A Sunny Spanish Fairytale

Once upon a time there was an Australian girl who travelled around continental Europe with a backpack, some sturdy shoes, a beaten up copy of Let's Go and a Walkman packed with up to the minute musical compositions by The The, Black Box, Nirvana and New Order. 

By and by she found herself sitting on a bench in Parco Sempione in central Milan, on a cold crisp blue day.   She spent some time wondering whether to visit the Dead Christ by Mantegna in the Brera, her favourite painting in the whole wide world, or perhaps some shopping in the Via Montenapoleone.

In spite of her father's admonition to never speak to strange men, she soon found herself chatting to a young man from Florence, in Milan on a weekend holiday.  They had much in common.  Soon they were travelling a little together, to Livorno,  Pisa and in Florence and walking everywhere in the cool crisp sunshine.  They spoke of books, and the strangeness of language, and philology, the study of historical linguistics and of corruption in Italian politics and the wonderful taste of salty cured meats.

(warm salad of roasted capsicum, onion, garlic and tomatoes)

Like all adventures, it had to end sometime. 

Melbourne seemed very boring and pedestrian on her return. A bit sad and lonely, the girl simply had to go back to Europe, this time to Madrid in winter, where the boy was now living, to stay in a little apartment near Calle de Toledo. The days were spent in the crisp blue coldness wandering around the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and shopping in Calle Serrano and the nights were spent dining at 11 pm, drinking gin and tonics and dancing till the sun came up.

(chicken in onion and sherry sauce, saffron rice)

There is a certain time of year in Melbourne, in August, when the sun shines, and the air is sweet, cold and clean.  It reminds the girl of that time in Madrid.   In memory of that time, the girl sometimes cooks a Spanish feast for lunch.

(sweet lemon doughnuts)

All dishes thanks to this cookbook, which is really growing on me:

The end.


(image (1) via La Femme Blog) 

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My favourite things of the Year Part 2 - Food

Favourite restaurant - Mo Vida, the quintessential Melbourne restaurant and bar, in all its incarnations, including the one (Aqui and Terrazza) which opened opposite work in early November. To understand the significance of this, bear this in mind: when we moved offices 5 years ago, we moved from what is called the Paris End of Collins Street to what is known as the Beirut End of Bourke Street (apologies to all Lebanese people). An area largely bereft of good coffee and anywhere much to eat lunch with a few notable exceptions.

So, to now have Mo Vida so close is excitement itself.

I wrote here about a dinner I had with Mo Vida food and Spanish wine. The new Mo Vida Aqui, an industrial space behind a bank, with views to the Supreme Court, is up to Mo Vida standards.

Having had a many coursed meal there last week, it satisfied all my requirements, including one I barely knew I had, namely for an octopus terrine with smoked paprika and potato salad. Here it is:

Favourite wine - is wine a food? Yeah, sure. The heatwaves last February which led to devastating bushfires in South East Australia had one good outcome - in combination with heavy rain in mid December 2008, an outstanding 2009 riesling vintage.

This is really mostly what I have drunk this year.

Favourite packaged food: Pineapple and vanilla bean jam.

Generally speaking I do not like pineapple. To paraphrase Dr Seuss:

I do not like it in a tin

I do not like it on a pizza

I do not like it in a burger

I do not like it with ham

Not in fruit salad

Not in a muffin

Not on pavlova

Not under upside down cake

Not in a salsa

Not in a pie

I do not like it

One little bit

But this jam, which manages to smooth the sharp spikiness of pineapple with pungent vanilla-eyness, is quite something else. Perfect on toast.

This jam comes from Phllippa's Bakery, a place of such temptations we were compelled this year to buy a coffee machine to avoid our weekend trips there for takeaway coffee, as these visits always involved us also returning home laden with unnecessities like French butter, gingerbread stars, peanut butter biscuits, tomato kasoundi, creme fraiche, costly spiced nuts, raspberry cupcakes, little hand shaped dinner rolls and so on.

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Spanish tasting dinner with Movida food

On Friday night we went to a Spanish wine tasting dinner at Armadale Cellars (their motto 'Life is too short to drink bad wine' - pretty nice I think).

The food was catered by Movida, currently (depending on who you ask) either the best Spanish restaurant in Australia, or the best Spanish restaurant in Melbourne. Pointing out there is not much competition on that front is not meant to belittle the amazing food. And it is amazing.

Here is Movida food (from their website):

Here is 'Movida Next Door' more of a down to earth tapas bar, which they had to open to deal with all the people queuing to get into the restaurant proper. Here is a link to a Sydney food blog which describes in detail his visit to Movida in May 2009.

And this is what we ate (and drank)

Ortiz Anchovy on a crouton with smoked tomato sorbet

'Basa' Verdejo 2007 (this is a lovely fresh crisp white wine we drink in the summer especially at home)

A selection of cured Spanish meats and olives

(the olives were marinated in garlic, olive oil and lemon and orange rind. The meats were serrano and iberico ham and a mild chorizo sausage - note to meat eaters - the pigs which comprise the sausage run around in fields of oak trees and gorge themselves on acorns then eat grass to cleanse their palate).

'LZ" Tempranillo 2007

'Lanzaga' Tempranillo 2006

'Altos de Lanzaga' Tempranillo 2005

Braised beef cheek in Pedro Ximinez served on cauliflower puree (they cook this by leaving it in the oven the night before when service closes - it cooks for 8 hours)

'Dehesa Gago' Tempranillo 2008

'Gago' Tempranillo 2007

'Pago la Jara' Tempranillo 2005

Hand selected Spanish Cheese (these were a hard goats cheese and a soft blue wrapped in vine leaves and their names escape me)

'Molino Real' Moscatel 2005

'MR' Moscatel 2007

I am not a huge red wine drinker and the 6 different tasting glass (plus 3 white) lined up in front of me were somewhat intimidating. The dinner was held in Armadale Cellars' underground brick lined cellar. The wines really were amazing.... I am not going to bang on about the tasting note type stuff (a hint of quince, blackberries and aging very well to a nicely balanced sootiness). I enjoyed the wine regardless.

However, apart from the food and wine I derived the most enjoyment from the progression of the night. At the beginning there were 14 complete strangers sitting around a table politely talking with their partners, a little too scared to say anything to the wine distributor host or ask any remotely controversial questions. But by the end of the night we were all jostling, shouting for attention, loudly critiquing the temperature, taste and cost of the wine.

Could it have been all that lovely warming wine?

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