You may not think of Spain as one of the best places in the world to eat meat, but it is. Spaniards are carnivorous at heart, eating all parts of the local domesticated animals with enthusiasm and in various preparations. There’s one kind of meat cooking that stands above all others in Spain, however: fire cooking.
Madrid is a global cosmopolitan city with a diverse food scene to match, but the city retains a love of traditional eateries of the type lost to time in many cities.
Spain’s greatest contribution to the world’s food may be jamón ibérico, the salted, cured ham made from the Iberian pig. This is the delicacy par excellence of Spanish cuisine, beloved in Spain and abroad, sliced razor-thin by hand and presented on fractal platters, meltingly tender. Many consider Iberian ham to be the world’s greatest ham. But Iberian ham differs from other ham.
Mussels, razor clams, cockles, barnacles, baby sardines, squid, octopus, tuna belly, anchovies. Packed in olive oil, preserved in escabeche sauce or simply canned in brine. Some people claim that the conservas can surpass fresh seafood in concentrated flavor. And they say that the seafood ages in the can and improves over time, much like fine wines.
Spain is not a country where cocktails are common. Spanish drinkers have traditionally been devoted to wine and beer, or a brandy or anís, both made in Spain, in the old man bars. Yet with the rise of Spanish haute cuisine since the late 1990s and the turn of the millennium came the implantation of a special take on a seemingly mundane mixed drink:
Celebrating with friends and family is what I love best about the holidays. To enhance these celebrations, I think of wines, in this case Spanish wines, that are special and pair well with holiday menus from seafood to lamb, beef to wild game, as well as plates of Iberian jamón or goat´s-milk cheeses.
Deep in southern Spain, in the province of Cádiz, spring arrives slowly, timidly, sometime after the drums of Semana Santa die down and before the flamenco and horses and sherry ferias begin. Spring: languid lunches in beachside chiringuitos, walks on the region’s pristine beaches, horse and wine and spring festivals seemingly every week, and almadraba season.
Barcelona's plan to win back the streets from traffic and make the city more livable by adding green space, increasing traffic-free zones and lowering the noise and air pollution levels is based on superblocks, or 3-by-3 Eixample block areas re-conquered for neighbors to live, play, interact and breathe.
