Donostia. A Fiesta of Pescado

A foodist holiday in North-West Spain is a mixed bag. Ours steered clear of the posh places, which, I expect, run the full spectrum from simply wonderful to should-have-been-a-lot-more-bloody-wonderful. One day we’ll go to a crazy, fancy, Basque food-cathedral gaff, but it’s not really what excites me: I’m too stingy. On other trips we’ve been initially wowed, only to be largely let down. Spanish food’s supposed to be cool and interesting isn’t it? The ham is amazing, even the cheap stuff’s really good. Tortilla, the heroic spuddy omelette-cum national crutch, is probably my all time bestestever sandwich filling (especially with a bit of jamón on the side) – but I had to come to Spain to realise it could also be shite. Bocadillo de lomo*! Om nom nom!!! Maybe that’s my favourite... Salt cod is great, hake is great. Any of these things done well, on their own or combined, will make my day. But not every day. Why is it so hard to find vegetables? Pimientos de padron doesn’t redress the balance – fried mini green peppers are tasty, with a little crunch from rock salt sprinkled on top. All good stuff, but where’s the salad, hombre? I want a radish. I’m pining for broccoli, for fuck’s sake...**

With this in mind we booked self-catering in San Sebastián. We would still eat pintxos (the Basque tapas, pronounced ‘pinchos’) and drink beer and have fun, but when we got back to base we could have some carrots.

The pintxo bars† were what brought us here. Last year we’d spent the afternoon, and had to drive home after only two little beers and a fantastic plate of pulpo gallega (octopus with olive oil and paprika). The temptation was to stay and drink and eat – and walk back to France... Instead we promised to return. 

The Basques call it Donostia (which, surprisingly, also translates as Saint Sebastian). It’s rather a grand, sophisticated place with an old town, a new town and three spectacular beaches, but also a vague scruffiness that we are always struck by when entering Spain from France††. I quite like a bit of scruff, mind you. We headed straight out to the old town to fill ourselves with ham, eggs, spuds, salt cod, grease, bread and beer!

A good night. I wanted to check out the fish market so at the end of a very lazy morning we bimbled into the Bretxa food hall. It was still very busy and the fish stalls were predictably great. There were exclusively whole fish on display. They were prepared to order by fishmongers wielding big curvy cutlass-type knives. I surprised myself by recognising most of the fish: bass, bream, maigre, pollack, cod, herring‡, mackerel, monkfish, dover sole, lemon sole, brown gurnard and, my favourite, weever. And hake, hake, hake. They were all buying hake.

All the stalls were exceptional (and dirt cheap) by my standards, but the one that held my attention was like an art installation‡‡. It didn’t have the most spectacular display, there was no snaking queue – the fish looked top notch and it was displayed simply and prettily, but the guy at work behind the counter was mesmeric. I must have peered at the gliding and flicking of his knife for half an hour before I realised I ought to have taken a ticket to be in the queue.  I took one and continued to stare, transfixed. He was a magician: relaxed, unhurried, deliberate, smooth, delicate but effortless. While I watched he must have prepared five hake in exactly the same way, all perfectly portioned and placed ready to be wrapped up for his discerning customers. He was very cool. I think he’s my new hero... When my turn came I hadn’t even decided what to buy. I got what the man before me got (to go with his hake). I thought it was a fresh herring. I’ve only just found out it wasn’t. I also bought raw prawns and a few fancy-looking clams. ¡Gracias señor! Brilliant! Grab some incredibly lovely ham and salchichon, don’t forget the veg, find Dot (by now, almost suicidal), and off home for a luncheon feast! Via a swift cerveza of course!

Scad, or horse mackerel (with broccoli!). Weever cevice. Yum and Yum!

Hake 'bianco', with paprika - so 'rojo'

Merluza con salsa verde - hake in parsley sauce.

*Thin boneless pork loin chops slapped in the middle of a baguette. I don’t particularly like the red stuff that has been marinated in paprika and garlic. Fresh and plain is where it’s at – grilled with plenty of salt and perhaps a squeeze of lemon. Don’t overcook it and let it rest in the bread so that you keep all the juices! Om nom nom indeed!  God, i’m starving...

** Broccoli’s for girls. Not purple sprouting – that’s for winners and kings!

† Check out the link for a very informative and useful list of pintxo place recommendations. Don’t be a slave to recommendations, though. Follow your nose and try lots of places. You don’t have to stay if it’s not up to much... You might end up getting a little drunk, mind.

†† The cake shops are an interesting example of this. Go to a patisserie in France and then into one in Spain. You’ll see what I mean.

‡ However, a bit of internet research, and the herring that I bought turns into a ‘horse mackerel’, or scad. Oh well. Serves me right for allowing myself to feel clever...

