Travels in Spain With Gerry Dawes

28/10/2024

Burgos Revisited, Alubias de Ibeas, Olla Podrida (Rotten Pot Stew) and Vermút at Vermutería Victoria: October 3, 2024

Spain, Gerry Dawes, Spanish food, Spanish wine, Spain travel,

25/10/2024

One of my favorite breakfast and tapas spots on calle San Lorenzo in Burgos.

Jamón Ibérico on pan con tomate (with corsets) at Mesón Los Herreros, Burgos.

Tortilla de patatas with café con leche.

Cojonudos, quail eggs with a link of chorizo on a piece of bread.

Caracoles, snail and Scotch.

25/10/2024

Burgos, October 3, 2024 My first day on the road ended in one of my favorite towns, Burgos.

The food, a late dinner of alubias de Ibeas and rosado at Rincón de España, then a Vermút at Vermutería Victoria, one of Spain's greatest Vermút bars. My friend manager Jorge García helped make it a great stop, as did Ángel Alonso and Javier Pobtones, whom I met at the bar and who kindly invited me to my Vermút.

25/10/2024

Chuletillas de cordero al sarmiento. Baby lamb chops ready for roasting over grapevine cuttings in the merendero (lunch room) at Bodegas Lecea, San Asensio, La Rioja.

25/10/2024

October 3, 2024 My arrival in Spain on this last trip.

Alubias de Ibeas, Rotten Pot Stew and Vermút

Part of my night foray in Burgos, a terrific, historic Spanish provincial capital that I know very well (I published an article on the front page of The New York Times Travel Section in 1993 wrote chapters about it in both The Penguin and Berlitz Travellers Guides to Spain).

This is what I photographed between 10:30 and midnight, with a light dinner, then drinks in a Vermút bar. Photo details later. The food, one of my all-time favorite Spanish dishes alubias de Ibeas at Restaurante Rincón de España (just half a block west of the Cathedral), where this version was billed as coming from the famous olla podrida (rotten pot stew), which means everything from a pig goes into it.

"One day over lunch at Julián de Tolosa, a superb trencherman´s Basque restaurant in Madrid, Ambrosio carefully related the recipe for a great rotten pot stew into my tape recorder, thus preserving for posterity the secret Castilian formula for mainlining pork: "First, an olla podrida should be made with alubias de Ibeas, the little black-red beans that come from around the village of Ibeas east of Burgos and are the best beans in Spain. That is most important.
Then, in a clay stovetop casserole, you slowly cook the beans with a special adobado (marinated) pig foot, a marinated pig’s ear, and pork ribs. The adobo marinade is made with salted water, to which orégano is added or, depending on the area, other spices such as black pepper, bay leaves and Spanish pimentón, paprika, sometimes even pimentón picante, piquant paprika.

The marinade, which gives the olla podrida its strong flavor, also preserves the meat, so it can be left all season in a cool place such as a basement or a cave.

Then you put in some fatty chorizo, the one they call botageño, because it has a higher percentage of fat to lean, and some morcilla, blood sausage."

But there is more. Ambrosio continued, "Once the olla podrida is cooked, you make what we call bolas, made from toasted hard bread that is mixed with some of the pork fat from the stew to make "balls," which are then fried and served on a platter alongside the olla. The meat that was cooked with the beans is served on a separate platter, the beans are also served on a separate dish and guindillas, pickled onions and other pickled vegetables are served as a garnish.

Then all you need is a big appetite."
He then recommended a scandalous precaution, not to be repeated here, for the flatulence he said was sure to ensue from eating rotten pot stew.

I had accompanied Ambrosio and his family to one of these olla podrida pigouts near Ibeas. And he also offered to take me to the mother of all pig festivals at the Virrey Palafox restaurant in El Burgo de Osma in the neighboring province of Soria, where they have multi-course pig meals in February to celebrate the winter hog slaughter.

But now my concern was for Restaurante De Galo, whose chef-owner Galo was the son of the owners of Galín, who were proud of their olla podrida. Just thinking about rotten pot stew conjured up visions of thousands of tiny porkers lumbering through my arteries in pursuit of the Pig Olympics Gold Medal for cardiac arrest."--Excerpt from Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain Volume I.

