Autobombo October

A little bit of press for the new neighborhood.

Why the veg box rocks

A while back I wrote about a friend and my quest to get an organic vegetable box here in Madrid. I thought it might be worthwhile to post a follow-up because both my friend and I are so pleased that we decided to do this. All winter we’ve received boxes of very tasty fresh fruit and vegetables from Recapte and it’s really changed the way both of us eat (and, to some extent, live).

For starters, I’d say that the primary component of most of my meals this year has been vegetables, complemented by a good amount of fruit for dessert or snacks. Secondly, while some vegetables are ready to eat, most take a bit of preparation, which means we have to dedicate more time to getting meals ready and investigating ways to use vegetables that we haven’t cooked with before. I do believe that this is time and energy well-spent. One of the best changes is that I’ve greatly reduced the number of trips I make to the supermarket. In fact, I hardly go. I usually go to NaturaSí for basics like oats, yogurt, rice, and pasta, and to my local panadería for loaves of bread. My cousin taps maple trees in upstate New York and makes syrup, which I always bring back from the States and for the past few months I’ve been using honey from a friend of a friend’s bees and sheep’s cheese from a student’s finca. The time I save by not going to the supermarket is probably reinvested in cooking my vegetables. Fifteen euros a week has really never been more valuable.

All of these experiences were reaffirmed as good things by my reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma last November and really starting to think about where my meals come from. It’s good to care (peanut scare: case in point). By no means do I feed myself the perfect diet, but I think the changes brought on by the box are a step in the right direction.

I leave you with highlights from the veg box, October-February:

– Boniatos (sweet potatoes): easily our favorite product of the fall. Mashed or as oven fries, there’s never been such a vast improvement on the potato.

- Granadas (pomegranates): another fall treat, great in salads and out.

- Calabaza (squash/pumpkin): I turned a big one we got into many cups of purée and made two pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving and froze the rest. Last week I defrosted it and made pumpkin soup and three loaves of pumpkin bread.

- Aguacates (avocados): we’ve been getting the most amazing ones for maybe two months and haven’t tired of them yet.

- Chirivías (parsnips): started appearing sometime in January. Love ‘em roasted!

- Acelgas (Swiss chard): a staple for months now and a green I’ve grown to love, steamed or sautéed.

Giving thanks

My roommates have been asking me to make a Thanksgiving turkey since I arrived in Madrid more than three years ago. But this September some friends made a proposal for the dinner and, mainly since an American friend agreed to brave the Thanksgiving cooking with me, I acquiesced. Needless to say, my roommates were a bit miffed. But they got some leftovers and my practice pumpkin pie.

Spaniards are intrigued by Thanksgiving, probably because it’s at once strangely foreign yet familiar. (If my students are any guide, they appear to get most of their idea of Thanksgiving from films or TV.) But they are also drawn to the holiday because it has a rather universal appeal: eating with those you care about and giving thanks for whatever you feel like, no strings (in the form of religion and/or gifts) attached. Several students threatened to show up at our dinner after I told them everything we were going to cook and the butcher I bought the turkey from was more than happy to be of assistance in our preparation for the big day.

After weeks of planning, inviting, and coordinating, and a solid 12 hours of cooking the day before, Thanksgiving Saturday began with a 9 am trip to the butcher to retrieve the turkey. I watched, eyes bugged out, as he slung the naked 7.5-kilo bird onto his chest for the short trip from fridge to counter, where, at our request, he hacked off the remaining stump of the neck with one swift blow of the cleaver. And he put our dear pava (that’s right, it was a female) in a plastic bag, swiped my debit card, and sent us on our way with wishes for a happy día de acción de gracias.

And about nine hours later, after stuffing our bird and fitting her into the pan, washing and steaming three kilos of Swiss chard, making several kilos of mashed potatoes, improvising gravy, and reheating sweet potatoes, roasted carrots, red cabbage, and broccoli casserole, fourteen people sat around the table and were thankful.

