grabbed a city bus, and made my way - sloppy, bleary, and unshaven - into town.

First stop, near European parliament, was an oh-so-inviting bakery, Paul Bruxelles Bel'art (Rue Froissart 72, 1040 Etterbeek; 02/231.11.31) where I beheld the most welcome of early morning sights for a weary traveler: this amazing blistery crunchy/chewy torsade du fromage, plus a coffee so civilized I'm amazed they'd serve it to the likes of me:

Fruit tart. So flakey, so lardy in the crust....sigh:

Apricot tart. Moist, tangy fruit contrasted magnificently with soft, buttery pastry:

Lovely raisin torsades (unsampled, alas):

Upon subsequent research, the place turns out to be part of a huge multinational chain (Paul Maison de Qualite, "Fondee en 1889") with branches all over Europe, the Mideast, and, uh, Florida. Fine by me; deliciousness is deliciousness. My favorite Montreal Bakery, Première Moisson, also wound up being a chain.

Unfortunately - though, I suppose, quite reasonably - the best frites stand in Brussels, Maison Antoine (1 Place Jourdan), is shuttered at 9am, damn them. Is this not a heartbreaking sight?

But right across from Antoine was my consulation prize: a bourgeois bakery called Allemeersch (Steenweg op Waver 396, 1040 Etterbeek, Belgium‎ - 02 647 47 69‎). They sell attractive this and that, but the real gem is "pralines avec biere trappiste": chocolate truffles made with strong Trappist ale from Westmalle and Rochefort, two of my favorites. They were unforgettable.

Then it was on to lunch at In 't Spinnekopke (Bloemenhofplein 1, 1000 Brussels; 02 511 86 95), an unpronounceable stalwart of old-timey Flemish cookery. It's declined since my last visit; apparently being one of those places that's played "telephone game" through successive generations of chefs, with the result being slightly unfocused, sloppy food. They're coasting on reputation. But unfocused sloppy food by Brussels standards is still a rich pleasure for a visiting astronaut/zombie. Consider, for example, these plump garnalenkroketjes (aka croquettes de crevettes grises d'oostende), croquettes made from tiny grey shrimp from the North Sea (here's a good-loooking recipe):

Like I said, the cooking's a tad unfocused:

Here are mussels topped with creamy/eggy waterzooi, a novel (to me) construction that really didn't meld:

Frites had the right flavor, but were a bit soggy:

But I washed it all down with fantastic gueze from legendary lambic blender Drie Fonteinen, and felt I'd enjoyed a true (if not truly great) Belgian experience:

Obviously, I was in no condition to drink much, but gueze is fairly low in alcohol, so I didn't hesitate to drink four large glassfuls. Woops. I'm not sure how I made it back to the airport, but I did, and was soon on my way to Spain.

Stay tuned, please, for coverage of shocking orgies of charry onion shoots, bodacious potato porn, and an emotional revisit to my single favorite restaurant in the whole world.

Continue to Part 2: Calçots Somewhere in Catalonia

Grease Stain Remover Page (and more!)

The Grease Stain Remover Page is jam-packed with bizarrely unlikely, yet somehow strangely compelling, homegrown fixes. Pour a can of Coke in with the wash! Smear with Cheez Whiz! Spray with lighter fluid or hairspray!

I couldn't stop reading, buoyed particularly by the zesty corroboration by the web page's anonymous proprietor ("Thanks so much Tiki! Super Tip!!"; "Thanks for the dandy tip Ellen!! Works like a charm!"; "Thanks Beth.... yes, your tip has been a great help!") who must spill an awful lot of grease on herself.

I don't do my own laundry, so my interest is purely aesthetic/cultural, but I love this sort of thing. I also read eagerly through those trucker owner/operator magazines stacked up in truck stops down south.

If you share my predilection, here's a remarkable and completely unknown book, available second-hand for under $3: "And I Thought I Was Crazy!", a treasury of human quirks compiled from umpteen contributors. Breathtaking wisdom and pathos in a trashy, cheezy, mass market paperback.