After my bowl of alubias de Ibeas at Restaurante Rincón de España, I moved a couple of blocks away and I had a Vermút at my favorite Vermutería Victoria, one of Spain's greatest Vermút bars. My friend manager Jorge García helped make it a great stop, as did Ángel Alonso and Javier Pobtones, whom I met at the bar and who kindly invited me to my Vermút.

I even stopped to complement the guy washing down the streets, which reminded me of coming home in my early days in Sevilla, where after a bar crawl I would meander home at 3 a.m. through fresh-washed with the workers still hosing down the streets.
(Photo at Ibeas de Juarros, just east of Burgos on the Camino de Santiago, home to the great little black-red beans of Ibeas and near to discovery of the world's oldest human remains at Atapuerca, July 10, 2023. Ironically, this mural suggests that the primeval man is soon going to add some pilgrim meat to enrich his Ibeas beans stew.)

And one of my favorite bronze statues in Spain, the Chestnut Seller at the end of the Espolón between the Puente de Santa María and the Arco de Santa María.

20/10/2024

San Sebastián Gastronomika opened its 26th edition by re-affirming San Sebastián as the city of cooking and with an emotional tribute to three-star chef San Sebastián Pedro Subijana.

The congress paid tribute to three friends of mine, Pedro Subijana for his more than fifty years of experience, to the oenologist Mariano García for his enormous work in the world of wine and to the journalist Lisa Abend for her contribution to gastronomic journalism.

Gastronomika recognised the work of three gastronomy professionals who, each in their own field, have marked the path of gastronomy. The San Sebastian Gastronomika Tribute Award was presented Pedro Subijana (Akelarre, Donostia) for his more than fifty years in the kitchen. Subijana, in addition to being part of the Founders Committee, has been a speaker at the 25 editions of the Congress. The chef has insisted on his desire to continue working hard, has claimed the importance of knowing how to listen and observe and has confessed that the current team is the best he has had in his 50 years at Akelarre. Loud, clear and emotional he said "I am not thinking of retiring".

The Gueridón de Oro was awarded to Mariano García, oenologist and general manager of Bodegas Mauro, "one of the most influential men in the world of wine in Spain" according to retired chef Hilario Arbelaitz, who presented him with the award.

The Pau Albornà i Torras Gastronomic Journalism Award went to Lisa Abend, an independent American journalist who, from many parts of the world, has been able to detect, and of course communicate, new trends and new values ​​in gastronomy.

Photos by Gerry Dawes

#1 Benjamín Lana, Director General de Vocento Gastronomía and Director of San Sebastián Gastronomika opening the conference.

#2 American writer Lisa Abend, a long-time acquiantance.

#3 One of my best friend--of forty years--Mariano García, Spain's most revered winemaker, former enologist for thirty years at Vega Sicilia and now owner and chief winemaker at Bodegas Mauro and several other properties. I would have lunch with him the following week in Sardón de Duero.

#4 The great chef Pedro Subijana, whom I have known since 1990, when I took Chef Thomas Keller of The French Laundry, Per Se, Bouchon, etc. to meet him and have lunch at his Restaurant Akelarre just outside San Sebastián.

16/10/2024

Continuing my Hemingway research, after previous visits to Sastrería Rufino on Plaza de Herradores 10, just northwest of the Plaza Mayor, across the street on half a block down the hill, I finally met Francisca "Paquita" Izpisua, whom I had missed a couple of previous visits. I wanted to talk to her about La Antigua Casa Botín, at #7 across the plaza, which was almost surely the Restaurante Botín that Ernest Hemingway immortalized in The Sun Also Rises, not the Restaurante Sobrino de Botín on calle Cuchilleros that has long been claimed to be the place.

I talked to Paquita for awhile and she told me she remembered it well and used to go there with family members before the restaurant closed in the earlier 1960s and Sobrino de Botín bought the rights to use the name Botín. Until then, they had been prevented from calling themselves just "Botín" in two previous lawsuits dating back to the the 19th Century.