Miyama, or where to get a great Japanese menú del día

If you’ve ever tired of bad menus del día, Spanish food, or ornery waiters, make the next weekday lunch menú you eat at Miyama. While it’s a bit pricier than where I would usually eat lunch, the 18.80 euros are well spent on better-than-normal Japanese food, attentive service, and a pleasant atmosphere. The place tends to fill up, so reservations are recommended. My friend and I were seated on a recent Friday only because we put on our best puppy-dog faces and told the maitre d’ it was a birthday lunch (which was true … just two months late). You can choose between a sushi or sashimi menu, both of which consist of a number of courses. Both my friend and I chose the sushi. Before we received our rolls, we ate a tiny tuna aperitivo with our drinks, followed by a bowl of miso soup, a basket each of vegetable and seafood tempura, and then our 12-piece rolls. To wrap things up, we chose the delicious green tea ice cream.

Organic fruit and veg

After a month in the States this summer eating amazing pesticide-free local fruit and vegetables both in upstate New York and in the D.C. area, I decided I’d try to change the way I eat my greens in Madrid. Neither the CSA model, which has spread like wildfire across the United States and Canada, nor local farmers markets really exist in Spain (or Madrid, at least) to the extent that they do on the other side of the pond. Generally the produce you can get in Spain is quite good, and much of it is from somewhere in the country, but it’s not always easy to know where it’s coming from, or how many pesticides have been used to grow it. I do have a good natural foods store in my neighborhood, and there are a number of these throughout the city, but the produce has never looked particularly great.

So this month a friend and I have ventured into the world of weekly organic fruit and vegetable boxes. While these are not exactly CSA, they are an opportunity to buy boxes of seasonal, organic produce from farms. Both places we’ve ordered from have been just under 300 miles from Madrid, which is not incredibly local, but relatively speaking, it’s not bad. The first was Daiquí, a farm in Ourense, Galicia (northwest of Madrid), where we paid 25 euros (including delivery to my flat) for a 10 kilo box that included Swiss chard, apples, green beans, adorable little green peppers, potatoes, a huge zucchini, a beet, and lovely heirloom tomatoes. All of it was really delicious, and very fresh. I’ve just checked the Daiquí website, and it seems that you can no longer request the box, you have to order things by weight, like an online store. Though I’m guessing the seasonal box will make a comeback.

At any rate, we’ve now signed up for four boxes from a farm in Lleida, Cataluña (northeast of Madrid) that has a lot of promise. It’s called Recapte, and you can sign up for a minimum of four boxes and as much as a weekly box for a year. Each box is 30 euros, also including delivery to your house. What I like about Recapte is that every week they post the available fruit and vegetables on their website and you can choose the 10 things that you want in your box (you have a choice of more than double that number). You can also take a week off by notifying them that Monday.

We received the delivery from Recapte today. It was much greater in quantity than last week’s box from Daiquí and included—as requested—apples, peaches, pears, tomatoes, carrots, rainbow chard, cucumbers, lettuce, red peppers, and sweet potatoes. It all looks quite good and I can’t wait to start cooking and eating it.

Of porras and chocolate

In the end it was my very American parents who introduced me to one of the greatest bars in my Madrid neighborhood. Sometime on their first jet-lagged day in my adopted city they said, “Hey, tomorrow let’s have breakfast there,” and pointed to a glass-fronted bar on the next corner that I’d never even noticed.

The next morning at 9 we walked bleary eyed into the smoke-filled bar. I recommended café con leche for my coffee-loving parents and ordered a ColaCao for myself. Mom and Dad eyed the glass case perched on the bar and decided on croissants. Our barman, whose quick movements behind the bar suggested he’d been doing this for a while, asked, “¿A la plancha?” I translated. Mom and Dad nodded vigorously and the barman shouted, “¡Tres cruasán plancha!” into the din of the bar’s morning rush. Pretty soon we were munching on our grilled croissants and my parents, whose caffeine habits have been learned at the school of Starbucks, were ordering a second café con leche. Each.

So began our relationship with Herza. We ate there every morning we spent in Madrid that September–nearly a week straight. During the road trip through Asturias and Galicia that followed, we sought out bars as bustling as Herza, where the barmen also dressed in white shirts and black trousers, where the customers were also locals and workers.

