Spanish breakfast

Recently I went on a day trip to the countryside with a bunch of people. The meeting place was across town and I timed my arrival so that I could there walk from my house and grab breakfast en route. I did not know the area where we were meeting particularly well but I was sure there’d be a bar humming with a breakfast crowd in the vicinity. This hypothesis rarely fails, so when I finished eating and met the rest of the group and told them, a bit giddy with caffeine and warm, fried dough, that I’d just had breakfast in the bar on the corner, one, a madrileño said, “Ahhhhh, Espanish breakfast.” Yes, I said, I love it.

The practice goes back to my early days in Madrid. I might have been initiated in the Spanish breakfast by an American friend who’d lived in Spain longer than I and relished the tradition of a café con leche with whatever light, sweet fare was on offer in the midst of noisy locals and rushed barmen. Back then I didn’t even drink coffee, but I knew that when my parents first came to visit, in 2006, I’d have to find a spot to get them their caffeine fix first thing in the morning. Enter Herza. From then on, there was no looking back; it didn’t become a daily routine, but an eagerly awaited treat for out-of-town visitors or early morning meetings.

I should admit that I am a breakfast lover in general, which makes my love for the Spanish breakfast somewhat confounding. I was raised on hearty breakfasts—not bacon and eggs, but hot and cold cereal, weekends of pancakes or waffles, or bagels with cream cheese. The Spanish breakfast is simple and, like many tasty things, without great nutritional value. Kids grow up on Cola Cao and galletas María. In bars, you can get coffee with a bollo (breakfast pastry) or tostada (toast) for anywhere between two and two-and-a-half euros. In Madrid, it’s especially common to have churros or porras with your café. Pastries are so-so, the toast is white bread, and I have a theory that people eat their croissants a la plancha because they’re generally not that good plain. But Spanish breakfast has its gracia. What I’ve grown to like most about it is the functionality: for most, it’s not a special treat, just something that one does every day to get things going.

And now, unlike back in the day, we don’t have to have our breakfast and smoke a pack simultaneously. The Spanish breakfast has only improved with the prohibition of smoking in bars and restaurants. On my bike commute there are three breakfast spots that I picked out while riding by in the first several weeks. Now I’ve tried them all and every couple weeks I stop by one to engage in what’s becoming something of a tradition.

Last Friday at Bar Rubí (corner of Castelló and Diego de León), a tiny elderly woman walked in around 7:30 and the barman immediately set upon preparing her order, but she corrected him, “I’m going to have my tostada for the first course, and the churros as the second.” Now that’s a Spanish breakfast.

Fall

It took the seasons a while to work things out, but summer has finally given way to fall. The rain started on Sunday and has held the upper hand since the week began. Like Leftbanker, I started wearing pants again.

Two notable things have happened since fall really took hold. First, the bad news: on Sunday our flat was broken into and the thieves absconded with my year-old MacBook Pro and my iPod Touch. They got in through a window, and though they hardly touched anything (nary a drawer was opened), they left two dirty handprints on the wall above the window. So the forensic police showed up with their fingerprint dust and everything. I suppose it was a matter of time before something like this happened.

Second, the good news: I wore out the rear brake pads on my bicycle. It’s been two months of minimum 20-kilometer weekday rides to and from work and around town on the new Fahrrad, and today I did those kilometers through some serious rain. My intention was not to ride to work on the days it’s raining when I get up, but this morning it wasn’t; it started raining as soon as I got to the corner where I begin my ride. I was already geared up so I went for it, which I regretted only for the feeling of water-logged denim against my thighs.

On the way back I noticed that my rear brakes didn’t really brake and that I could pull the lever right to the handlebar. Upon investigation it seemed the pads were sort of melting away against the rim. A combination of impatience and lack of time led me to Calmera, where they informed [bicycle-maintenance novice] me that the pads were worn away completely. The female clerk was so impressed by my daily kilometer count that she punched the numbers into a calculator to see how many it had been in two months: “1000 km! That’s like riding to Valencia and back at least once!”

