Mercado de San Miguel and Restaurant Botin

I'm sure I have said it before, but one of my favourite things to do is visit markets. Not only does it give you a great idea of what is fresh, local and in season, but seeing what locals are buying and cooking is a great way to understand the cuisine of a new place. So that's what I decided to do next in Madrid.

I had heard about an old market that had been closed down and renovated to be almost like a food court, but with a great selection of fresh produce to choose from. The Mercado de San Miguel is based on an idea I haven't seen before.


No row upon row of the same thing over and over again, but a spacious area designed for eating and selecting food from one of the specialty providers that surround it.

Mostly there is one of each type of stall, there is a seafood bar selling fresh and cooked seafood.


Another stand sells oysters, priced by size and shucked to order.


Not far away is a deli that sells small rolls with various jamons and other meats for 1 Euro each.


A cheese stall not far away sells samples on bread for 1 Euro each and there are a couple of wine shops selling wine by the glass. This is a great way to put together a lunch full of variety and try several different things.



You then take your plate and find a seat at a table or bench (or wherever you can) and enjoy your food.


For dessert you have a couple of options, there is a cake shop selling some great looking slices of cake and a selection which makes it very hard to make up your mind.


Also, for all my chocolate loving readers, there is a whole shop full of it.


This market is reasonably expensive as far as markets go, but this is more like a combination of a market and a food court which sells incredibly fresh and high quality food.

The next restaurant on my list is, according to Guinness World Records, the oldest operating restaurant in the world. Casa Botin in Madrid has been operating continuously since 1725, almost 300 years. Their specialty is cochinillo asado -Roast Suckling Pig, something I was very much looking forward to.


Walking into the restaurant is almost like walking back in time, they obviously focus very much on keeping the feel of history and tradition alive.


As delicious as that jamon looks, I wasn't here for that. Walking down the stairs into one of the various dining rooms, I had to watch my head on the low ceilings. Looking at the menu, the house menu of Gazpacho, Suckling Pig and Ice cream seemed like the way to go.

The bread and Sangria arrived first.


The gazpacho came out as a bowl of plain, cold soup and the waiter brought around a tray of garnishes to add to it, including cucumber, peppers, tomato and bread.


Bursting with bright, fresh, summer flavours, this was a great cold soup and a delicious was to start a summer dinner in Madrid.

Next came the star of the show, the suckling pig.


Tender, juicy and full of porky goodness, simply prepared in a way that has stood the test of time. No fancy embellishments or showy techniques, just a fantastic, fresh ingredient allowed to speak for itself....and yes, I did eat the tail.

There was also a live band which found their way down the narrow staircase to play and sing during the meal.


For dessert, the menu says dessert is simply "ice cream" and I wasn't expecting much, but whatever was in the chocolate topping they used on it, it was surprisingly good. Unfortunately the photo came out blurry, so I'm not posting it here. Needless to say, I very much enjoyed this meal and if I had more time in Madrid, I wouldn't mind a return visit to try the Roast Baby Lamb or the Baby Squids In Their Own Ink. Another dish on the menu which is worth a mention is the Baby Eels, a traditional Spanish dish of baby eels quickly fried in a small pot of olive oil with garlic and a small dried chili is one of the most expensive side dishes you will see at around 130 Euros per serve. This is apparently due to the rarity of these eels.

Another great day in Madrid and it's not over yet, look out for more updates coming soon.

Tapas Dancing

If there was one country I was looking forward to visiting more than any other, it was Spain. I love eating tapas, being able to try many different things in one meal, especially when travelling is a great way to go. In the limited number of meals you have available to you on a holiday means you never get to try all of the amazing flavours and ingredients that represent a local cuisine, but this style of eating allows you to try much more. Not only that, but it is a great way of dining if you are travelling solo, just find a seat at the bar and chat with the people beside you or the bartender, asking what is good that day or what the dishes of other diners taste like is a great way to try the best food.

Let's start with a trip to the central market of Barcelona. As I walk down La Rambla, navigating my way through crowds of tourists mingled with locals and street performers, I find La Boqueria de St Josep. Right at the entrance, I walk past a shop selling many different versions of jamon - spanish ham. Although to call it ham is probably doing it an injustice. Jamon is one of the most sought after hams in the worlds and attracts prices in the hundreds of dollars per kilo. You can see one in this photo selling for 160 Euro per kilogram.

This amazing meat product is one of the best recognised hams in the world, along with prosciutto. One of the ways to tell a quality product is by looking for marbling of fat within the muscle. As you can se, they are displayed with the hoof still attached.

After that, I walk into the fruit and veg section of the market, stalls piled high with delectable fresh-looking produce.

And even a few that I had never seen before.

The fish section has amazingly fresh looking fish and many of the shellfish on display are sold live.