I photographer Paquita Izpisua with the yellow building at Plaza de Herradores 7 that was the site of the original Antigua Casa Botín (it was the bottom three stories of the yellow building behind her. And in her very classy store, I photographed looking at my book
Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain Volume I.

The slide of the original building when it was la Antigua Casa Botín.

16/10/2024

Yesterday, after my birthday luncheon at Lucio, I kept my 17:30 hair cut appointment with my favorite barber in Madrid, Dani Aguilera, who is from Murcia. Not only does he cut my hair, but we have a hundred laughs while he is doing it. I found him out front of Kinze de Cuchilleros, the oldest barber shop in Madrid. He was on a smoke break--I chastised him! He was entertaining a little girl toddler, clapping Flamenco rhythms. He has now cut my hair four times. I love this guy.

15/10/2024

God, I love breakfast in Madrid at Mallorca, the great pastry shop on calle Serrano. After a harrowing birthday morning returning a goddamn rental car to Atocha station, I finally got breakfast at 13:00 or so at Mallorca.

Great coffee with honey, which I always use to sweeten my café con leche (here really a capuccino). They gave it to me in a ramekin, not a standard package of honey or none at all, as in many places. a big glass of orange juice with ice and my favorite, a crabmeat croissant (yeh, I know it has a lot of surimi, but it is still great). I skipped the tarta de manzana, because I was having lunch at Casa Lucio in less than two hours.

13/10/2024

Plaza del Castillo, Pamplona, Friday night, October 11, 2024. The Windsor Bar is still closed.

12/10/2024

This morning I went for breakfast in Pamplona at El Churrero de Lerín, a churros place on calle Estefeta, with my friend Pedro Mena, who is married to Arantxa Jorajuria Martin, one of the daughters of my old friends the late José Ramón Jorajuria and Paquita Martín, the niece of Juanito Quintana. Later, Pedro took me on a walking tour of the old quarter of Pamplona, including some of the streets the formed the Jewish quarter of the city.

12/10/2024

With Mikel Lacoma and Laura Lacalle and other friends from Tudela and Pamplona en su sociedad gastronomica en el Casino de Pamplona hoy para comer. Mikel Lacoma with is brother Eduardo, who did the cooking.

12/10/2024

Amongst the greatest restaurants in northern Spain, Restaurante Europa in Pamplona is headed by one of the best chefs in the country, Pilar Idoate, whose cooking is based on traditional dishes that have been modernized without ever losing the essence of the original flavors of the dishes. Her albóndigas, meatballs topped with a shaved black truffle, are still among the best I have ever eaten.

Pilar´s pochas, served with a side of piparras-guindillas verdes, are among the very best. I have had them often and have been in the kitchen when she is separating them from their hulls. I had them again last night.

I also had arroz meloso con chipriones y habitas, an exceptional dish of risotto-consistency rice with two small squid bodies and their tentacles, served with a thin shrimp-flavored disk with a whole small edible quisqilla shrimp embedded in it, a mini tortillita de camarón.

12/10/2024

"Take a photo with Hemingway: Order a Hemingway Daquirri and enjoy a memorable moment with the iconic writer," Bar Rincón de Hemingway, Café Iruña, Pamplona (Navarra).

Wonder what Don Ernesto would think about this? Hey, you want to be immortal. Sometimes this goes with the territory.

11/10/2024

Ernest Hemingway, mano a mano, Rincón de Hemingway, Café Iruña, Pamplona. Photo by Gerry Dawes copyright 2024.

10/10/2024

Felipe Andia "El Maño" sang a couple of jotas de la Rioja for me in Bar José Luís in Tudela. This is the second.

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10/10/2024

Felipe Andia "El Maño" sang a couple of jotas de la Rioja for me in Bar José Luís in Tudela. This is the first.

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10/10/2024

I love fandangos, an Andalucian Flamenco song from the province of Huelva. Felipe Andia "El Maño" sang one for me in the first bar in Tudela.

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