Never Count on Redemption

Well, health care passed. And Obama has dared the right to run this Fall on a platform of repeal, once the plan's benefits (never well communicated) start becoming apparent to constituents. Doing so would be as suicidal as Alf Landon's ill-fated 1936 presidential campaign based on repeal of social security.

Of course, the country will be delighted with its new health care program - even the furious protestors, all of whom will blithely continue to rail against the socialist president - much as those who've come around to deem the Iraq war a debacle seem incapable of reevaluating their early view of war protestors as un-American. And much as many furiously anti-stimulus Republican congressmen proceeded to brag to constituents about the resulting flow of local economic development funds.

This particular dementia is not unique to the right or to any other single group (though it appears that way when one observes across a divide). Rather, it's a deep-seated bug in the human OS. We are easily capable of changing our minds on issues while blithely sticking to an over-arching story. The evidence may change, but the judgement remains in force.

Years ago, a few horrendous assholes swaggered onto the message boards of Chowhound.com and proceeded to post in vast profusion, relentlessly pummeling anyone who dared disagree. We asked them to give others a chance, rather than monopolize every conversation, but their compulsive output continued to spread like kudzu. We expunged the nastiest stuff, and, when they howled with indignation, we begged them to start their own forum...which, praise Jesus, they finally did. Predictably, they used the new forum to prattle on about how they'd been forced out because I'd felt threatened by their superior food knowledge.

Fine. Whatever.

But people believed it (a lie oft-repeated becomes truth). And even though these individuals eventually became duly notorious for their "special" qualities, it's amused me that no one ever thought to reexamine the "Leff is a Tyrant" trope they'd worked to circulate.

On the other hand, this psychological issue may represent a "feature" rather than a "bug". If every time we changed an opinion, it involved a major unraveling and reevaluation of our thought systems, it'd be impossible to get on with our lives. And so we retain an irrational but practical ability to insert and retract individual ideas and opinions modularly, without affecting the fundamental structure of our outlook.

Biz Idea: Next Generation Chatroulette

If there are any entrepreneurs out there (or anyone who knows any entrepreneurs), here's a good idea:

Chatroulette is the latest cutting-edge online sensation. The set-up is this: you're paired in a real-time chat with a random stranger, and it's sort of like a social sumo match; if you bore or anger or otherwise turn off your chatmate, he/she will abandon you to move on to the next random stranger (called "nexting"), whereupon you, too, are immediately thrown in with someone else.

Needless to say, it can be awfully thin gruel, dominated by amorous drones looking to "hook up", and plenty of people you'd normally have little interest in chatting up. But that's part of the amusement. As with channel surfing through dozens of uninteresting cable stations, there's a certain ADD-like satisfaction in indulging your unbridled impatience while winnowing and ferreting. And also a certain inherent rudeness and cruelty, but at least it's vented in small, relatively painless bursts (social rejection in this setting, after such brief exposure, and with someone new always right around the corner, doesn't hurt very much).

But it would be easy to thicken the soup, so there's less winnowing required. Just offer "channels", allowing users to connect, randomly, with self-described stamp collectors, bored housewives, home cooks, motorcyclists, fans of various bands, or Presbyterian weight-lifters. Give me a jazz musician channel, where I can sail forth riffs and have them thrown back at me by other players (make new associations! find gigs!). Those who remember IRC - too early for mainstream and lacking a sexy roulette option (much less live audio/video) - will attest to the attraction of this sort of narrowcasting.

Chatroulette is a good first generation effort, but it's not quite ready for prime time. This enhancement, though, could drive this concept to become the next Facebook/Twitter.

Update: even better, allow people to create their own branded channels (customize the graphics, etc.). Perhaps scale back to make roulette merely an option within each channel (call them "salons" or "granfaloons"). Give proprietors a share of ad revenue so they have incentive to attentively manage and market their realm. This could all be built fairly easily/cheaply...and it would kill!