Why the end of summer isn’t so bad

And that was just the top layer. Underneath were eggplants, zucchini, onions, baby potatoes, and apples. Via Recapte.

El Midi

Rarely have I spent as much time admiring a peak as I have the Midi d’Ossau. I’ve walked past it, all the way around it, and gazed upon it from virtually all of the points on a compass. Though it’s just over 100 meters shy of the Pyrenean standard 3000-meter mark, it’s an iconic peak because its distinctive rocky mass is visible from so many places and doesn’t have to compete with any other giants in the vicinity. The Midi stands alone.

Last weekend some friends and I finally set out to conquer it. After my experiences with Almanzor, I wasn’t sure we’d make the summit on the first go, but I figured we’d give it a try.

September is a lovely month for mountain climbing. In fact, last September we finally did climb Almanzor (no issues there without snow), and the Midi also proved to be no problem at all, apart from the crowds of people we were climbing with. It is advisable to rappel down the three chimneys you find at the start of the ascent (and some people roped up them), and you have to wear a helmet because there are some serious rocks that fall from time to time, but it is nowhere near as vertiginous as the Gran Facha, for example.

Here are some different views of the peak from my wanderings in the Pyrenees. This one’s from the Col de Peyreget, directly south of the peak and so close it’s nearly unrecognizable.

You might have to strain a bit to see this one, but it’s the highest peak here among these May snow-covered mountains, and looks a bit like a camel’s hump

Here’s the first view we had of the Pic du Midi on the HRP in 2010, from the Col des Moines, which is just beyond Astun.

Later that day we climbed up the Pic d’Ayous to get a better view of the Midi through the drifting cloud.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the view we had from our campsite on Lac Gentau, near the Refuge d’Ayous, the next morning.

Then we continued east on the HRP and looked back on a new view of the peak.

Last summer I got yet another perspective on the Midi from the Ibones de Anayet.

We spent a long day finally climbing it, and the sun had gone as we hiked out to the van last weekend, but we kept looking back at it.

Mountains, part II

The Pyrenees are so big and have played such an important part in my Spanish mountain education that they deserve their own post. I’ve spent a lot of time in this great mountain range, crossing between France and Spain, meeting all sorts of livestock and humans in the hills and valleys along the way. Here’s a bit of a tour from west to east, along the length of the Pyrenees that I’ve walked.

This summer my sister and I walked part of the HRP through the Navarran Pyrenees, where the impressive Pic d’Orhy was our first obstacle.

Mornings in the Pyrenees are magic. Especially when you’re camped next to a spring, like we were at the Source de Marmitou, just over the French border near Lescun.

My first trip to the Pyrenees, in 2007, led us to the spectacular Ibón de Acherito.

I’ve gazed upon the Midi d’Ossau from many angles and it’s striking any way you look at it. This summer we saw it from the Ibones de Anayet, just west of the Formigal ski station.

Crossing the rocks pictured here with no trail to speak of and high above the valley below was frightening and exhilarating,

but the view from the pass we reached (the impressively steep and narrow Port du Lavedan) over the Ibones de Arriel and south into Spain was definitely worth it.

Near the Col de la Fache, below the pyramid-shaped Grande Fache (Gran Facha), you can find snow and ice above a crystal clear ibon well into August.

The Gran Facha is a 350-meter exposed scramble from the col to the top. The views from the summit are amazing, though at the time I was concerned about making it down safely.

Vignemale is probably the coolest mountain I’ve seen in the Pyrenees. The day we were there in August 2010 there had been a helicopter hovering nearby. ‘Dropping food off at the hut?’ we asked a park employee. No, he explained grimly. It was looking for the body of a climber who had fallen into a crevasse in April.

The views from Monte Perdido are spectacular: this is the Lago Helado and the Cilindro (and the procession of people heading up the mountain).

And here’s Perdido itself, part of one of the two Spanish national parks in the Pyrenees, Ordesa.

Without cows, sheep, and shepherds the Pyrenees wouldn’t be the Pyrenees. This is the Cirque d’Estaubé, just east of Gavarnie.

