You’re scared, aren’t you? I can tell. You’re scared because you’ve read the title of this post and you know I’m going to have another bash at writing about wine. What’s the worst that could happen? Well, I’ve spent some time thinking about the answer to that question and I’ve come up with several possibilities:

1. I will look like a total idiot.

2. You’re not interested because you come here for the food stuff and you don’t know that much about wine.

3. I will look like a total idiot.

Putting options 1 and 3 aside for a moment, let’s deal with number 2. You’re into food, so you’re probably into drinking wine. If you’re anything like me, you drink the stuff like a fish but you find the world of wine frankly terrifying. Why so scary, wine world? Hmm? There are lots of reasons why I personally find it scary, which include but are not limited to: the fact that there is so much to know and I know so little of it but, mainly, the fact that many people I have met in the wine world are terribly pompous, condescending snobs who use their chosen subject area as a passport to twatsville. Apparently, not knowing everything there is to know about wine makes you a total LOSER. Who knew? These people are the equivalent of school bullies; they use their advantage (be it strength, popularity or in this case, wine knowledge) to make other people feel stupid because they are ultimately insecure about their own self-worth. Deep breaths, deeeep breaths.

Anyway my point is that it is coming into contact with those sorts of people that destroyed my confidence from the very beginning and I therefore just gave up. There’s too much to learn! I can’t possibly taste anything properly! What if I say the wrong thing? FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE WHICH WORD ON THIS BOTTLE IS THE NAME OF THE GRAPE?!

I’ve since taken 3 ‘school of wine’ courses at my local (amazing) wine shop, Green and Blue in East Dulwich which, quite honestly, brought me back from the brink. Kate Thal (the joint owner) runs them and she is the most down to Earth, non-snobby wine person one could hope to meet. She saved me, man. So, I know a lot more about wine than I did before. I’m still scared, though. Nothing puts the shivers up my spine like the thud of an enormous list on white linen. That’s the point where I start frantically looking for the sommelier then beg him/her not to rob me blind.

So, as I wrote before, I got invited on a wine trip to Georgia recently. They invited two food bloggers amongst the (very lovely and brilliant and the opposite of those above) wine people, I imagine because they understand the divide too and they want to bridge it. I actually know quite a lot of wine people nowadays and they are the complete polar opposite of those crusty old men (I’m sorry, but it always seems to be men); the people I know now just tell me things like, ‘it’s all down to personal taste’, ‘you can’t get it wrong’ (slight lie, that one, trust me), and ‘just because someone else gets fear and insecurity on the nose, it doesn’t mean you have to’.

Anyway, the wine. So the wine in Georgia is natural, right. Do you know what that means? Natural wine sends the wine world a bit loopy, basically. They get well wound up about it. The idea with natural wine is to intervene as little as possible during the wine making process, with the ultimate aim of producing something that is much more representative of the place in which it was grown (there’s a word for that last bit which escapes me…cheeky grin). It’s supposed to be more, um, expressive.

Apparently, Georgia was the first country to start making wine; they’ve been doing it for 8000 years. The way they do it is really interesting, though. No barrels for them. They get these massive clay pots called qvevri, and they bury them in the ground. Then they whack everything (juice, skins, stems) in there, seal it up with clay and let it all separate out. The wine is then drawn off the top very carefully using a special jug on a stick. They use a really old grape variety called Rkatsiteli which comes out freakin’ orange! Then there’s another one, which is red and called Saperavi. They’re both native to Georgia. The first time I tasted the orange wine, I was quite taken aback; that stuff is just totally unlike any wine I’ve ever tasted; kinda funky but, you know what? I got into it. By the end of that trip I think we were all a bit Georgian.

Georgia is a post-Soviet state and its people are trying to re-build their country. Part of this means re-discovering traditional methods of producing wine. I found it fascinating, even despite my insecurity telling me I couldn’t possibly be as interested in the wine as I was in the food. I urge you to seek out some Georgian wine, because that stuff will make you have a good old think about natural wine and wine making, if you’re at all interested. The RAW natural wine fair is happening on May 20th and 21st in London (buy tickets here). I’m going to be there. If you see me, come and say hi. Just don’t ask me anything too technical…

Have you ever considered visiting Georgia? I’m talking the country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia here, not the American state.