But they would never be Herza, with its enormous three-sided bar, its businessmen in suits downing breakfast before catching the metro, its garish lighting and incredibly dirty floor. Herza had another special quality, too: deliveries of hot, fresh churros and porras roughly every 20 minutes by the guys from the churrería across the street. Dad loved the guy wearing the Yankees hat. All must be right with the world if the Spanish (or Latino) churro-maker symbolically supports the Yanks. Yes, indeed.

We began to refer to our barman as Herman, just because it seemed to fit him: short and bespectacled, a real professional behind the bar. He quickly learned to put a second coffee in front of my parents before they’d even finished the first. When we told him we were going away for a week, he gave us recommendations on where to go in Galicia.

Mom and Dad eventually left Spain, but my love for Herza remained. I began to meet a friend in the neighborhood for breakfast there every week or so. And then Herza closed for a week. For painting, my friend informed me. When it reopened, the sign had changed to “Cesareo.” Inside it was brighter, less lived-in looking, cleaned up somehow. The walls were a pale green instead of a dirty white.

The bar formerly known as Herza was under new ownership. But for six months or so everything remained more or less the same. Herman was still there (and I found out his real name was Felix), and the churros and porras, and all those Madrileños dipping the fried dough into their coffee.

When I returned to Madrid after the summer, the new owner had finally made his mark. The old marbled black bar is gone, replaced by a shorter corner-shaped one. Tables are small and square and modern, the old Formica rectangles gone. The place looks spiffy and chic, the antithesis of what it once was. And Felix and all the old guys are gone. A waitress told me that Felix is now a doorman.

For the time being, the churros and porras continue to flow.

The top photo was taken by my father. Thanks, Daddy.

New Orleans success in Madrid

What follows is a piece I wrote several months ago and have been unable to sell to any papers in the U.S. I’d rather not let it languish on my hard drive any longer!

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Ask Matthew Scott, Madrid’s own New Orleans restaurateur, where in Spain he gets the peanut butter for his peanut butter pie and he’ll tell you: up until recently from an American expatriate who made and sold it.

“She just stopped making peanut butter,” he says. “But I bought the last eight boxes of three tubs. That should last me a year.”

Good thing: Scott, 36, recently opened his second restaurant in the heart of Madrid. Things are looking up for peanut butter pie.

Scott, a former architect who moved to Madrid over eleven years ago, opened Gumbo in the working class Malasaña neighborhood in 2003. Banking on the growing success of the restaurant, he’s now opened Gumbo Ya-Ya—a sister café/restaurant with a menu that’s a touch more refined—just a few blocks away.

Ya-Ya opened quietly last April; it was nearly a month before the critics caught wind of it. There was no sign, just a bright blue façade and paper signs hung in the windows with a pair of dancing alligators. But for people walking up Calle de la Palma, in a neighborhood with a long list of ethnic food restaurants and an equal number of trendy Spanish tabernas or cervecerías, it’s an eye-catching place.

On a Saturday afternoon shortly after it opened, more than a handful of people moved closer to read the sign, and a number came in for coffee or a beer. (Ya-Ya, in contrast to the original Gumbo, opens between meals as a café.)

The interior, with its blue and yellow walls, wood floors, and low lighting has a classy feel to it. There’s a record player turning out jazz in the background, and black swing-arm lamps light the intimate tables. (The lamps were being thrown out by a nearby library.)

Scott knows it might happen slowly, but people will come. Things didn’t start out easily with the original Gumbo restaurant—Creole cuisine was all but unknown in Madrid—but nowadays he speaks proudly of a burgeoning group of varied, mostly Spanish clientèle.

“You’ll have ladies in mink coats next to a gay couple from Chueca,” he says. Actors and writers from the hipster chic neighborhood come by, as well as “kids from down the street who share two starters.”

Scott says he didn’t have a public in mind when he opened Gumbo—and he enjoys the relative diversity of his customers. He says the restaurant was never about “being seen” like some places in Madrid.

“I’m interested in good food,” he says earnestly. “That’s a really New Orleans attitude. Some of the best restaurants there are in the worst neighborhoods.”

The presence of drugs and prostitution is still manifest in some areas of the barrio, but it’s come a long way from when junkies lined the street as you exited a restaurant.