The other Spanish national park in the Pyrenees is Aigüestortes, home to the eerie peaks of Els Encantats.

From Mont Roig, a peak in Catalunya near the end of our walk on the HRP two summers ago, we had this view back at the snow-covered mountains of Maladeta Massif, many kilometers away.

This journey is to be continued.

Mountains, part I

I don’t post about all the mountain adventures I go on. That would be a very time-consuming activity. Though I suppose thinking about all the posts I would write is also fairly time-consuming. I’ve decided to just give a bit of a photographic tour of Spain’s amazing mountains. Here goes:

Madrid’s got some pretty great mountains just an hour from the city center. Here’s one from my first trip to la Pedriza way back in January 2006.

I always go back to la Pedriza. This year I was there just after a snowfall.

Peñalara is Madrid’s highest peak and this year we attacked it from the north, and found some good ice near the summit after trudging through lots of deep snow.

I still haven’t walked the entire cuerda larga, but I like taking pictures of it. It’s at its best when it’s snow covered.

Summer is a good time to get to Madrid’s sierra, too, though. Too bad swimming in the lakes on Peñalara is totally prohibited.

Mountains get a little wilder to the west of Madrid. Gredos is pretty stunning and is home to the highest peak in the Sistema Central. I don’t get tired of the view of the cirque, with Almanzor standing tall in the middle.

Close to the summit of Almanzor you get to places that look like this, overlooking the so-called canales oscuras.

Rarely have I been so grateful for the sunrise as I was on this morning in a valley in Gredos where we’d had some problems the day before.

To the east of Madrid, the mountains aren’t too shabby either. The view from Ocejón over Guadalajara is pretty nice.

And in winter the mountains there are a lot of fun, too.

The Basque Country has got some nice peaks

as does the oft-overlooked Montaña Palentina. Beware of hunters, though.

Just north of where that photo was taken, you come across the spectacularly sculpted Picos de Europa.

And the Pyrenees? Oh yes. They’re coming. In their own post.

September

For those of us who work in education, September is like New Year’s. Without the hangover, of course. Or the cold. In fact, September is one of the nicest months around in terms of weather. And Madrid is still delightfully sleepy, not quite woken up from its long summer siesta. It’s a lovely time to cycle around the city—the weather’s good, but not as hot as summer, in the morning and the evening there’s a refreshing chill in the air, and the streets haven’t quite regained their habitual chaos.

I spent some of the summer in Berlin, and came back to Madrid with a new bici. That was pretty exciting. I’d been thinking about a new bike for a while, and I fell in love with the ones at a shop near my language school. The bicycle is a joy to ride: it’s a trekking model, has an 8-gear internal hub, internal dynamo, fenders… It’s a great commuting bike and should do the job for weekend jaunts to the countryside, too.

The first thing I did before taking it out in Madrid, however, was buy a good second lock. I already use an OnGuard Bulldog DT, which is a reasonably priced U-lock with an extra cable, and I’m happy with it, despite the plastic covering the crossbar falling completely off within the first months of use. After reading some lock strategy, including that of Sheldon Brown, I decided I needed another type of lock that wasn’t a U and not a cable, because cable locks are so easily defeated. I looked in the States, and found a lot of U-locks and huge chains, neither of which appealed to me. So when I got back to Madrid, I headed to Otero, and without any hesitation was recommended this Abus bad boy, which is supposedly one of the toughest on the market. I feel pretty good leaving my bike for the day with two locks on it, but I suppose if someone’s determined enough, any lock can be broken.

Now the problem is how to fit both bikes in our small apartment (thankfully, my flatmate’s been very laidback about it). Happy September, and happy cycling.