Nope, I hadn’t either. I barely had any idea where to stab my finger on a map, let alone any knowledge of the food, the people, the wine; all of which, I found out last week, are very loveable indeed.

The Georgians are remarkable characters, famous for their hospitality; warm, open and generous, their eyes sparkle and their laughter flows. My first real encounter with the locals was in the food market we visited in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. The Georgians are not yet so used to tourists that they have become jaded; they welcome you to their stalls to taste food, without any expectations that you will buy. In fact when we did want to buy something, we occasionally had a hard time getting them to take our money. They willingly pose for photographs, tapping their friends on the shoulders to turn around and join in with cheesy grins. Can you imagine that happening in Borough Market?

The market in Tbilisi made me tingle with excitement. You can really feel the distance from Western Europe. I stumbled through each ramshackle pathway, ducking through doorways and underneath swinging bulbs, eager as a kid in a sweetshop to see what new discoveries lurked in every nook and cranny. There were many:

The Georgians are into pickles, which of course endeared me to their cuisine immediately. My favourite and fortuitously the most ubiquitous was this tall tangle of what seemed to be pickled flower stems; the comparison with capers (being pickled flower buds) was a natural one and the flavour was quite similar.

Walnuts are grown in Georgia and therefore appear frequently in sauces, soups, salads and most famously, in churchkhela (above); strings of walnuts (and sometimes hazelnuts) are dipped repeatedly in grape must, which is thickened with flour so that it coats the nuts in a slightly sweet, chewy casing.

We stumble across a ‘cheese room’ in the market, stacked with sheep’s and goat’s cheeses, both similar in flavour with an additional, heavily smoked variety. The texture is crumbly like feta, and the flavour, incredibly salty – more so even than halloumi. It is addictive, just as anything very salty always is.

We later visit a cheese maker who tells us that the saltiness is for preservation purposes. We have some fun trying to translate the technicalities of cheese production from Georgian to English but the gist is that they use rennet from the stomachs of their 500 sheep, mixed with milk and nettles, the latter helping to clean the mixture by catching impurities. The cheese was once stored in shaved sheep skins but is now kept in plastic bags (for obvious practical reasons), where it spends a year before reaching maturity.

In typical Georgian fashion we are greeted with refreshments – a plate of the cheese, plus bread and plenty of wine to wash it down. The wine is most definitely what one would describe as rustic, the kind of wine that a teenager would love; very sweet indeed but somehow absolutely perfect in that time and place, the sweetness perfectly balancing the super salty cheese. We glug down several glasses.

Back in the market, carrier bags bulge with heady spices and seeds. Cumin and coriander seem prevalent and I spot nigella seeds, too; unmistakeable black studs nestled amongst the fiery reds of a dozen different chilli powders. The chilli flakes look Turkish so I buy some of those – they come wrapped in a small newspaper cone like fish and chips – plus I take some of the Georgian spice blend which graces the table as a seasoning and tastes like a turbo charged celery salt.

Chickens are bright yellow and clearly corn-fed. The other meat we see hangs in a remote market; every stall holder equipped with the kind of axe one would expect to see furnishing the arm of Gimli in Lord of The Rings. The Georgians seem rather partial to offal, too; brains, tripe, snouts, the lot. In my delicate state (read: disgracefully hungover having spent 8 hours the previous day necking wine and grappa-like spirits), I find my usual ox-like constitution compromised and scurry away.

Honey is scooped from buckets in huge amber globs, then smeared into old jam jars. Pots of honeycomb are also available, which marked the first but not the last time I cursed my decision to bring a tiny suitcase.

Empty soft drink bottles are filled with Georgian table sauce, made from mirabelle plums. The green sauce is sour, while the red sauce, made from riper plums, is more sweet. Both are made by boiling then pureeing the fruit, before adding garlic, coriander, dill and chilli amongst other ingredients. Both are quite delicious, appearing at several meals we enjoy over the course of our stay; the flavour is unique and I’m rather excited at the prospect of attempting to re-create it.

Everywhere we look there are buckets, platters and boxes of ingredients:

Baby leek-like strands of wild garlic…

Platters of tiny fish are metallic flashes in the corner of the eye…

Sugar dusted dried fruits yield squidgy and soft within; dates, figs and persimmons (sharon fruit)

This is a picture of a Georgian cat because it is very pretty. No other reason. Not for eating.