“A few years ago, it was strange that a restaurant would open in an area like this,” says Neza Alvarez, waiter and Scott’s business partner. “But at the time, it was the only [downtown] neighborhood with affordable rent.”

And now it’s hip. Malasaña is home to a large number of young people who have created an alternative atmosphere there, as well as some of Madrid’s increasing number of immigrant families.

“It’s changing,” Scott says.

Madrid itself has changed a great deal since Scott first made it his home about nearly twelve years ago.

A Tulane graduate with a degree in architecture, Scott had studied abroad in Madrid. He left New Orleans after graduation to study Portuguese in Lisbon. From there he headed to Paris, where he intended to stay three months, and ended up staying a year.

It was there that he really started cooking.

“I was an architect by day and a chef for an Italian banker at night, in exchange for a chambre de bonne,” he says.

It didn’t matter that he hadn’t studied cooking. His mother and sisters were always cooking, and, as he says, “In New Orleans you grew up knowing about food.”

After the stint in Paris, Scott headed home by way of Madrid. He’s still here.

His first jobs were cooking in a series of Irish pubs, without working papers. More restaurants and three years later, he made his breakthrough when he was hired as chef at Undata, which specialized in vegetarian cuisine for non-vegetarians. Positive critiques ensued and there was no looking back.

Five years after he arrived in Madrid, Scott says he decided he needed to see if he was serious about being a chef. He returned to New Orleans for three months, where he cooked at Bayona with Susan Spicer.

The experience was enough to convince him to return to Madrid and open his own restaurant. He spent about a year working in a number of high-class restaurants with renowned Spanish chefs “to work on his palate and practice Spanish tastes.”

From the very beginning, Scott knew he would open a New Orleans restaurant in Madrid (if it wasn’t a Spanish tapas bar in New Orleans). He says he was convinced that Creole cuisine, with its French, African, and Spanish roots, would appeal to the modern Spanish palate.

The raw ingredients for Scott’s creations were also within reach. He finds okra at the neighborhood market, as well as crabs and crawfish. He gets his andouille from the Germans and pecans (at 22 euros a kilo—“but it’s worth it”) from a store called Taste of America.

But the Spaniards provided one small challenge: they are known for disliking spicy food. Scott maintains that Creole food is “well seasoned, but not necessarily spicy,” but he still has to tone it down while trying to remain faithful to the flavors.

Ya-Ya’s menu, as Scott likes to describe it, is “more elaborate” than Gumbo’s. The fried green tomatoes (a specialty at both restaurants) have a remoulade sauce at Ya-Ya. The gumbo is made with chicken and smoked sausage instead of seafood. The entrées include fried soft shell crab and sole meuniere with lemon pecan butter to Gumbo’s shrimp and grouper creole and stuffed pork chop. Even the desserts are a little more complex: the pecan pie now includes chocolate and the cheesecake is topped with wild berries.

Scott appears to be succeeding in making “good food.” A restaurant critic passing through Madrid proclaimed Scott’s gumbo better than some in New Orleans itself.

Scott has received high praise in the Spanish press, as well. Metropolí, an entertainment guide published by the daily El Mundo, has written about Gumbo on numerous occasions, praising its originality.

“Practically no one in Europe knows about regional cuisine in the United States,” says Victor de la Serna, deputy editor of El Mundo. “It’s been a big revelation here. He’s got a strong base of Spanish customers.”

The Spaniards who come, though, Scott says, “have traveled.” Juan, trying Gumbo out for the first time on a recent weeknight, lives in the neighborhood and had eaten New Orleans cuisine in the U.S.

“They’re a little more open,” Scott says of his customers. “We get the tables of traditional Spaniards … but they just don’t like the food.”

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Both restaurants are open for set lunch and dinner times (for the Spanish, that’s 2-4 p.m. and 9 p.m.-midnight).

