pedro

Michael, there was a great thread on confit duck at: Confit Duck There, the methods to confit duck using sous-vide were discussed, among other posts, at: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...ndpost&p=815000 http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...ndpost&p=818069

Santi Santamaría pretty much agrees (see Living Heritage at the Daily Gullet)):

No family member to pick up the legacy, Pedro. So Santiago just decided to retire and close up shop. A frequent tale these days in family-run restaurants. ← I thought that the guy who was in charge of the kitchen was a young member of the family. I guess I was wrong.

Is there such a thing as too much publicity being bad publicity? I mean, people should be aware of what they're going to find when they go to Rafa. Good seafood, some of it being excellent, in a non-descript setting like many other bares around, and a skilfull man with the plancha, reasonable but not cheap prices. Is it the best seafood you can have in the country? Hardly. Is it a nice place where you can enjoy with a good and simple meal? Definitely. In fact, I preferred to go there instead of to the more sophisticated Golondrinas (at least from a cooking point of view) to give my palate a rest of creativity some weeks ago.

Well, I think I owe you more than one lead, Víctor. What's happened to San Mamés? Have they closed or do you mean is not good as it used to?

Here goes a first attempt: Arce, Viridiana, Asturianos, Aldaba, Casa d'a Troya, Betelu, Errota Zar, Gaztelupe, San Mamés, Las Batuecas, Mesón Arturo, Combarro, Sacha, Dantzari, . . . Not all of them are in the same range price, but they've been around for some time and usuallly deliver food that is worth the visit.

Iñaki is in good shape. As he's been since I started visiting his restaurant years ago. Restaurants like Arce, who regularly deliver great food year in year out without much fanfare, of which Madrid has more than a handful, are the gastronomic backbone of a city.

From a dining perspective, I'd say they're not mutually exclusive if your mind is open enough. The problem with going the Adrià way is that besides the enormous amount of talent that is required no matter which route you choose, you require lots of other resources. To name just one: time. My impression is that Adrià's is riskier precisely for that; the environment in which he and his team produce their creations is overlooked.

Pan, I have a hard time imagining Santi using frozen fish. Nonetheless, as Iñaki Camba (chef and co-owner of Arce, which recently appeared in the NYT) pointed out, there are some fishes (i.e. sole) which get better after a short period of aging (3-5 days). They release a large amount of sea water during this period, sea water that would be the only taste they would have if eat them the same day they were caught. The use of technique in Santi's cuisine is a tough subject. For instance, in one of his signature dishes, pork jowl with caviar over a parmentier of potato, the parmentier could be qualified as a foam, being as lighter as any parmentier could get, but I'm quite sure he didn't use any syphon to produce the parmentier. Santi has firm views on what dining should be and the role that technique has to play in cooking (a supporting one). He's not alone in looking at some of the avant-garde wannabes with criticism: other chefs and critics in the country question the foundation of this style which is becoming the mainstream among a certain segment of restaurants. Stay tuned for the next two parts.

I returned the other night with some friends to Antojo. César Rodríguez proved to be in a very good shape and this could have been the best of the meals I've enjoyed there. When a chef starts with his own version of caldillo de perro (dog broth) and sopa de gato (cat soup), combined in the same recipe in the most refreshing way adding some bread with spices, you know that he knows his game. The ravioli of pepitoria hen was excellent as it's always been, so the vieira (scallop) over a cream of chirivías (parsnip). A dish of blood with sweetbreads was received with divided opinions in the table, though I think it was very good. Hopefully, Rogelio will complete the list with the rest of the dishes we had that night. On the whole, having visited Antojo a handful of times, I'd definitely recommend a visit to it.

Well, it looks like there's a pretty good agreement about roast beef losing flavor and taste once it gets cold and you try to reheat it. Which makes me wonder how places like the Dorchester in London manage to have its roast beef always ready. Unless, of course, they discard the leftovers and use them for other purposes.

After exploring the secrets of roast beef following the low temperature-long time method described in Science in the kitchen, we've achieved pretty good results. Problem is, I haven't found an equivalent way of reheating it, that is, a lot is lost when you reheat the beef. Has anyone came up with a proper way of reheating a roast beef without significant lose of taste and flavor?

Corinna, you may want to take a look at: http://www.derecoquinaria.com/fichagrande.asp?ID=5883]http://www.derecoquinaria.com/fichagrande.asp?ID=5883 There's also a French edition: http://www.derecoquinaria.com/fichagrande_eng.asp?ID=5884 The price is the same for the three editions, 99.5€.

You're welcome, Robert. I don't remember which fish dishes we had at Viridiana, Robert. Would you please refresh my memory? Certainly, the pre-salé lamb cooked in two different ways was a remarkable dish by all accounts. PD: This time, Abraham served us a classical gazpacho with no strawberries.

The roads to Roses are fine, highway for the most part of the trip. The only kind of bad part is going from Roses to Cala Montjoi. Personally, I drive better on the return trip back to Roses. The night hides the ravine.

First of all, let me congratulate you for your report. It really makes me want to return to the Basque Country and enjoy its food and all the rest. On the zizas: this is the calocybe gambosa (aka Tricholoma georgii), St. George's mushroom, which also receives the common name of perretxico. I'd say that it's called ziza in Guipuzcoa (Donostia and surroundings) and perretxico in Vizcaya (Bilbao and surroundings), but I'm not totally sure about that. Regarding the indigenous condition of this mushroom, it grows in a number of different regions of the country, including La Rioja and Navarra. Nonetheless, it's one of the most appreciated mushrooms in the Basque Country.