We later visit the flea market in Tbilisi, which proves just as exciting for the cook; silver cutlery, crystal glasses, china and all manner of curious kitchenalia are laid out on the pavements. I once again curse the suitcase, passing up many opportunities to feed my obsession with plates and cutlery. At almost 3 lari to the pound, there were some bargains to be had.

I fell in love with the markets of Georgia. Well, I fell in love with a lot of things about Georgia. I’ll write next about the Georgian supra (feast), how the market ingredients are used in the kitchen and how the hospitality of the Georgian people is legendary. I’m even going to have a go at writing about the wine. Brace yourselves…

My visit to Georgia was led by ‘that crazy French woman’, Isabelle Legeron who organises the RAW artisan wine fair in May. Tickets available here.

A friend and I spent last weekend in Amsterdam. Quite a lot of things went wrong. We arrived to find a rather inappropriate transparent shower cubicle in our shared room, I got sick, we crashed our hired bicycles in the middle of a major junction causing chaos and we missed both our trains home. Through sheer grit and determination however, we did manage to fit in some good grub.

After 5 hours of train and tram travel, we were starving and headed straight to Albina in Albert Cuypstraat for some Surinamese food, a cuisine I’d never even heard of until we started looking into places to eat in the dam. The South American Republic of Suriname was a former colony of The Netherlands and so there are a lot of Dutch Surinamese living (and cooking) in Amsterdam. Completely coincidentally, a reader e-mailed me about Surinamese food almost as soon as we arrived back in London (weird), so I know that our first dish of fried potatoes topped with a kind of fish floss is usually made with cassava. Maybe it even was cassava. She also told me that the floss on top is called teloh, made with cod. Like kids in a sweetshop we excitedly doused it with the various condiments on the table, our favourite being a kind of sweetened soy concoction.

Moksi meti (above) was a dish of roasted chicken, pork, sausage and green beans in a sweet sauce; it was lovely but no match for the flakiest of rotis which came atop a mild chicken curry (below). Underneath the roti nestled boiled potatoes, which had spent their time soaking up all the precious sauce and were to be squished, savoured, treasured and fought over. Despite being full to bursting we managed to pack away most of this. The boiled egg however, was a bridge too far.

The next day we managed to pack in a bit of sandwich action despite my sickness, in the form of herring rolls from a stall called Frens Heringshandel. Two glistening fillets of rich herring were beautifully soft, contrasted by crunchy nuggets of diced onion and sweet/sharp pickles. I would have liked twice as many pickles but then, I always do. An excellent sammich. I warn you though, it makes you stink of fish and onions. This wasn’t a problem for me and my mate; we’d been sharing a bed and a room with a see through shower compartment and a toilet in the middle. Fishy onion breath was nothing.

On the subject of street eats, I’d definitely recommend also grabbing a cone of chips at the awesomely named Vleminckx Sausmeesters on Voetboogstraat. The chips seemed triple fried to me as the exterior was thick and crunchy. Topped with a sweetened mayo and diced onion they were excellent. The service was very fast, which is just as well as the queue was constant; a steady stream of tourists and locals, with more than the odd incredibly stoned person after a cure for the munchies.

On the other end of the street food scale, there’s the Febo automats. That’s deep fried stuff, plus burgers and sausages, from a vending machine. I kid you not. The poor burgers looked incredibly sad and the shrivelled sausages were a sorry sight but we chose a deep fried sausage shaped thing which was labelled ‘vegetarian’. It turned out to be filled with a very salty cheesy mushroomy gloop which was actually rather addictive, and I wasn’t even drunk. Worth a try if you’re game for a laugh.

So there’s a few pointers for you, in case you find yourself in the dam with an appetite. Ahem. We also visited a fancier restaurant which my friend assures me was lovely; I wouldn’t know because it was then I got sick and so ended up sitting there watching her eat it alone. Woe! Still, I pushed on through in the name of research, even grabbing a second herring sandwich for the train home. The one we were a spectacular two hours late for.

Eurostar return to Amsterdam from £99. It takes 5 hours but for someone like me who has a fear of flying, it’s an appealing option. 