Adventures in bike commuting

Two months after the trial run, I started bike commuting. Turns out I needed a little push to finally make it happen, which came in the form of a wholehearted endorsement from a bike commuter friend. Granted there had been a fair amount of rain in March, and in April I was away for half of the month. But on May 3 I said, alright, enough with the excuses: let’s do it. Now it’s been five weeks of riding to work a minimum of three days. This week I went by bike every day. And like anything, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

Aside from a few critical points (usually big intersections or circles), the ride is simple and very pleasant. It takes me an average of 50 minutes to get to Begoña, where I catch the city bus to school, and then 45 minutes to ride back home down all the hills I climbed in the morning. In total it’s about 20 kilometers (roughly 13 miles) round trip. Here’s the route map.

My bike has been performing wonderfully. I’m pretty happy that someone stole my saddle a few months ago—the new one I have is pretty sweet and wasn’t more than 40 euros. Fenders would be a good addition, though I am toying with the idea of getting a new bike when I’m back in the States this summer. But I’ll always have a place in my heart for this bici.

Some thoughts and observations from the commute:

There’s nothing like riding through an empty Retiro Park at 7.30 in the morning.

Even if first I have to ride up this:

Learning the traffic light times and patterns helps a heck of a lot with the trickier spots. If I time this circle right (I have to go left, but cross the whole thing to get there), it’s amazingly easy.

It’s pretty fun to see where you’re headed a few kilometers before actually getting there. Feels like hiking when you can finally see the summit.

Bonus: where you’re headed—even if it’s the Towers of Mordor—looks pretty cool up close.

A testament to the ayuntamiento’s attention to cyclists: the bike parking area near where I park at Begoña has been stripped clean of its steel “U”s and all that’s left is the sign. Sad, really. Guess I should be glad that I’m not locking to something that can be pulled right out of the ground.

Shoutouts to Aalto and MiguelS, my original guides, over at enbicipormadrid.es; Villarramblas for figuring out the route, being my Tuesday morning companion (when he doesn’t oversleep), and making some really awesome cycling maps of Madrid; I. for pushing me to stop bellyaching and just ride; and to the random cyclists I’ve met along the way.

The tortilla story

The tortilla española was a great mystery to me for the first few years I lived in Spain. At first I just couldn’t understand all the hubbub about a thick omelette with potatoes. Later, when I grew to love it, it took me a while to learn how to actually make it. Since it’s something you can count on finding in virtually every bar in the country, I never really made the effort. The prospect of deep-frying all those potatoes and the fact that so many people make good ones seemed to make my learning how to do it rather redundant (see photo below: the amazing tortilla con cebolla confitada at Juana La Loca).

I remember watching my Spanish roommates (most of whom had recently started living away from la cocina de mamá) make their first tortillas in my old flat. Once they had a little practice, they debated the virtues of slicing versus cubing the potatoes, using onion or not, and how to get the salt right. Tortilla-making, I learned, is actually something of a science. I made my first tortilla in that kitchen that had seen many an amateur tortilla maker and it was pretty bad. I had grown up in a household where salt was a no-no because of my father’s health and used little (or no?) salt in the omelette. I also hadn’t used enough oil to fry the potatoes and had sliced them too thick to cook well or to lie flat (see lumpy tortilla above).

Ultimately it was my American roommate in my new “grown up” flat who taught me the secrets of making a good tortilla—four years after my arrival in Madrid. She moved in to our completely unfurnished new place with a key utensil: a heavy, deep pan with rounded sides, almost like a wok, with a good quality non-stick surface (see left). Tortilla lesson number one: the pan is very important. Non-stick is great, and if not, you really need to make sure your pan is well-oiled (we lightly oiled the non-stick).

The way you slice the potatoes is also key. She’d cut them in half lengthwise, and then each half again lengthwise, and then slice them as thinly as possible. The size of the slice doesn’t matter much as long as they’re just really thin. If you’re going to fry the potatoes, you need to make sure to use plenty of oil. Cover the potatoes with it. Yeah, it’s a lot (more on this below) but you can do as the Spaniards do and reuse it. My roomie’s rule of thumb was to use a tablespoon of salt, which taught me not to be afraid of it, though now I don’t use quite that much. Another of her tricks was to cover the tortilla with a plate while it was cooking.