Apart from all the fabulous fresh produce available, there are several Tapas/Pintxos Bars scattered throughout the market. They serve the amazing fresh food of the market cooked right before your eyes. I had to come back to try two of them, but I'm very glad I did. The first visit was to Pinotxo Bar, right near the entrance of the market and as with all of these bars in the market it is always full and you have to wait around for someone to leave and snag their seat before someone else does.

I sat down and asked for a cerveca and whatever they felt like serving me. They started me off with the mussels.

Bursting with fresh, bright flavours, the salsa really enhanced the briney flavour of the plump mussels.

Next came more shellfish, this time clams. The ones on the left are razor clams which I had never tried before, but they were very nice and I'm sure freshness has a lot to do with how good this tastes. They do very little with it, just a slight dressing, allowing the taste of the ingredients to shine through.

The next dish they served me was baby squid and beans.

This is a very different presentation of squid to what I have normally seen. Usually it has been served with bright, fresh flavours. In this case, the flavour was earthy and savoury, the beans tender. To start with, taste buds were craving for something bright and powerful to give some high notes to this dish, but as I ate more and more, I started enjoy this dish more than I thought possible. I was starting to crave the deep savoury flavour and hated when my bowl was empty. As I was eating this dish, the couple next to me had a plate of stew that looked really nice and when I asked them about it they were very pleased.

Even though they couldn't really communicate in too many words of english, I could tell they wanted me to have some by the way the lady grabbed my fork and gave it back with a heap of the stew on it. I asked for a small portion of this.

The meat was tender and the sauce was delicious, more of those savoury flavours that I am coming to enjoy more and more while in Spain.

The other bar in the market that is well worth a mention is El Quim. I only had two things there, but they were both very nice. To start, I saw a dark sausage and asked for one of those.

This was their version of black pudding,this tasted really mild, with a delicate flavour that was a little nutty.

The second dish, which was the dish I had come here to try, was their fried eggs with baby squid. The eggs are served with a runny yolk and covered in baby squid. The waiter told me to cut up the egg and stir it all together.

The yolk creates a sauce that binds this rich, delicious dish together. Again there are lots of savoury flavours going on here with no bright touch to balance it out, but I'm starting to want that less and less as I eat more of the local cuisine.

There are still a few restaurants to talk about, but you'll have to tune in next time to see more amazing Spanish food.

Modena and Hosteria Giusti

While in Bologna, I had planned to spend a day in Modena, which is about 30km north of Bologna and having heard of a restaurant called Hosteria Giusti I really wanted to try it out. Now, the story with Giusti is one that you need to know about before you can get to it. You really need a reservation, so I tried to book it for my last full day in Bologna, but unfortunately it was booked out (it only has 4 tables), but they had a spot for me on the day I was leaving Italy from Milan. Now Modena is between Bologna and Milan and since my flight was departing at 5:45pm I figured that if I had no trafic problems I could still manage it. I really didn't want to miss out.

I headed to Modena a little earlier so I could take a look around town and wondered into the market, and I'm glad I did. The Modena market is almost at the centre of the town and has some sensational looking produce.


Even though Modena is in the middle of Italy, the fish and seafood look extremely fresh and great quality.


The produce is vibrant and colourful, I'd love to spend hours looking around, but I have a lunch to get to.

Now to get into Giusti, I had to find the Salumeria Giusti, which was closing it's shutters already. They close the shop, like almost all other shops during the afternoon, but you can get in if you have a lunch reservation by knocking on the shutters. After entering this tiny room full of some of the best meats and preserves, I was led through a door at the back into another small room with only four tables. This is the entire restaurant and they only open for lunch. I wanted to try as many dishes as I could, and luckily almost the entire menu is also available in half portions (mezza porzione). For Antipasti, I chose the Baccala Mantecato con pane (Salt cod whipped into a puree with oil, salt and pepper).


This was very nice, the texture was perfect and the flavour was delicate and great for getting the appetite going. For Primi, I tried the Tagliatelle al sugo di Guanciale (Tagiatelle with a sauce made from veal cheeks).

The pasta was perfectly cooked, with just a little bite to it and as you can see, the sauce just sticks to the pasta and the meat was tender and melting. Secondi I decided on the Maialino freddo con cipolle all'Aceto balsamico Stravecchio (cold suckling pig with onions caramelised with balsamic vinegar).


Wow. The suckling pig is first roasted with aromatics and then placed in cold olive oil and left for 10 days. The resulting pork has a texture very similar to tuna preserved in oil, but denser and with a stunning amount of flavour. I was wishing I ordered a full portion rather than a half. The caramelised onions were sticky, sweet and sensational. How could they not be with balsamic from Modena?