Albina
Albert Cuypstraat 69, 1072 CN Amsterdam

Frens Heringshandel
Singel Hoek Koningsplein, 1017 AW Amsterdam

Vleminckx Sausmeesters
Voetboogstraat 31, Amsterdam

I’ve been in West Sweden for the past 3 days, bouncing around on boats, looking for some of the world’s best seafood. It’s a hard life. Most people apparently visit Sweden in June, with the peak tourist season lasting just 4 weeks a year – hardly ideal for some of the Swedish people who make their living from the influx of visitors. It’s crazy really, because the place is staggeringly beautiful in the late summer/early autumn. The West Sweden tourist board want to encourage people to visit all year round, which is why they invited me on a ‘culinary tour’ including 3 ‘seafood safaris’; we would look for mussels, lobster and oysters and we would devote an good amount of time to eating them. Don’t mind if I do.

Mussels first. We departed by boat from Lysekil with mussel-keeper Adriaan van Der Plasse who was, I was pleased to note, wearing a classic ‘Salty Sea Dog’  jumper. Very Captain Birdseye. Loved it. He took us out to what is essentially a big pipe with nylon stockings hanging off it; the mussels are ‘sown’ into the stockings and then dangled into the sea where they grow for 2 years in the nutrient-rich waters until mature enough to sell.

The sight of those nylon stockings emerging from the water is quite a thing, let me tell you. Millions of tiny anemones (I think), like miniature shrimp, twist and squirm alarmingly on the stockings. Here’s a video of the spectacle that my friend made.

After looking at the baby mussels, we clambered up onto a rocky island to lunch on the adults. Adriaan had a portable gas stove set up and he cooked the freshest mussels very simply with leeks, carrots and white wine. They were so sweet. We sat eating them and drinking wine, taking in the idyllic scenery. There was carrot cake and coffee for dessert, too; the Swedes love cake and coffee so much that they have a special name for cake and coffee time – ‘Fika’.

Adriaan and his companion were, like everyone we met in Sweden, incredibly friendly, healthy, weathered-looking people, eager to answer questions about the food and the country. Everyone speaks English. This was a blissful start to our adventure; I remember feeling totally relaxed, something I haven’t felt in a while. Well, not since my jolly to Spain er, 2 weeks ago. Ahem.

Details: Our mussel safari was organised by Orust Shellfish and was a shorter version of the usual 5 hour tour. The full tour costs £76 pp. You can also organise it as part of a package with a stay at Strandflickorna Havshotellet, see website here for details. 

The next day we went off to the enchanting car-free Koster Islands to explore South Koster, much of which falls within Sweden’s first Marine National Park: Kosterhavet. There’s something going on with the meeting of 2 tectonic plates under the water, and there are tons of unique species living there as a result. The planned afternoon safari was the biggy we’d been waiting for – lobsters, although in the end it was decided that a 2.5 metre swell in the sea was just a bit too frisky for a group of lily livered Londoners; we retreated, pulling up some pots the next day instead, from calmer waters.

The pots are baited with fish and lowered into the water. Apparently anyone can catch lobsters (providing they’re Swedish), as you don’t need a license like you do for fishing. The lobsters like to hang out in the stony areas with lots of little nooks and crannies they can poke about in. The first pot that came up was just full of crabs, which apparently happens all the time. Obviously crabs are sweet and delicious too, and we enjoyed big pots of them at almost every meal; picking and cracking our way through so many claws, viscera spraying onto hair, eyes and other people’s clothes. How I do enjoy working over a crab, even if I do always stab myself in the fingers with the equipment.

The lobsters fight often with one another and with the crabs too, gnarly little sods; this is why they often lose a claw, then grow a new one, leaving them with one claw bigger than the other. They’re incredibly lively when fresh and the claws need to be banded quickly, as they can take a finger clean off no problem. We saw lobsters as big as 2kg but they’re not good to eat at that age – less sweet and juicy.We enjoyed eating the good ones later as part of a 4 course lobster menu at Sydkoster Hotel Ekenäs and you can too. See details below.