Thanks for your reply, Almass. Yes, you're comparing tomatoes with potatoes. Since when sales figures are a valid indicator of superior gastronomic value? Were such the case, we would have to conclude that Serrano is superior to Ibérico, since the former is sold in much larger quantities no matter which type of store you choose. Naturally, salmon eggs would be superior to caviar. Wait a sec! Perhaps the price has something to do with it!

On wine: get some Sherry, Fino or Manzanilla. Get the most recent bottle you can get. Get some albariño wine which hasn't been aged in oak but in steel deposits. Pazo de Señorans Selección de Añada is wonderful. On the marinade: what about some romesco sauce?

Though the yogurt mention puzzles me, I believe you're looking for ajoblanco, the white gazpacho. One of its many recipes: ajoblanco.

It looks like the teppannitro was perfected. I've tried not to read too much about the menus of this year at elBulli. I hope that by Monday I'll no longer have to carry that burden.

The only sensible way to pay 150€ per person at O'Pazo I can think of is ordering marisco. Lots of them. What do you consider 'minimalist'? I don't consider my disappointing meal by all accounts of last summer at Sant Pau a representative one, given the general recognition achieved by Carme Ruscalleda. Probably they were having a bad day, I was having a bad day, or a combination of both. Nonetheless, I wouldn't go to a "virtuoso modern chef" temple to sample seafood: I go to see what they're up to. Surely, they will have top notch product and they will cook it in the most exquisite ways, no question about it. But if I have an appetite for seafood, I prefer to go to a place where minimal process has been applied to it during its travel from the sea to my plate. Elkano. Sea view? You have the sea in your plate, what else do you need? I'm not particularly fond of fish cooked a la gallega. I believe there are better ways to extract the best qualities of fish, or at least, I enjoy them more. Albeit, charging all Galicia but its most modern chefs with overcooking, and by extension almost every single Galician restaurant in the world, looks like a way too broad statement to me. I'm sorry I didn't answer your question, Saborosa. Let's see if someone more experienced than I on Asturias and Cantabria can give you some hints.

Alida, first of all, welcome to the eGullet Society and its forums. I hope you enjoy it. Second, let me ask you a couple of questions: how long do you plan to stay in Barcelona? will you have a car while in the city? If you don't, would you mind taking a bus or a train for a short ride (let's say an hour or so)? While you answer, I'll add a general comment. Catalonia is one of the regions in the country which has one of the most varied traditional cuisines, with techniques and dishes that date back centuries. The current explosion of creativity, in my opinion, has very much to do with that strong tradition. I would suggest to anyone visiting Catalonia (in fact, anyone visiting Spain) to balance the number of creativity-driven restaurants they go to with more traditional proposals. Doing that, can give you several keys to know where people is coming from, and you'll have more fun when you find references to tradition in creative dishes. For instance, last summer I had a wonderful dish of bacallà (the Catalonian name for bacalao or cod fish) at Can Roca. If you know nothing about Catalonian cooking, what you have is a very good dish of cod fish presented in odd textures. But what Joan Roca was doing was reinterpreting one of the most traditional and extended dishes of Catalonian cooking, escudella i carn d'olla, substituting its traditional ingredients by cod fish in different preparations to resemble them. As I said in the beginning, welcome to the Society! I look forward to your participation in the eG Forums! Pedro PS: escudella i carn d'olla, the Catalonian cocido (I'd say every region of Spain has its own cocido), is tipically a dish of Christmas day. You can find a recipe in here.

Thanks. I know BBR, but Bibendum is new to me.

Tocinillo is, I think, a custard dessert, fairly similar to a flan. And just like flan, there's a thousand variations. Not sure if there's any particular characteristic to it, but hopefully other people in the forum (pedro? victor?) will be able to tell us more. ← I believe Tocino is fat back or uncured bacon. I assume Tocinillo, the custard dessert, more often described as tocinillo de cielo, gets it's name from its heavenly richness. I can't recall how it differs from other custards such as flan. ← Tocinillo is made just with egg yolks, water and sugar, whereas flan needs milk. Regarding its origin, Caius Apicius -- who should be known by the readers of the Digest of Spanish Media Gastronomic Sections compiled weekly by Rogelio -- qualifies the following theory as "se non é vero, é ben trovato": egg whites where used in tremendous amount to clarify Sherries in Jerez de la Frontera. Since there was an equivalent tremendous amount of egg yolks which wasn't used, the wine makers donated them to the nuns of a convent nearby who created this dessert with them.

A friend of mine, Abraham García, chef and owner of Viridiana in Madrid, is going to London next week for the Derby and asked me for advice about wine shops / merchants in the city. He's a wine lover, as his wine list proves, or the fact that he received a call on Tuesday about three bottles of Petrus 89 in Santander and was flying on Wednesday to buy them. He'll be most interested in older vintages of French wines, particularly Burgundy, Rhone, Bordeaux and Loire, though he also has a keen interest in less known Appellations and the wines of the New Wolrd (he mentioned Penfolds). Your help will be most appreciated.