‡‡ Not in the boring and pointless sense. Although, perhaps Dot wouldn’t agree...   

Woke up this mornin...

Emptiness has come into my life. I saw it coming. Maybe for the rest of the world it’s been over for years, but I kept my head in the clouds – I’m pleased I managed to... But what do I do now?

We’ve just watched the final episode of The Sopranos on DVD.  A bittersweet moment... the end of an era. Tony Soprano will be forever linked to the South West of France. Perhaps we should give French telly another go*... But, then again, this year Father Christmas brought me the first series of The Wire. How did he know?

The Marché Victor Hugo in Toulouse is reckoned to be among the best in Europe. This was our second visit, on a rare Saturday off. On the back of last year’s experience**, we got a room for the night: on a trip like this, lunch should flow into dinner via little more than a digestif, a snooze and an aperitif...

The market is worth celebrating. It heaves with people and produce. Under one giant, unbeautiful roof, traders group according to speciality: cheese; poultry; piggy stuff – mountains of rillettes, anaconda coils of Toulouse sausage, teams of suspended hams; piles of lamb; great slabs of cow; a whole section of bibbly-bobbly offally bits; and a collection of the most abundant and varied fish counters I’ve ever seen. Abundance is the key word – a hangar-sized cornucopia of fresh, good stuff. Sensibly, there are a number of small bars scattered around the edge of the hall for those who encounter bewilderment in the face of so much shopping, and need a moment to restore equilibrium. We bimbled about, gazed at the buxom displays, intimidated by the opulence, and by the business. Trying not to dribble.

All photos are click-on-able, if you want to get a better look.

A bee-line for the fish. It way surpasses anything we can get in our local market (which, in turn, way surpasses most English fish stalls). We joined a vaguely orderly queue and struggled to decide what to buy: 

Rascasse (Scorpionfish), Lemon Sole, Red Bream

un comme ça... 










un comme ça,











deux comme ça...




Merci. Brilliant! Now bring on the most expensive ham we’ve ever tasted!

100g cost 22 quid! But by crikey it was worth it. Jamon Ibérico Pata Negra de Bellota, 36 months maturation. The guy carved it by hand in front of us and advised us to serve it on a slightly warm plate. We had a bit of a chat, agreed to perform a small personal errand, and he spoilt us with 20g lobbo for our troubles! Glad to be of service! We’ll be back...

All this bustle is thirsty work and the bars were calling, but it was lunchtime already and we were holding out for something more substantial.

The entrance; the b&w photo at
the top of my blog was
taken inside here.

Lunch is served in a corridor of buzzing, interconnected joints which runs the length of the first floor of the market hall. You reach it via a grotty stairway in one corner – perhaps a ploy to keep the tourists out. It’s jam-packed with locals, and it rocks your socks off! There are four or five places, each specialising in a particular market product. Last time we had beef; this time we went for fish. We ate a simple, fresh lunch of grilled bream. Razor clams to start and a chocolate mousse at the end, with a fruity white to relax us into the noisy atmosphere. A proper French lunch.

Next, we planned to revisit a bar that we’d liked last time – but post-lunch sleepiness paired with a flair for getting lost had us on a tour of town. Toulouse is a mixed bag of scruffiness and grandeur; they seem to be doing the place up, but perhaps they’re too skint (or can’t be arsed) to finish. It was a pleasant change from small-town life, though: self-confident, friendly, multicultural and busy. We had a nice time. Eventually, I admitted defeat and we asked for directions. The couple we spoke to had never heard of the place but found it for us on a much posher phone than ours and our feet were saved.  (This was one of a number of examples of friendliness we encountered. Earlier, a lady led us right across town so we could find the market. Then she pottered off back the way we’d come: she wasn’t in a rush, she said!)

The place we had been prepared to struggle to find is called Au Père Louis – brought to our attention by Rick Stein in his FrenchOdyssey series†.  It’s a tiny wine bar with an on-the-face-of-it grumpy old barman, who was actually rather jolly. Perhaps he became jolly as we stayed in his bar grazing on a plate of delicate ham and drinking an enthusiastic quantity of Côtes du Rhône and Quinquina†† before we decided we needed a kebab.