Details: Lobster safari package includes  a three-day lobster experience, with two night’s accommodation, lobster safari, all meals including four-course lobster dinner and a cycle tour of the island. This costs 3,695 SEK (£359) pp (based on two sharing). Details here:  http://www.vastsverige.com/en/Shellfishjourney/products/101926/Lobster-Safari-in-Kosterhavet-Sydkoster-Hotel-Ekenas/

For the oysters, we travelled out to an adorable restored 19th century boathouse in Grönemad, Grebbestad, built on the rocks and supported on piles of stones, like many of the surrounding houses in the fishing villages. Our guide, Per Karlsson, grew up in Grebbestad and has been selling oysters for over 20 years, if my memory serves. He says the oysters of Sweden are considered by experts as some of the best in the world; I’m no expert but I’ve eaten a shedload and they were definitely up there. They can’t be bought here, in case you’re wondering. He has been asked to ship them further afield but refuses; they’re not plentiful enough and will be past their best by the time they reach destination.

They’re harvested from the natural oyster bed underneath the boathouse using a rake attached to a net. Handy.

I asked him if he’d ever been sick from an oyster: “well…only once, and that was because I ate an oyster I suspected may have been almost dead but I just wanted to try finding out.” That’s bloody brave if you ask me. Per said that he never gets sick because the oysters are so fresh and they’re tested every 2 weeks to ensure they’re safe to eat. The Swedes are very concerned with safety, I later learn. We have the opportunity to shuck an oyster (with protective glove) and we eat our fill, washing them down with a locally produced, dark beer I’ve forgotten the name of. The oysters are round, flat natives; metallic, mineral, saline and boy, do they chase the wind out of a hangover. Six perfectly fresh oysters, plucked from the sea just minutes before and BANG, the hangover is gone.

Details: The oyster experience was organised by Everts Sjöbod and there are various packages available. See links here and here. 

So you can probably tell that I thoroughly enjoyed the seafood journey experience and I think the packages are good value. A major word of warning though: Sweden in general is expensive [edit: see comment from Steph below], particularly if you like a drink (I think you know that I do). A European pint will set you back at least 7 quid and in one restaurant, a bottle of JACOB’S CREEK was over £30. If I were you, I’d book the seafood experiences with accomodation and meals included. There’s no doubt about it though, Sweden is a stunning country with some of the best seafood available. If  you’re an outdoorsy person, you’ll adore it. The Koster islands in particular are beautiful and if you do go, try to fit in a cycling tour; there are no cars to worry about and pedalling around with my mates was the most fun I’ve had in ages.

Even though I still feel like I’m bobbing about on a boat more than 24 hours later, I’m thrilled to have been invited to experience such a breathtaking country and of course, I had fun stuffing as much fresh seafood into my trap as possible. The details of how I came to find myself dancing wildly in a bar to the sounds of WHAM! and Credence while a Swedish man gyrated in my face shouting “let’s do it for the English girls!” shall go unmentioned.

You can see all my photos from the trip in my Flickr set, here. 

More information about West Sweden:

Website: www.westsweden.com
For more information about the Shellfish Journey: www.westsweden.com/shellfishjourney
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/westsweden
Twitter: www.twitter.com/westswedentb
Blog: www.explorewestsweden.com

SAS Flight Information

Heathrow to Gothenburg fares incl taxes and charges :
£63 one way
£103 return
www.sas.se

I’ve just come back from a week in Puglia, specifically the Itria valley, which encompasses the provinces of Bari, Brindisi and Taranto. The area is noted for a distinctive architectural feature, the trullo; a conical shaped stone roof designed to cool in summer and insulate in winter. Our villa, Trullo Tranquillo was located just outside Ceglie Messapica in Brindisi, hidden away in a labyrinthine network of narrow dirt tracks. Being tucked away like this was not a bad thing, although it did define the way we shopped and ate while in Puglia. I thought it might be of use to others who want to visit the area if I share my experiences of shopping and eating here.

With no restaurants within walking distance of our villa and only 2 drivers among 9, all of whom harboured a desire to get drunk, opportunities to eat out were limited. Mostly we bought ingredients at local markets and cooked for ourselves. Our excursion to the town of Monopoli however, saw us busting bellies at Osteria Perricci.

There’s no menu here, an unexpected relief. Monopoli is a coastal town, so they just serve fish; “antipasti?” our host asked. We nodded. “Pasta?” Of course. “Fish? Grilled? Fried?” We ordered both.

First bruschetta, properly made. Ruby ripe tomatoes smooshed into garlic scrubbed toast. The tomatoes in Puglia are to die for.