The tortilla I now make is a slight variation of my roommate’s, though she also invented the genius of the variation: boil or steam those thinly sliced potatoes. Eliminates the excess-oil conundrum and, at least to our American palate, you don’t lose too much in taste. And leave the skins on for crying out loud! They’re good for you. Spaniards will call me a heretic, but my Spanish friends love this tortilla. Here’s how I do it:

Tortilla de patata a la Katie (with steamed skin-on potatoes and caramelized onions)

1. Take anywhere from 3-5 medium onions and caramelize them. I use this method, with just the oil and salt.

2. While the onions are working their magic, get your potatoes ready. You need 4 or 5 medium-sized potatoes. I just use the ones that come in my veg box, and I’m not sure what kind they are. Cut them as I explained above: first lengthwise, then again (so you have quarters), and then slice their width as thin as you can. Boil or steam the sliced taters until they’re soft enough that they break when you stick a fork into them (15-20 mins).

3. While you’ve got the veg going on the stove, break four eggs into a large bowl. Add anywhere from a teaspoon to a tablespoon of salt, depending on your preference. Grind some black pepper in there, too, if you fancy. Whisk it all together.

4. Pour your caramelized onions and cooked potatoes into the bowl with the eggs. Stir to mix and let sit while you get your pan ready. Put a little oil on the bottom and get it over medium-high heat. When it’s warmed up a bit, dump the raw tortilla into the pan. Use a spatula to get it all together and then rest a plate over the spatula so that the tortilla is covered (and you can later remove the plate with the help of the spatula). The plate should be the size of the pan if possible.

5. Cook on the first side until you can see that the eggs on the bottom have cooked and you can slide the tortilla around in the bottom of the pan (the top half will still be very raw), about five minutes or so—I usually have time to wash some of the dishes I’ve gotten dirty. Remove the spatula so that the plate rests on the raw top of the tortilla, put a potholder over the plate (it will be very hot!) and flip the pan over the plate in a swift, sure motion (this might take a little practice, but it’s really not hard). Put the pan back on the burner, add a little oil if necessary, and then again, in a swift motion, slide the tortilla (raw side down) back into it. There’ll be a little goo left on the plate, but there shouldn’t be lots of chunks.

6. Cover the cooked side now with a clean plate with a (clean) spatula under it. Cook another 5 minutes or so. You can stick a knife in the middle to check how cooked it is. When it slides freely around the pan when shaken, you’re golden. Flip it onto the plate and let sit a few minutes before serving. Or even better, let it get to room temperature. It’s also really excellent after it’s been refrigerated (mmmm, tortilla leftovers).

Note: the last two photos are of the tortilla I made this afternoon and that inspired me to finally blog again. The green stuff is chopped spring onion greens that I had and threw in with the eggs. And yes, I did eat half of it for lunch.

Lunch epiphany

It was three-thirty in the afternoon on a rainy Monday. I was hungry and in Malasaña with a dear visitor from the States. We’d intended to go to a vegetarian restaurant recommended by a friend, but, it we’d found it shuttered. We weren’t especially tempted by any of the nearby offerings (though there are some good ones), and, all of a sudden I spied a plaid-shirted lad heading into the Hare Krishna center. I’d been by many a time and heard rather vague information about inexpensive vegetarian meals served there. Let’s check it out, I said. And in we went, rather tentatively, though we were soon reassured by the line of people waiting to pay and shiny trays of colorful food they got in exchange. We removed our shoes—no biggie, that’s how it works in my house and at yoga class—and joined the line.

Six euros and ten minutes later we were seated on mats on the floor digging into some delicious, filling vegetarian food (green salad, white beans, vegetable curry and rice, homemade whole-grain bread, and dessert), surrounded by plenty of other relaxed- and content-looking diners. People got seconds, people stayed and chatted, we asked one of the men serving food about the whole thing. Every weekday you can go and eat at 15.15. They sing at 14.45 (just our luck to have come after). Lunch is at 15.00 on Saturday, and on Sunday it’s an evening meal and it’s free. And they sell loaves of their awesome bread for two-and-a-half euros. Totally recommended.