Sanlucar de Barrameda

[clb]

Adam, did you take any pictures of what you made with all those sausages? And what did you do with the fennel/sugar biscuits?

clb

[Adam Balic]

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.

Edited June 5, 2005 by Adam Balic (log)

[Adam Balic]

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

[clb]

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

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Yes, there's a shop at the end of my road which sells them, and when I buy them they are indeed eaten morning, noon and night - but not by me.

That dinner sounds amazing - do I take it your friends have got slightly more adventurous in their tastes over the last few years?

clb

[Adam Balic]

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.

[clb]

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.

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[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?

[Adam Balic]

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.

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After 16 months or so I visited Sanlucar again last week. Essentially, it was a very similar relaxing week, but a couple of points from the last trip are worth addressing.

The deep fried sea anemones are shown here as they are sold at the market. From this I would guess that they are the type known as "Snake-lock" anemomes in english.

The shrimp for the tortilla were sold by individual ladies in the alley leading up to the market entrance. I saw no evidence that they were sold within the market itself, so maybe catching and selling these is a very small scale enterprise? You can see the shrimp being sold here on the right.

The shrimp themselves are tiny (2-3 cm) and I thought that they may be larval stages of some large shrimp that are common in the area. However, on close examination, so of them did appear to be have eggs, so prehaps some of them are adult stage at least.

Edited September 18, 2006 by Adam Balic (log)

[Alvaro]

The shrimp are adult stages of Palaemon Longirostris (locally known as "camarones").