Favourite antipasti were butterflied anchovies drenched in the ubiquitous (delicious) olive oil; meaty morsels of octopus and sweet mussels bathing in grassy pools of their own juices mixed with, you guessed it, lots of olive oil. A couple of duds didn’t spoil the fun at all; battered fish was, for me, all bready batter and little fish. Sundried tomatoes were chewy as ever, although the accompanying chunks of cucumber rocked; a sweet, round variety that tastes like a mild melon.

Huge bowls of pasta next – ‘fish’ spaghetti, predominantly octopus and squid in a tomato sauce which tasted of shellfish shells, silkily bound with cooking liquor. The second, not the Orecchiette typical of the region but similar in shape (I think Cencioni), delightfully chewy, the sauce packed with garlic and white wine, the bowl clattering with mussels and sweet clams. Chillies were added at table.

Eating was becoming more difficult. Simply grilled fish was delicious, but an effort. We picked lamely at fritto misto; I stuffed down as many tender squid rings as possible.

A refreshing lemon sorbet could not have been a more welcome finish, sitting atop sweet glazed strawberries, it saved us from passing into a food coma.

The owners don’t speak much English at Osteria Perricci but they’re very friendly and make it easy to get by with gesturing, nodding and piss poor attempts at speaking Italian. Our meal came to around €25 a head I think, including a few beers and a bottle of wine. You can walk it all off around Monopoli afterwards too; the old part of town is well worth a look.

Osteria Perricci
Via Orazio Comes, 1
70043 Monopoli Bari, Italy
080 9372208

We couldn’t visit Italy and not eat pizza. One evening 4 of us left camp to pick up some takeaway from Mamm Ce Pizza in Ceglie Messapica, reasoning that 1 pizza per person should be enough. As we sat waiting for our order it slowly dawned – they were the size of small planets. We staggered out with towering stacks, the owner following behind us; we turned to find him pointing and heartily laughing at our tiny Fiat 500. I think we made his evening. Next thing I know I’m jammed in the back, pizza boxes rammed between my face and the seat, not a millimetre to spare. Each bump in the road guffed more hot cheesy steam into the eyes. We snorted with laughter the whole journey, as did everyone who passed us.

Nice though, and cheap (€7-11 each for those monsters). The ham and ricotta was my favourite. Here’s the menu.

Mamm ce Pizz
Via Taranto, 5
Ceglie Messapica
Brindisi
334.3643145

The remainder of the time we shopped at (fairly) local food markets; some were better than others. I really hope my memory serves me correctly here because it could save you a lot of disappointment. Of the 3 we attempted to visit, only 2 were actually where they were supposed to be – those in Cisternino and Alberobello. We found stall holders at the former very friendly, at the latter a little less so, as at one point we got into a misunderstanding trying to buy figs and had to run away. Don’t let that put you off though, the majority were lovely.

I wouldn’t bother trying the market in Martina Franca; advertised in our guide book as happening ‘all day’ we failed to find anything apart from stalls selling cheap clothes and toilet rolls [Edit: see comment from Tony below; they do exist!]

All the markets carry the same stuff (seasonal, innit) and you’ll find fishmongers and butchers dotted around the towns. To find the markets, just head for the centre, it’s obvious once you arrive.

Fat, buttery green olives.

Bright pink prawns with purple heads.

Saving the shells to make pasta sauce.

Bream ready for the BBQ.

Tomato salad – one of many.

Langoustines.

Can’t beat a mooch around a foreign supermarket.

Now I’m going on a week long detox (that’s obviously a joke, I’m really making focaccia).

A holiday always leaves a cook feeling inspired and a  rich squid stew in a restaurant in L’Escala set my mind racing about making my own version, with added pork. Before that experiment though, it was time to get some practice in the ways of a traditional Catalan stew.

The beginning  is a sofrito – tomato sauce cooked long and slow to develop character and sweetness. I cheated on this and used a jar I had from Brindisa because, well, I had it. In this I simmered some squid pieces until tender. For my white fish, I scored a bargain on some monkfish cheeks at Moxon’s in East Dulwich. I asked for the cheapest firm white fish in the shop and that’s what he produced – big meaty chunks at a fraction of the price of the tail (I got 300g for a few quid). On the shellfish front, I dropped in a giant prawn per person and then clack, clack, clack as I stirred in some fiercely barnacled mussels.