We’d stumbled across O’Saj earlier and I’d had half a mind on it since. It’s a kebab shop with cookers shaped like big bin lids. Who wouldn’t be intrigued? It turns out the bin lid itself is the saj, a Lebanese flatbread griddle – like an inside-out tandoor. Bread dough rolled thin is slapped onto the surface, a filling spread on top like a pizza, and it all cooks from just one side. It was folded up, wrapped in a hankie and presented to us. Our lamb farce, scented with coriander and friends‡, was delicately cooked by the heat coming through the bread. Crunchy, chewy, fresh and spicy, a very sophisticated kebab.  We tried another, this time the simplest filling – just zataar. Now, I actually knew what this was thanks to the Moro books – a paste of olive oil, thyme, sesame and sumac‡‡ – but I’d never tried it. The first bite was weird; the second had me hooked – sour, scenty, dry and sweet. In that order. Complicated and good. Grown-up food for people who like eating.

The cushion is used to thwack the bread onto the saj. Great stuff!

We’d intended to eat on a park bench, but the staff were so friendly we ended up munching at the counter, chatting to the boys about food and music. And then we ordered the second one! Haha! Good times...

* No.

** Yup, very rare.

† In fact, old Rick’s researchers did us proud – the market and the restaurant upstairs are also mentioned. Splendid work Rick! He makes great programmes.

†† A sweet, bitter wine with quinine

‡ Erm... cumin? Sumac‡‡? Maybe a bit of fenugreek? We’d been drinking...

‡‡ This is a berry that is dried and crushed into a reddish-black powder. It has a lemony, sour taste and is used in middle eastern cooking. Apparently it used to stand in for lemons when they were out of season. It’s worth looking for. It’s lovely.

Dinner!

Ceviche for breakfast?

Day two of the hangover and we need to do something. I always look forward to a fishing trip, although the excitement is diluted by novice-nerves and the goading of rationality, which confidently predicts frustration – but hey, you never know!  

We have lived the dream. On almost my first trip, on the dingle peninsular, west coast of Ireland, we hit gold. My torchlight caught a silver flicker through the frothy shallows. It was an instant of intense adrenaline injection – I hadn’t even been sure there was anything on the line. Incredibly, a fat and most un-stinky fishy thing bounced onto the beach. A seabass! Crikey, crumbs and carruthers! A real one... A big one... And I had caught it! Blimey... It was truly one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life! Dot and I danced about, whooping and laughing in the black deserted bay. The tide had decided we start as the sun was setting, on a craggy wee cove down the road from our cottage. Pleasingly, the darkness had settled and camouflaged the cack-handedness of our efforts. We’d been there less than an hour.  It all seemed so unlikely. So much sea, a little half-dead worm: I’d made bacon stew for when we came back, cold and confused...

Bollocks to bacon stew! We skipped home early – why bother carry on? It was time for a feast!

The tail went for a ceviche starter, leaving two fat steaks, garnished with a bit of my stew. It was one of my Greatest Ever Moments! We got up early for the next high tide and caught two more!! We were the finest fishermen alive!!!

My brother in law is from Peru and a very good cook. He taught me how to make ceviche. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate really fresh fish. It’s dead easy, and (handily for the beach) doesn’t involve any cooking. In Peru they eat it for breakfast and use bass, as I rather smugly did that day. Bream is good too, but gurnard, and, a recent discovery, weever (vive in French) are my personal preference. Fresh-caught mackerel is another winner*.

Whatever your fish, it has to be filleted, skinned and pin-boned, and then chopped into healthy bite-sized pieces. Crush up a scrap of garlic with some salt, season your fish with this and some more salt and pepper, a sprinkle of ground cumin, plus a bit of finely chopped chilli (or cayenne, or piment d’espelette, but fresh and red is best). Give it all a mix and squeeze over the juice of a lemon or lime (not jiff!). Mix again and taste the juice. Add more of any ingredient, if need be, to make it zingy but balanced: sweet, spicy and delicious!

Put the lot on a nice plate and cover with thin slices of red onion or shallots (and celery if you like) and some barely-chopped coriander or parsley leaves (I prefer coriander).

Leave for 5 – 20 mins for the citrus to cook the fish. The fresher the fish, the nicer it is raw, and so the less time you will have to wait! Eat on wintery French beach** with plenty of bread to mop up the juices! Yum!

a memorable breakfast. cooked on driftwood on the beach where it was caught.
I've since been told that it was below the legal size. Ooops! We honestly didn't know...

France hasn’t been so kind. Numerous trips and not a sausage. My utter incompetence is embarrassing. I have no idea what I’m doing and can’t bring myself to advertise this by asking a local fisherman for help. I’m basically hoping for another dose of beginner’s luck...

Hope springs eternal though. Today, as always, my tackle box contains a lemon, a bag of salt and pepper, and some piment d’espelette. Be prepared, innit.

Happy new year! Tight lines...

* Basically, any very fresh fish is good. White and meaty, as a general rule. Mackerel has to be spanking fresh, or it might be a bit stinky...

** Hopefully, one day...

Shocked!