American Jews Need to Get Loud About Israeli Settlements

Obama seems unwilling to get tough with Israel about halting settlement growth. He's issued requests and ultimatums, but is loath to go beyond tough talk out of fear of losing of Jewish support. The Israeli hawks currently in charge continue to brazenly expand settlements in spite of the administration's rhetoric.

But I get the feeling that a slim majority (or at least a hefty minority) of American Jews may be against settlement build-up - likely enough of them to change the political calculation. Unfortunately nothing's being done to channel this sentiment to achieve change.

In the 1960s and 1970s, American Jews were unwilling to publicly condemn Israel, which they believed to be in desperate need of their staunch and undivided support. This is a different generation, with much less tow-the-line sentiment. Post 9/11, people want peace a lot more than they want to maintain ethnic solidarity. Yet the political wisdom on American Jews remains the same: we're seen as a one issue constituency, and any politician advocating contradiction of Israeli policy would be assumed to automatically forfeit this constituency en masse.

So wouldn't it be fantastic if large number of American Jews spoke out about this one issue? Not just the usual lefty doves, but even some Zionists. Israel itself is conspicuously splintered, with a wide spectrum of attitudes and opinions on practically everything. It's ridiculous that American Jews, for their part, are unwilling to take a stand when they disagree. If they'd stand up on settlements, that would give Obama political cover to force the issue - and that'd be an impressive first domino toward peace. And what American Jew wouldn't be honored to topple the first domino?

I'd help organize such a movement, but, given that I've never been a Zionist (I'm more or less equally disgusted with both Israeli Jews and with Palestinians), I lack proper credentials. But if we presume that the administration is sincerely anti-Settlement (it sure sounds that way), and that Rahm Emanuel (a staunch Zionist) doesn't spend his days begging the president to change his thinking, then Emanuel really ought to be doing this very same political calculus right now, and taking steps to build support among American Jews for the application of much stronger pressure on the Israeli government.

An Unorthodox Perspective on Opposition To Gay Rights

I'm strongly for gay marriage, gays in the military, and, generally, gays having every right anyone else enjoys. But I'd like to pull away a few layers of collective amnesia.

When I was growing up, there was exactly one black child in my class, and he was, to me, scary and different. I certainly never hated him or excluded him - and couldn't have imagined doing either. It was just that there seemed to be an unbridgeable chasm. Conclusive proof could be found in his hair, which was, after all, so strange!

After escaping my sheltered suburban existence, I came to meet, work, and hang out with hundreds of black people. With familiarity, they stopped seeming scary and different. Well, some still seemed scary, but it was because they truly were scary. I had learned to gauge scariness on the merits, rather than on the basis of unfamiliarity. I moved to NYC and launched a career playing black music, finding myself perennially the only white guy in the band. I can recall watching the Count Basie band on TV as a child, wondering whether the sole white musician felt weird. I can firmly reply to my younger self: no. It doesn't feel weird at all.

I also remember, as a kid, accidentally sending the elevator to the basement of my grandparents' apartment building. The doors opened, and Cuban workers, speaking some incomprehensible and alien-sounding language, were eating food that smelled like rotten garbage. I mashed my finger on the "door close" button and held my breath, made nauseous and faint by the stench of the disgusting stuff these strange people were eating.

The smell was garlic. Obviously, I'm well over that now. I also speak good Spanish. And I've sat in plenty of basements with Cubans noshing on garlicky this or that.

Are you getting the idea? Ok, one more.

In grade school in the 1970's, I never met a gay person. Of course, I met hundreds of them, but had no way of knowing. With anyone the least bit effeminate, there were suspicions. Not that I'd want to, like, beat them up. Or wish them unhappiness. But, once again, there was, again, that eerie feeling of unbridgeable chasm. In college, a fellow trombonist drove me home from a gig and casually mentioned, as he drove smoothly through the rain, that he was gay. I nearly opened the door and jumped out. Homophobia, after all, is fear, not hatred. The term has come to apply to both, but, unlike hatred, it's hard to condemn fear.