At the end the stew is thickened with a picada – a mixture of breadcrumbs, garlic and toasted ground almonds. Such a magical combination. The garlic remains punchy yet not raw and the ground nuts enrich the broth, the breadcrumbs swell and thicken. A final squeeze of lemon at the table and a torn hunk of bread for scooping and it’s time to slurp, shell and mop. One of the most complex and delicious dishes I’ve eaten in a very long time.

Catalan style fish stew

300g firm white fish (I used monkfish cheeks), cut into bite size chunks
200g mussels, cleaned and de-bearded
1 giant prawn per person
250g squid, slices into rings and tentacles roughly chopped
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 large onion, sliced
A handful flatleaf parsley, chopped
1 315g jar of sofrito or you can make your own
1 litre fish or vegetable stock

Lemon wedges, to serve
Bread, to serve

For the picada

1 clove garlic, crushed
1 slice dry white bread, made into crumbs
50g almonds, lightly toasted

Begin by sweating your onion in some groundnut or vegetable oil in a heavy based large pan. Cook it on a low heat for 20 minutes at least until the onions are very soft. Add your jar of sofrito plus the stock, paprika and squid and bring to a gentle simmer. Put a lid on and let cook gently for about an hour.

For the picada, pound all the ingredients together in a pestle and mortar until as smooth as possible.

Stir in a couple of tablespoons of the picada just before you add the remaining fish for the final few minutes of cooking. My prawns were very large so I added those for 2 minutes, plus the white fish and mussels for another 3 minutes. Garnish with the parsley and serve with lemon wedges and crusty bread.

You know you’ve had an intense eating experience when mid-way through a meal you wonder if you can actually go on; when your friend decides he can’t and has to leave the table 3 times to be physically sick and then, when it’s over and you’ve made it through, you’ve eaten so much that a button pops off your dress. This is what happened during the 12 course ‘Feast Menu’ at 3 Michelin-starred El Celler de Can Roca in Gerona. The restaurant is run by 3 brothers – Joan (Roca) the savoury chef, Jordi the pastry chef and Josep the somellier. We were booked in for dinner on the last night of our holiday, to make sure we went out with a bang. It was one of the most intense meals of my life.

The earliest dinner sitting is 9pm, very late by British standards but perfectly normal to the Spaniards (we saw a couple sit down to dinner at midnight) and when we arrived the place was dead. The first thing that struck me was the silence. We shifted about nervously, talking in hushed voices. As the place started to fill up though the air came alive with background chatter and the tinkle of glass and cutlery. The recently built space is modern – clean lines, starched white, lots of mirrors but the restaurant’s ethos of being in tune with the surrounding landscape is apparent: a sky-exposed central area is planted with trees and tables dotted with pebbles.

The €115 tasting menu was quickly ditched for the more expensive €145 ‘Feast Menu’, as dishes like ‘baby squids with onion rocks’ and ‘steak tartare with mustard ice cream’ jumped off the page. It was just about do-able, as long as we didn’t drink. One of our party was driving anyway and a fizzy aperitif included in the price kept us happy.

The accompanying ‘snacks’ added up to a course in themselves; ‘caramelised olives’ hung from a bonsai olive tree and kicked off a sweet and salty theme which continued throughout the meal. There were 7 in total but my favourite was a ‘bellini bonbon’ – an ice cold pink sugar sphere which burst instantly in the mouth to release the cocktail or, if you are my friend, burst between your fingers when you tried to pick it up, sending an unflappable waiter back to the kitchen to fetch another.

And so it began. A culinary marathon which was exquisite in places and downright challenging in others. Here are my peaks and troughs:

The bread: the best of it on the sweet and salty theme like my black olive brioche. Not as good as The Ledbury‘s bacon and onion version but I have that on a pedestal. Our first proper course arrived in a clear glass orb; a light smoke enveloped little vegetable cushions concealing pieces of the famous Catalan anchovies beneath. I’ve a lot to say about those anchovies: another post. The dish was light and interesting (although the broth practically flavourless) but things were about to get a lot more intense.

