Cuines Santa Caterina - Barcelona

Sometimes the most satisfying meals come when you're not really expecting them. I must have read about Cuines Santa Caterina before we left for Spain, but recall being leery at best - though I liked the idea of a restaurant tied to a market, I was wary of the menu description, which sounded like an unfocused hodge-podge of cuisines. But the afternoon before we left Barcelona, I found myself drawn to the market's multi-colored roof. Unfortunately, the market itself was closed, but its restaurant, Cuines Santa Caterina, was open and hopping.

Though it didn't look like much from the outside, the restaurant was deceptively large. The front holds a rectangular tapas bar with seating on all sides for a total of about 25 people, but the restaurant space stretches way back, with several different stations (a cold station for salads, a sushi station, and an open kitchen that seemed nearly half the length of a football field), with counter seating along the cooking stations and a combination of communal and regular tables throughout the rest of the room. Over the open kitchen, a huge display scrolls items from the menu in red LED lights, like a train-station departure list.

The menu was laid out as a grid, with the top of the page listing basic ingredient categories horizontally ("vegetables / rice / fish / meat / egg") and the left side listing different preparation styles ("vegetarian / mediterranean / oriental / grilled"). Then within the grid were the various menu items, organized both by primary ingredient and prep style. A little confusing at first, but after a little while it started to make sense.

I was very excited to see calçots on the menu, after having just seen them in the stalls at the nearby Boqueria market. Calçots are a Catalan thing, wherein they take a white onion bulb, replant it, and then cover the shoots with earth as they grow from the bulb, yielding tender, sweet, leek-shaped onions. They were flame-roasted until completely blackened on the outside, and served steaming hot on a terra-cotta shingle. Eating them is a messy, finger-searing business, which requires pulling down the blackened outer layers of the calçot to reveal the tender white steaming center, which is dipped in romesco sauce and then eaten sword-swallower style, often involving some quite inelegant contortions. These were fresh, sweet, and absolutely delicious, simply the best onions I've ever had.

While I blackened my fingers and twisted around dangling onions over my head, Mrs. F had an appetizer of a a provoleta, a dish of grilled provolone cheese that I've always associated with Argentina. Here, it was served bubbling hot in a cazuela, topped with a dice of tomato and a nice, pungently herbal and garlicky pesto. Very good and almost too much food for an appetizer. She followed with some delicious grilled baby calamares, served with shaved asparagus and a dribble of sauce of the squid's ink. I had a very nice rice dish, made to order and served in a cast iron pan, with wild mushrooms, butifarra sausage, morcilla, and chicken. The rice was permeated throughout with the aroma of the mushrooms, and had nice crispy bits around the edges.

I had low expectations and they were vastly exceeded, indeed everything we had was just great. I have no idea if everything on the ambitious menu is of the same quality, but after our experience, I'd be willing to try.

Cuines Santa Caterina
Avnda. Francesc Cambó 16
Barcelona 08003
93 268 99 18

I'll Have What She's Having

Glad to know I'm not the only one pondering what to call this new-fangled cooking thing going on, but here's one I think I'll pass on: "ORGASMIC" ("ORganoleptics, Gastronomy, Art, & Science Meet In Cuisine"). I mean, I'm a big fan your spherified such-and-such and so on, but there's really only such much you can accomplish with hydrocolloids. For some things, you have to stick with traditional fare like Katz's Delicatessen (and she didn't even have the corned beef).

For more reactions, look here, or here, or here (everyone's jumping on the bandwagon!); but here's a heartfelt counterpoint.

Edited to add: let it be noted that this new proposed name has always been inherent in the original:

"mOleculaR GAStronoMy"

Teena's Pride CSA

For those who are late to the boat for CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), it's not too late. Teena's Pride Farms, with a big assist from Sunset Corners wine & liquor store, did a successful four-week CSA "test program" and is now signing up additional participants for another four-week round. The idea of a CSA is to create a direct relationship between farmer and consumer - the buyer commits to buy a season's worth of produce (shortened here), and the farmer delivers what's fresh and plentiful each week to a central pick-up location. Teena's Pride is supplying the veggies, and Sunset Corners (in South Miami at 8701 Sunset Drive) has volunteered to use its store and its walk-in as the distribution site.