Having subsequently met lots of gay people, the fear's gone. I no longer worry, ala Tennessee Ernie Ford on I Love Lucy, that gay people want to, like, "vamp" me.


Phew. The above was uncomfortable to publicly spill. As I view my early life, it certainly doesn’t strike me as "A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Bigot". But here's the thing: I've snapped back from these fearful-not-hateful perspectives not because some higher consciousness kicked in. I changed because: 1. I met lots of black people, gay people, and garlicky fried bananas, (and fear of the unknown goes away when the unknown becomes known), and 2. society around me changed, and my role models were embracing rather than recoiling from Otherness. I hadn't seen much of that as a kid. When I did, something clicked.

The same is true for you, I'll bet. Admit it: in 1975 (if you were alive and sentient in 1975) you'd never have favored legalization of gay marriage or gays in the military. How about 1985? 1995? For nearly all of us, it took time for tolerance to develop. It required exposure plus a general trend toward multiculturalism. And the thing to bear in mind is that many people in this country haven't had those things! They live in places with less exposure both to gays and to the general notion of multiculturalism. The rest of us may feel more evolved, but we oughtn’t gloat over our high-mindedness. There were factors in play, and without those factors we’d still see things as we did in 1975. And here's the thing: there are still 1975 people out there, and they need time to catch up.

Really, I think a lot of them are coming along beautifully. What a remarkably pliant society this is, where, in a mere three decades, raw fish has become accepted (imagine serving sashimi in Duluth in 1980!) and people are even discussing, more or less civilly, legalizing gay marriage!

Obviously, I'm not talking about vicious bigots and thugs who scream "faggot". They're beyond the pale. But the hordes voting against gay rights measures are not that. They’re mostly nice, reasonably tolerant people, who don't wish gay people ill, but still find the shifts a wee bit scary and sudden. They haven't been where you or I have been, and haven't seen what we've seen. I don't sneer at them, because I was 1975, myself.

We must legalize gay marriage and sanction gays in military. And we will. The way seems bumpy, but it helps to remember that most resistance is not rooted in hatred or prejudice. It's more mild and benign - just people needing to get a little more comfortable with changing notions. For me, a New York City musician/writer living squarely in 2010, change seems ripely overdue. To understand others, I juxtapose my 1975 self, and can better empathize with their sense of disorienting acceleration.

Of course, opponents will need to adjust their comfort levels after the discriminatory laws are changed. No minority should have to endure discrimination while waiting for the majority to wise up.


End Notes:

1. Not one Republican joined the eleven senators who last week introduced legislation repealing "Don't Ask/Don't Tell"....even though the secretary of defense, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili have all called for repeal.

2. My writing here is vulnerable to the DiFara Pizza Effect. When I first ate at that vaunted pizzeria, the place was perennially empty, and owner Dom DeMarco was on the brink of shutting down. Now, of course, he's become a huge sensation, and I keep hearing from scads of people who claim they were regulars there long before the place came to public attention. The question is: where were all those congnescenti when the place was vacant and Mr. DeMarco was dejected and thinking of shutting down?

The DiFara Pizza Effect makes it likely that many (straight) people will read this and insist they were staunchly pro-Gay rights all the way back to 1975. If so, my question is: where were you when gays were being beaten and arrested and no one was uttering a word in their defense?

Trader Joe's Whole Wheat English Muffins

Trader Joe's now sells whole wheat English muffins that are wonderful.

Sorry to keep flogging Trader Joe's products; I promise I'm not on the payroll (though not for lack of effort; after quitting CNET, I hatched the idea of working for them as a scout; I even sent a proposal, but never heard back).

These are texturally similar to regular English Muffins, but there's an intensely wheaty flavor plus surprisingly good nutrition: each smallish muffin has 5g of fiber and 6g of protein, which is truly exceptional.

Even better, after toasting, I actually prefer them with a drizzle of olive oil rather than butter.