At this point, I was very happy with the meal, and starting to get nervous about making the more than two hour drive, but after three amazing courses, I just couldn't leave without dessert. Asking the waitress which was the quickest dessert, I was offered a selection and chose the chocolate mousse. Now many of you may know I am not a big chocolate fan, but I do like dark, bitter chocolate, so when I heard that this was made with dark chocolate I had to try it.

This was a very dense mousse and unfortunately I forgot to ask for a half portion and got the full one instead, but I managed to struggle though and it just the way I like my chocolate, dark and rich with just enough bitterness to cut through the sweetness.

Hosteria Giusti is a dinin experience I would recommend to anyone, the price is on the higher side but worth every cent. Just make sure you book.

Trufflicious

What do you do when you are offered a chance to use a product that you rarely get to work with? In my case I was asked if I wanted to cook for a dinner party using truffles. Of course I said yes and honestly any chance to cook with the produce I had seen at the market in the last few days would have been great, but the truffles were an added bonus.

What do I know about truffles? Not a huge amount. They are a fungus that grows under oak trees, have a strong earthy taste and are usually used in very small quantities (just a few grams per serve). Traditionally they were hunted with pigs who are specially trained to be able to smell them underground, but dogs are used quite a bit now and gave the benefit of not eating the truffles like the pigs sometimes do.

My first thoughts were to do something that really showed off the truffles and something I knew how to do reasonably well. I narrowed it down to pasta or risotto.

Next I had to think about what other ingredients would support the truffles without overpowering them. I decided on bacon as part of the risotto flavour base and pan-seared duck breast which would be sliced and just a few slices used to top each dish – something rich and flavourful to match the earthy taste of the fungus.

I also decided to do a risotto and that I would not prepare a dessert, but would make an appetiser. Thinking back to the market I remembered that there were some great looking zucchini available and decided on an antipasto recipe from Gordon Ramsay, cheese-filled zucchini rolls with pine nuts and basil.

Shopping list in hand, we headed off to the market and my first mission was to find two cheeses, parmesan (for the risotto) and ricotta (for the zucchini rolls). After our third delicatessen we found some Grano Padano parmesan cheese, but ricotta proved impossible so we found a local fresh cheese with a very similar texture and flavour. One thing we couldn’t find was pre-made stock, so I opted for powdered chicken stock rather than making it from scratch (don’t tell anyone though, it’s our little secret).

The next hurdle was the duck; there was none at the market at all. There had definitely been some on our last trip, but they were all out this time. I quickly tried to think of a replacement ingredient, but decided to go with just the bacon risotto instead until we stumbled across these:

Absolutely amazing! Fresh Chanterelle mushrooms! I don’t even know if we can get these in Australia, but I’ve seen them on TV and love their colour. There were also fresh Porcchini and other mushrooms I had never seen before. I bought some of the chanterelles and the main ingredients of the night were complete. Finishing off the shopping trip, we grabbed the rest of the ingredients: Some amazing fresh garlic, onions, thyme, basil, parsley, zucchinis, pine nuts, short grain rice, and lemons.

Let’s move on to the dinner. The first thing I prepared was the zucchini rolls, follow this link to Gordon Ramsay's recipe.

It is important to note that I had several eager (and not-so eager) helpers and my thanks go out to them, it made the whole night go much smoother.

For the risotto, I brought approximately two liters of stock to the boil and turned the heat down to low to keep the stock hot. While this was happening the chanterelles, herbs, garlic, onions and bacon were being chopped.

In a hot pan, I sauteed the chanterrelles in butter with thyme leaves, salt and pepper. The next thing I did was get the bacon into another pot with a little butter and olive oil. I like to leave the bacon in slightly larger pieces because it tends to shrink quite a bit as the fat renders. After the bacon was nice and brown and the kitchen got that amazing fried bacon smell, I added the dices onions and garlic and let them sweat for a while.

Once the onions were nice and soft, I added approximately 2 cups of the rice and stirred until the grains started to become transparent. At this point, I added a cup of dry white wine and let the rice absorb it, stirring all the time. Next I began adding the stock a ladle or two at a time and stirring until the liquid is absorbed.

I added the chanterelles for the last few minutes before the rice was done. Once the risotto was nice and creamy with just a little bite left in the rice, I turned off the heat and added the thinly sliced truffle.

One was enough for six people, so I didn't use both. Once the truffles had time to heat through, I added the grated Parmesan and chopped parsley. Here is the final product.

The result, even if I do say so myself was delicious and if the feedback from the guests was any indication, this was a definite success. If you'd like to try this but don't have access to truffles or chanterelles, you can substitute other mushrooms and I would suggest trying two or three different types.

Next update will be two more Belgrade restaurant reviews, stay tuned to see if they were better than the last one.