The prawn was the first real challenge. The barely cooked body lay naked, head intact next to a beach of prawn dust, its legs removed and standing to attention. “When you’ve finished the meat, suck the head to extract the flavour” recommended the waiter. We nodded excitedly, having done exactly that at our BBQ two nights previous. This head however, was different – filled with scary bright red and brown gunk, the likes of which I’ve never encountered. We concluded it must have been injected by the chef. Not wanting to wimp out, I picked it up and sucked. Intense shellfish flavour. The most intensely prawny prawn I’ve ever eaten but a dish which would might better served with a blindfold.

Feeling slightly queasy, the Comte, walnut and onion soup came as a relief. The flavours were familiar, but powerfully reduced. Fillet of sole with olive oil emulsions was just great fun. We worked our way from bottom to top as instructed, through each ‘Mediterranean flavour’; camomile was downright weird, pine nut creamy and olive oil topped with a crunchy, miniature caramel-olive-oil bubble.

Baby squids with onion rocks was my favourite savoury course – it’s fair to say I inhaled it. The ‘rock’ was an onion-y seaweed-coloured sponge. With each spoonful the foam swished back and forth in the bowl, picking up pieces of rock and squid like lapping waves. The menu aims to celebrate the local harvest, re-creating features of the surrounding landscape in the presentation – this dish achieved that perfectly.

After this things started to get hairy. I loved the silky, barely-cooked red mullet fillets with lard – they flaked like cooked fish but remained as translucent as if plucked straight from the sea. The surrounding suquet however (Catalan seafood stew) was starting to push me beyond my richness threshold.

Steak tartare, one of my all-time favourite dishes, was more difficult to eat than it should have been, even though the pearls of mustard ice cream were wittily perfect. The spiced puffs on top were superfluous though, and tasted like a Wotsit in development phase. By the time it was finished I felt nauseous but didn’t know why. I looked up to find my companion as white as a sheet. Flagging the waiter down he pleaded, ‘”no more food”, criss-crossing his arms for emphasis. I felt tearful about struggling with the next dish, a lamb and apricot combination, but pulled through, forcing down all but a few scraps and the frankly rather minging milky blob at the side.

As our friend got a little closer than he’d like to the porcelain throne, we gobbled up a reviving lemon dessert. “It’s the evolution of lemon sorbet” said the waiter but it was more than that, bringing me back as it did from the brink of defeat. A whipped icy puff soothed my tired, overstimulated palate and increasingly lemony components refreshed with life-saving waves of citrus flavour.

The desserts proved to be the best courses of the evening, and that’s coming from someone with a firm savoury preference (ice cream excepted). A rose soufflé was a sugar-cased tower topped with violet dust that was old-school sweet shop with none of the old-lady-soapy. Perfectly sweet wild strawberries lay beneath.

Our final dessert was a black Tahitian vanilla ice cream with a mixture of vanilla, caramel, liquorice and black olives; an odd combination of miniature pieces of various textures, which together were supposed to taste like the flavour of the ice cream. They didn’t, but were fun nonetheless. The ice cream was perfect with such a complex vanilla flavour. Some of the best I’ve ever tasted. Petit fours were great too, the marshmallows almost fizzing on the tongue.

Tasting menus can be really hard work. Eating 12 courses of very intense, rich food late at night is taxing for the digestive system. We sat down at 9 and left gone midnight. Our only other main complaint was the chairs. How a restaurant offering a menu that takes over 3 hours to consume can make chairs so fiercely uncomfortable baffles me. The back was the wrong height, the seat the wrong length, the whole thing under-cushioned. We shifted from bum cheek to bum cheek to get some relief. Speaking of bum cheeks, our charming and efficient waiter (who spoke excellent English) managed to cushion his up against me no less than three times as he moved around the tables. This was simply hilarious rather than annoying.

As I let out a huge sigh of relief mixed with satisfaction once the meal was over there was an audible ‘pop!’ – I had burst out of my dress through sheer over-consumption. I’d like to say I was embarrassed but I just felt pride at my own stamina.

There were moments of true brilliance at El Celler de Can Roca; it was a rollercoaster of excitement, confusion, fun, relief and truly amazing cooking. I had a blast, I’d do it again and it’s definitely worth the money. It’s also a hell of a lot easier to get a table here than at El Bulli and according to my friend, there are many similarities. I just wish the whole thing had been a bit more comfortable.

El Celler de Can Roca
Carrer Can Sunyer, 46
17007 Girona
Spain
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