Espai Sucre: Sweet Space

One of the hazards of having a pastry chef as a sister is that when she comes to town, you eat a lot sweets! I had no idea Barcelona was home to so many chocolatiers, pastry shops, pastry schools and restaurants with delicious desserts until we walked around and sampled at each one!

One of the most memorable places Alyce took us to was Espai Sucre, a restaurant so devoted to desserts, that's all they serve. 

First comes a palate cleanser, which on the night we visited, was broccoli soup with mustard cream sauce. Doesn't sound like dessert? Well, you should have tasted it!

Then, everyone chooses their own personal adventure of taste. You can select a Cheese Menu, a Chocolate Menu, a Big Pastry Menu, etc. Each comes with several courses, and each course comes with a wine pairing. It makes for difficult conversation when there's so many tastes mingling around your mouth all at once, but we managed.

To begin, some of us were brought an olive oil cake, topped with white peach ice cream, and garnished with a green olive caramel strip and a splash of cheese. It could be thought of as a very sweet salad.

Next, I had a goat "cheesecake"on top of an open-face red pepper. It was served with raspberry ice cream and lemon foam. I thought this one, with all these strong flavors, was too intense, but even so, it was artfully designed and fun to eat.

Another one of our favorites (we passed plates), was this codfish risotto with artichoke hearts, tomato ice cream and fish fin chips. Tomato ice cream is so heavenly, I bet it replaces salted caramel as the next 'it' flavor.

 Alyce, the pastry chef, was most impressed with this one: a simple cake soaked in red wine with a splash of saffron, decorated with parmesan cubes. She's even thinking about adding a version of it to San Francisco's  Bar Bambino dessert menu next month (if you order it, mention this blog and she'll probably give it to you free!)

After five plus courses of dessert, it was smiles all around!

The Shields in Spain

 Sorry for the radio silence - we've been busy entertaining guests from Texas (who came bearing many gifts)!

Take a closer look at those Texas delicacies they brought us - I'm not ashamed. We got some maple syrup, Tom's of Maine toothpaste and deodorant, glide dental floss, pancake mix, Texas pecans, two boxes of Velveeta Cheese - yum! - all comforts of home, money can't buy in Barcelona.

We took the train up to Pais Vasco for a week in San Sebastian and the surrounding area...

Sampled some Spanish delicacies...

And a few from France too....

 More on the Shields Family adventures to be posted soon ...

Crashing the Calcotada

Here in Catalonia, it's calcotada season, the time of year when the Catalans feast on calcots to celebrate the arrival of spring. In case you are wondering, calcots (pron: cal-sots) are a local, sweet onion, with a taste and size somewhere between a green onion and a leek.

Not one to miss out on any Catalan traditional festivities, I scoured the interwebs, found a calcotada happening in the nearby neighborhood of Gracia and emailed the organization for tickets.

Upon arrival, we knew we'd found the correct location by the calcots roasting on the barbie outside:

Inside, we were welcomed with the typical Spanish appetizer buffet plus local vermouth in plastic cups:

When all the old ladies hurried to get a good seat in front of the telly showing last year's calcotada, we began to think we were perhaps a bit out of place. 

As it turns out, this was a semi-private annual party and we were the only strangers in the group. Fortunately, they were a warm bunch and treated us as guests to their neighborhood gathering.

We took our seats in the converted high school gymnasium as Jeremy and Guilia prepped for the onslaught of onions...

The calcots were bought to the table, fresh-off-the-grill, in bundles wrapped in newpaper...

To eat them, you first strip the outer layers...

Then, you dip the calcot into the fantastically-delicous romesco sauce (recipe below)...

And lower the onion into your mouth.

After finishing our 20 or so calcots, we thought that was it. But how wrong we were!

The calcots, at a calcotada, are only the first course. Next, comes plate after plate of various types of meat. First, the butifarra (sausage):

Next, the grilled pork and then, lamb chops. Guilia is on her fourth plate of pork and having a hard time stomaching any more.

They also brought many bottles of wine and cava....

...and wrapped things up shots of whiskey, dessert, mandarines and coffee.

Side note: the guy below was so impressed by our American friend Jeremy's Catalan, he offered up his is Barca season passes for a game (but that's another story). 

My favorite part of the calcotada was meeting this 94-year-old woman and finding out that her family owns the cava company of the cava we were drinking. She showed me a portrait from her youth on the cap:

It was a pretty fantastic event by all accounts. We met lots of really nice people, ate lots of delicious food, and left with the secret recipe to the romesco sauce. Score.

Catalan Romesco Sauce

*Delicious on salads, fish and chicken

4 ripe tomatoes

50 grams of toasted almonds

50 grams of toasted hazelnuts

head of garlic

slice of bread

2 hot peppers

chilli pepper

olive oil, vinegar, salt 

Put the three peppers in water and soak for several hours. Then, peal the skins off the pulp.

Fry the bread in olive oil and let drain on a paper towel. 

Roast the tomatoes and garlic in the oven until completely roasted. Then peal off all the skins.

Put all the ingredients into a blender, including the nuts, and blend until the texture is smooth. Add olive oil, vinegar and salt to your tasting. Enjoy hot or cold!

