Adam Balic

More market images, this time from the town market in Jerez. As you can see it is a typical 19th century affair. I arrived at 7:30 on saturday morning, but as the market was closed until ~8:30 I had to go an find some breafast for an hour. This is a very late opening market! Mostly the market is dominated by seafood and veg, but there are some good meat stalls: Various sausages, including some I bought and took back to Scotland Mostly chicken, including the unformed eggs from slaughtered hens. Also on the right a block of blood (Not chicken blood?) Kidneys, tongues, hearts, sweetbreads, tails etc. The fish hall Porbeagle sharks The same sharks after a little more cleaning. Shrimp and crab legs A mixed bag, what a pity I couldn't take these back to Edinburgh Tiny Dover sole and hake roes Some beautiful Chub mackerel The veg How great do these peppers look?

Maybe a little so, but I just don't tell them what the ingredients are. It is difficult to sell 'pigs blood and liver, with chunks of fat and stuffed into a large intestine' as yummy.

This is the blend I made a few months ago for a project: Ceylon cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, star anise, tumeric, ginger, allspice, green cardamon, black cardamon, wild fennel, long pepper, rose buds, cloves, grains of paradise, black pepper, chiles, coriander and cumin.

The biscuits were eaten with Oloroso, but I would and have eaten them morning, night and noon just as they are.

Clb - dinner was pretty busy so I didn't take many photos and what were taken were quite unfocused etc. This is one image of some of the meal. What we have here is oxtail stewed with red wine; chickpeas with morcilla (blood sausage with chopped up pig skin, maybe ear?) and butifarra sausage;was and Boronia de rota, which is a stew of pumpkin, squash, quince (or apple in this case), green peppers, tomato and onions. The full menu was: Combinado de Cava an excellent Cava cocktail of cava, rum, sugar, mint and a little lemon. Various sliced sausages and hams, aparagus, salt cured tuna with Manzanilla to drink. Fideus with clams, monkfish and butiffarra Oxtail braised in rioya Boronia de rota Berza de col (cabbage stuffed with the liver morcilla, pork and chickepeas) Chickpeas it morcilla and butifarra Cabbage salad Chickpeas with spinach Leeks gratin (leeks in bechamel, flavoured with cheese and pinenuts, a Sanlucar recipe). Tocino del cielo ("bacon/lard from heaven") and pavlova for dessert with Malaga and Australian fortified Tokay (actually muscadelle) to drink. One advantage to the terrible Scottish weather is that you can cook Med. winter dishes in the summer.

La Cigarrera produce fantastic sherry. Originally I went there because it was next to my hotel, but we quickly reaslised that it had some of the most interesting products in Sanlucar. We drank the Amontillado last night and it was excellent. In fact you could taste a saltiness in it that I had previously associated with the Manzanilla. And yes they are very cheap (too cheap for their own good I should think), four bottles were less then 20 Euro, which is least then the price of a bad Bordeaux.

Last night I cooked a Spanish meal for 11 based on the ingredients that a bought back from this trip. Cooking from a random selection of sausages etc was certainly interesting . I was lucky in that I bought a cookbook titled "La Cocina de ayer y hoy" by the asociacion de Viduas "Luciferi Fanum". This seems to be a collection of recipes based on what people actually eat in Sanlucar which includes both very local recipes and not so local (carrot cake). Was interested to see a recipe for cuscus (couscous), I have not seen this dish in a restuarant in Spain, but it seems it is made in the home (recipe was a variation of 7 veg. couscous and includes Manzanilla).

As I bought a tub of it back to Scotland, I would appreciate any suggestions for its use (within reason).

Black summer truffles (Tuber aestivum) are found in the UK, but unless you have a tried pig or dog, finding them may be a problem. You could contact a mushroom gathering society, but I imagine that they may not pass out the information freely. English truffles N.B. as the truffles are native to England, not sure I agree with the 'spores from France' theory. Who knows though.

Now, I know that snake tastes like fish, but what exactly does sea anemone taste like? Texture? ← The texture was creamy (or mushy in plain speak), they tasted 'of the sea', mild and briney.

Bux - thank you for the kind comments. Apart from Casa Bigote the quay side restuarants were open, and in fact we did have one meal there, but it was very dead (the two of us, a German couple and a lone Frenchman) and I feel that it was such a non-representative meal that it would not be fair to comment. The breakfast fat seemed to be very popular, along with a bright orange fat that looked to me like it is rendered fat from chorizo originally, but I noticed that the meat stall in the market sold in small tubs, which they scooped out of a container that would have held a few litres of fat. So I think that it rendered lard flavoured with pimenton. I think that there are few thing finer for a breakfast in the sun then the olive oil, tomato and bread. In both Spain (Barcelona? It's been a while) and southern Italy I have grated tomato onto a bread rusk and then poured olive oil on this. For some reason I can't taste the 15% alcohol content of manzanilla, just salty deliciousness. At one point I was encouraging winkles, whelks and murex out of their shells with a pin/toothpick and while this was a pain in the arse, the combination of manzanilla and shellfish was perfect. I also think it is very good with sushi, but maybe this is just me. This is my theory: I think the flor element of fino/manzanilla production gives these wines a Umami content that is not found in many other wines. Well this is the explanation I have for why these wines actually stand up to eggplant and tomato dominated dishes that kill most other wines and go so well with seafood.

Recipes would be much appreciated thank you chefzadi.