According to Teena's, a typical full share would include:

A box of arugula
3-4 bags of fresh herbs (i.e: chives, cilantro, lemon grass, oregano, thyme, and on and on)
½ lb salad spring mix
4-6 hydroponic bell peppers
4 hot peppers
2 lbs vine ripe heirloom tomatoes
2 boxes mini tomatoes (red and yellow teardrop and sungold)
2 lbs regular tomatoes

Here are the details. All arrangements need to be made directly with Teena's (don't call Sunset):

COST:
A four week’s full vegetable share: $160.00 ($40 a week), prepaid to Teena’s
A four week half vegetable share: $100.00 ($25 a week), prepaid to Teena’s
PICK UP: Every Thursday after 1pm at Sunset Corners and before 9pm
LATEST PICK UP: Friday 9pm, after that you lose your share
THE SEASON: April 9th, 16th, 23rd, 30th
TO PLACE AN ORDER:
(I am not going to post Teena's contact info here to avoid potential spamming, but if you are interested send me an email and I'll get it to you).

All orders must be placed by Tuesday, April 7th.

Pork Pirates? - Please.

Miami New Times gets all up in arms this week over pig farmers in Miami-Dade County slaughtering and butchering their own pigs. Almost all of the article's sturm and drang is over the fact that these farmers (illegally) kill their own pigs for customers, replete with graphic and dramatic descriptions of the process ("the animals are killed like Mafia capos"; "The air is acrid with the twin aromas of blood and shit"). The only thing missing is to name one of the pigs "Wilbur."

Ironically, the description of the slaughtering and butchering process is almost exactly like what is described as happening in the slaughterhouses down the street - the animal is shot between the eyes with a heavy-caliber pistol (the slaughterhouses instead use an electric stun gun), then immediately the throat is slit, the pig is bled, scalded, shaved, and hung, and organs and hooves are removed. According to the article, the whole process takes 20 minutes. At the slaughterhouse? "They follow national slaughter guidelines requiring that hogs be stunned by an electric bolt and that their necks be quickly slit. The carcasses are then hung upside-down and drained of blood." So what's your preference - bullet or stun gun? Paper or plastic? Yes, it's a gruesome business, but it always is.

The alarmist tone of the article is perhaps best demonstrated by this little nugget, describing a police raid on a farm in west Kendall - "among the meat found in refrigerators was what appeared to be neatly packaged horse flesh." (Gordon Ramsay would be proud.) A full 600 words later it's revealed that "what appeared to be horse meat was found by inspectors to be beef." Well - that sort of changes things a bit, doesn't it?

While getting all worked up over the fact that they're killing pigs on the farm (which, of course, is exactly what they're raised for), the article fails to shed much light on several questions that might be of greater concern: (1) are the animals well-tended? (there are suggestions, but no evidence at all, that pigs are fed slaughtered pigs' entrails, but otherwise no information at all on their living conditions); (2) are there health issues? (not according to "state food safety chief" Dr. John Fruin, who said "If a piece of meat is properly cooked, even from an illegal slaughter operation, there's not much risk"); (3) are there environmental issues? (no explanation at all of what the farmers are doing to dispose of waste, nor, for that matter, how it compares to what the legal slaughterhouses are doing).

Look, there's not much reason to believe any of these farmers are artisans inspired by Michael Pollan's boar hunt and his channeling of Ortega y Gasset as described in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" (although one of them does claim to be raising feral hogs). But - absent further information not elucidated by the article - this hardly seems like the greatest danger to our local foodways. Indeed, notwithstanding the drama, I suspect the more common reaction is going to be "Where can I get some?" rather than "How horrible!"