Not in the Guide-Book Barcelona: El Parque de Laberinto

After living in Barcelona for almost five months, we've only now checked off most of the major attractions Barcelona has to offer. Good luck to tourists who visit for just one week!

Fortunately for us, many more enchanting places abound, and we're on a mission to discover them.

 Last Sunday, we headed a few Metro stops of out center city and found ourselves in an urban oasis - the romantic, Parque de Laberinto de Horta. 

In 1791, artistic mathematician / aristocrat, Joan Antoni Desvalls, hired an Italian architect to turn his farm into a neoclassical garden, complete with fountains, canals, an open air theatre and the labyrinth. How posh! Since then, the park has been preserved with it's original design, and lucky for us, was opened to the public in the early 90s.

The shrub-lined, tranquil passageways were a much welcomed reprise from the chaos of Cituat Vella's manic streets.

We spent hours getting lost, 

and admiring the tall trees.

As I've mentioned before, Barcelona is seriously lacking in the tree-department.

We had a picnic,

and made horror movie inspired by the labyrinth scene in The Shining (video to be posted soon).

The similarities between our villain and the original were striking, so it was then time to head home.

You know a place is worth checking-out, when Ted gives the camera his famous sky-punch. 

Foto Del Mes: A Trashcan

My only competition in BCN Week's photo contest may just be me, myself and I, but even so, they published another one of my photos! There's nothing like seeing your name in lights (or, print).

At Least They Tried // Issabella Shields Grantham

You're probably wondering why I took a photo of a trashcan. It's true I'm in love with this city, but I'm not so enamored that I photograph every damn thing I see (well, not everything). There's a backstory to this waste receptacle.

It's the ubiquitous Barcelona trashcan that nobody uses -  I've actually heard people say, if you put trash in them, the street-cleaners will be out of a jobs. (Yes, every single job in Spain is precious!) And you just don't see the anti-littering campaigns you find in the States (example: Don't Mess with Texas!). 

But, when Spain decided to ban smoking in all indoor public places (including on stage in a production of Hair, for heaven's sake) at the beginning of 2011, the litter on the street - mainly cigarette butts - increased ten fold.  Gross, huh?

Some of us non-smokers appreciate the cleaner, smoke-free bars, but smokers obviously would rather not go outside in the cold to get their fix, and now everyone complains about the abundance of cigerette butts littering the sidewalks.

Since smokers outnumber non-smokers in Spain, restaurants and bars are now seeing a lot fewer customers. More people seem to be staying at home to eat, drink, and have their smokes. And the economic crisis (pron: "creee-sis") continues.

Who thought it was a good idea to ban smoking in the middle of a creeesis anyway? This neat pile of butts at the foot of the trashcan seemed like a collective "f-you" for placing this ban in the middle of the worst economic crisis of our time. 

The Ladies of Catalonia

The first Lady of Catalonia I want to introduce, though technically a foreigner (a fellow Texan no less!), is the outrageously funny comedian, Rachel Arieff, who performs a one-woman stand-up show, Planeta Catalunya. She made us laugh for an entire hour sharing her observations of the idiosyncrasies of Catalan culture. 

If you're in Spain, I highly recommend her show, and if you're not, here's a Youtube clip.

If I were funny, I would be her.

In her show, she reminded me of something I've been wanting to write about for a while: the real (old) Ladies of Catalonia. I bet a television show about these women would be far more interesting than lives of  New Jersey housewives. Check out this rockin' grandma with her push-cart and shades:

She's probably headed to the market to buy her groceries. If there's one thing Ted fears most in Barcelona, it's being in the way of a Catalan Lady and her produce at the market. These women are feisty, not in the least amused by a confused American, and absolutely unafraid to drive a push-cart directly into your ankles if you're standing in the way of her dinner.

Often you see them in pairs, always arm and arm, slowly strolling around town. It always makes me smile to see those locked-together ladies (though you don't want be stuck behind them if you're trying to get somewhere quickly):

Better yet, a trio:

And this four-banger made my day:  

The truth is, I love these ladies: fearless, united, and unconcerned with the hustle and bustle of the rest of the world. How nice would it be to take an afternoon stroll like this with a pack good friends?  I'm dying to know some of these ladies, so I can figure out where exactly they're going.

In the meantime, my camera is locked and loaded, just in case I spot five-pack. 

Blossoming Street Art

Blank surfaces in this city only stay that way for a short while before someone with a spray can decides how it will be decorated, or defiled, depending on your opinions about graffiti. As I've mentioned before, street art defines the look of Barcelona. It's everywhere and always evolving. 

And it amuses me to spot new additions to our hood. Here are some of my recent favorites: 

A bird spewing tags on the side of Sant Antoni Market:

A beautifully painted boy below our apartment:

This radiator was begging for a little color:

Another interesting stencil drawing:

This poor little fellow is fed up with all the construction noise. It's loud as hell here in Gracia.

This wall, which I pass on my way to yoga, is like an ever-evolving community painting. Those cleaning it work equally as hard as those doing the coloring, and it's design changes daily.