On a recent trip to southern Spain I sadly didn't get to stuff my self with testicle goodness (the testicles are the pale ovoids on the left. But I did eat fried sea anemones, which apart from snake and spider (killed and cooked 'em me self) is about it for me. Sea anemones and cabbage salad

Rose water is mostly a by-product of distillation for the production of rose oil. A large amount of roses (mostly Rosa damascena I think) are put in a still, when the oil is seperated from the aqueous distillate, you get rose water which still contins soluble oils and volatiles. There are most likely more cottage type ways of producing the product as well.

Salmorejo. Odd to see it here as I had previously only really seen it in Cordoba, but maybe these recipes are not as regional as they once where? Very refreshing and a good foil for the fried food. All in all a nice meal with a couple of bottles of Manzanilla.

Madeira maybe? You can drink loads more of this then Port without ill effect....

Another odd treat. Fiddler crab (Boca in Spanish?) claws. These are the outsized display claws that male fiddler crabs use to pull the ladies. The locals told me that they pull off the claws and the crab is released to live another day (however we noticed that there were 10x more of these crabs on the protected side of the river, compared to the harvested side). They were very good irrespective of this. Dinner Pre-Dinner (so of you may notice another edible treat in the photo).

Also sampled were some of the local clams. The sauce is quite unusual (too me), I have the recipe (still translating it), seems to be burnt onions/garlic with parsley and a wine sauce thickened with flour. The onions are very sweet in Spain, if I tried this dish back in Scotland it would be revolting as by the time the onions had browned, they would be very bitter.

Both a pretty commonly used in some styles of Moroccan tagines. I think that there is even a regional preference for one over the other. Earlier Arabic recipes often used these in meat dishes, so I imagine that the modern recipes reflect this history. Paula has at least one lamb tagine recipes using orange flower water, maybe she could expand on this practice further.

As I mentioned previously, this is the time of the year when the tiny white snails (Theba pisana) seem to be everywhere. Many places don't even mention the word caracoles, just a few spirals of chalk on the blackboard seems to be enough to send a great proportion of the local population into a snail eating frenzy. As mentioned before these snails are cooked with corinader seeds, black pepper, chilli and fennel seeds in mazanilla with a few scraps of onion From what I could determine the snails are in part fed on green fennel also. They are delicious and it is a nice way to kill some time chatting, picking out the flesh with a toothpick and sucking any stubborn bits out of the shell. The broth was delicious, I could drink it alone. One think that was interesting was the amount of discssion on snails and the effort the snail customers were putting into buying the snails. I watched one lady inspect all three snail stalls before making her choice. Considering Britains most lauded restaurant of the moment sells snails as one of its star dishes, I think that it is curious that I have not idea what type of snails they actually use, nor can I remember a critic mentioning this. Are the Apple snails, petit gris, Mendip Wallfish, canned, frozen or fresh? Nobody seems to care the lady selecting her kilo of Theba pisana would not be impressed I think. caracoles

As noted before due to the garbage collection issue, it wasn't really possible to eat at Bajo de Guia in general and Casa Bigote specifically. So all our meals were taken in town at Casa Balbino. Which was a good thing as the food was interesting, the atmosphere good and the staff second to none. I should stress this last point, as really they were very good to me, considering my profound lack of Spanish and how busy they were. Casa Bigote As you can see an interesting, if conventional tapas bar. This is very early in the evening (9:30) and isn't that busy. Later it is packed. Two items I realy wanted to try in Sanlucar where fried sea anemones (ortiguillas) and the famous tortillas de camarones, which are crisp fritters made of tiny shrimp, wheat and chickpea flour. So being an idiot I ordered both at the same time. Delicious, but maybe a little too much fried food at once. Ortiguillas and cabbage salad. The former has not much texture, merely a bite of mild creamy sea flavour. Suprisingly good. Tortillas de camarones. These are about 90% shrimp, which are tiny and cooked with their shells, which flavour the fritter. I saw these shrimp for sale at the market, where they hopped about like fleas. I have seen similar shrimp sold at the Rialto market in Venice, you can tell who has bought them by the rustling sound the shrimp make in the paper cones they are sold in. The tortillas were just fantastic, perfect with salty manzanilla. I felt a little ill after eating so many though.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of self catering, I didn't get a chance to cook with this fantastic fish, but I did make a few purchases: salted pork skin, salted back fat, cuts of ham bones (all for stews etc), chorizo, a tub of red fat and a few spices. As I was interested in how the snails were cooked I bought a few samples of the spice mix sold by the snail ladies. Looks to me to be coriander, black pepper, chilli and fennel seeds: I also bought a bag of the local pimenton, which looked rather different to the version I have seen in the cute little tins and smelt rather different. More rich and fruity maybe. Obviously, the spice seller noted my interest as she gave me some of the dried peppers whole rather then ground. As you can see they are rather different to the pimenton peppers I have seen before, being quite round rather then pointed. The three smaller chilli are the Mexican variety cascabel, as you can see these are a similar shape, but much smaller then Sanlucar chilli on the right. I don't imagine that anybody knows the name of the Andalucian type?

Actually the wife picked it, she noticed others eating it and also the red fat rendered from chorizo (I think, correct me spaniards if I am wrong), spread on toasted rolls. Some days churros are not enough.

Front left to right; Cuttlefish (choco), Monkfish (rape) with liver and houndfish (a small shark, cazon). More cuttlefish, red mullet of a hugh size (up to 35-40 cm) and small sole. Weaver/viper fish. Very pretty. Murex shells and scampi. Murex shells, including this species were used to produce royal purple dye beloved of toffs and royals past. Spider crabs, large prawns, more murex and at the back, tiny squid.

Veg. Meat Fish, fish, fish.. Just a slice of shark please...(actually a Cailon or Porbeagle shark in english. A relative of the Great white, tastes like veal sort of.