Gumbo, C/ Pez 15, Madrid; Phone: (34) 91 532 6361
Gumbo Ya-Ya, C/ Palma 63, Madrid; Phone (34) 91 532 5441

Argentines in the ‘hood

One of the most exciting places to open in my neighborhood this year has surely been Todo Empanadas. At the corner of Vallehermoso and Fernández de los Ríos (map), the little empanada place has been doing a steady business since it opened in October 2006. Run by a bunch of Argentines, Todo Empanadas delivers, does take-out, and has limited (bar-stool) seating in its interior. The empanadas are made to order and extremely tasty; among my favorites are onion and cheese, and tomato, basil, and cheese. They also make various with meat and a vegetable empanada with spinach. At 1.50 euros each, they can easily become an addiction. They’ve become a delivery favorite among my roommates (half a dozen is the delivery minimum and you’ll want two or more). And just today I tried the dessert empanada: a little crescent of fried dough filled with dulce de leche. To die for. If you’re in the ‘hood, call 91 44 44 748 to order.And speaking of dulce de leche, another Argentine joint called KIBO Dulce y Salado, on the corner of Galileo and Donoso Cortés (map), sells some amazing alfajores for under 2 euros.

Finally, if you’re ever near Retiro and hungry, make a trip to Trenque Lauquen. It’s a tiny little Argentine pizzeria with a lovely terraza in the warmer months and it takes empanadas up a notch: these ones are baked, not fried. The crust is light and flaky, and the spinach empanada, flavored with raisins and spices, is particularly memorable. This place will cost you significantly more than Todo Empanadas, but it’s worth it for a sit-down meal right across the street from Retiro. Make sure to check their schedule; I’ve been disappointed by it being closed at least once.

Of an Italian restaurant

I love a restaurant recommendation, especially when it becomes a new favorite.

An adult student of mine recommended Pulcinella as an Italian restaurant with great Neapolitan pizza and ambiance–enough to pique my interest. My boyfriend and I went Sunday night and shared a pizza and a plate of pasta. I started with the pizza, and it was really quite good–thin, but doughy crust just a little burnt in places on the bottom and fresh toppings. But the pasta was really something else–we had ordered the strascinati alla norma: oval-shaped pasta with requesón (ricotta-like cheese), eggplant, and San Marzano tomato sauce. It was unbelievably good.

But it wasn’t just the food that was good. The restaurant has an intimate, homey feel to it and the service we had was really well-executed. We had an early dinner reservation (yes, 9.15 p.m. is early for Spaniards for dinner) and shortly after we arrived the place had filled up. There was plenty of wait staff, our food arrived promptly, and the waiter didn’t think twice when we asked for glasses of water (on a number of occasions restaurants here have told me that they don’t serve agua del grifo–tap water).

I have rarely, if ever, felt so satisfied with both how I was treated and the quality of the food in a restaurant in Madrid.

Two, of many, great things about Madrid

1. El Tigre is a bar in the center of Madrid (C/ Infantas), just off of Gran Vía, and in the über-trendy and gay barrio, Chueca. But this bar is neither trendy nor gay. It’s always bustling — and with good reason. With a 1.50 euro caña (small beer) you get a plate full of whatever’s on the grill and more: patatas bravas, croquetas, jamón, egg, fried peppers, cheese. The guys behind the bar yell orders constantly, while pouring beers, and move as if bartending were a choreographed art. You have to fight your way to the bar and perch your plate wherever you can, but a tasty and filling meal for under 5 euros (that’s three cañas) and great ambiente are worth it.

2. Casa Granada is a rooftop terrace restaurant hidden atop an ordinary and totally unassuming apartment building. You have to be in the know to find the place, just north of metro Tirso de Molina, and once you’ve buzzed up, ride in the elevator plastered with signs begging riders to adhere to the four-person limit. It’s within spitting distance of the Rastro, La Latina’s gigantic Sunday flea market, which makes it the perfect place for a meal after navigating the crowds and t-shirt stands. You might have to wait a while for a table, but you’ll be glad you did. What else is there to do on Sunday but eat and drink? And meanwhile, you can order a beer and wander out to the terrace for amazingly grand views of Madrid and her suburbs. The raciones are delicious and inexpensive. For two, a plate of pimientos de padrón (tiny peppers fried in oil and sprinkled with sea salt) and one of calamares were more than enough, and cost 11 euros.