Desayuno en Argentina

Medialunas (literally “half moons”) are the Argentine version of the French croissant, except they are very different and very delicious at the same time. They come in three variations—de grasa, de manteca, and dulce.

The first kind is my favorite, the skinniest, more of a thin crescent than a half moon. They’re almost crunchy while also being flaky and more than a little salty.

The second and third, I have to confess, I have a hard time distinguishing. They both flake in softer layers and have a shiny wash of sweetness.

All of them are small and lovely.

I had a bagel this morning in commemoration of my return to New York, but I miss my café con leche con tres medialunas.

Living it up, San Francisco-style

When I told my friends I was coming to San Francisco, Erin suggested that we cook a big dinner together and invite the rest of my San Francisco friends. She and her roommate, who I will continue to call "Zizou" out of politeness to her and fantasy for me, share a beautiful apartment with the kind of kitchen only rich New Yorkers can dream of. It's filled with light, equipped with an island and even a prep sink, and the stove has some gaseous power that I can't even grasp, something about BTUs. All I know is that it boils up water like you wouldn't believe.

We started our shopping at Alemany Market, my favorite farmers' market in San Francisco. Unlike the famed and rather bourgeois Ferry Building, Alemany doesn't truck in artisanal chocolate sprinkled with grey sea salt. So there are few tourists, and instead plenty of resident yuppies, Chinese bargain-hunters, and those who really want a live chicken, which probably overlaps more with the Chinese bargain-hunters than the yuppies. While Erin and I bought meyer lemons, strawberries, asparagus, and lilacs, Zizou took it upon herself to buy a few dozen Kumamoto oysters. She doesn't cook, but she sure knows how to eat.



The rest of the meal we picked up here and there, from the prosciutto I bought at the Cafe Rouge meat counter (not so exciting) to the walnut bread Lika picked up from Tartine (unbelievable, made me feel slightly less annoyed at Tartine).

And Diane brought the wine from Sonoma. She had called me the night before, telling me she was packing and wanting to know what I was serving for dinner. I momentarily forgot she makes wine for a living and asked, "Does the food you're going to eat affect what you're going to wear?



But what really amazed me is how relaxed I was planning and cooking the dinner. Partly it was that Erin was there. I don't normally cook well with others, but I trust her cooking judgment, especially when it comes to risotto. It's nice working with someone when you don't have to worry that she'll "dice" carrots into uneven chunks. And partly it was that after we baked our anise-almond biscotti, we took off to go eat sausages at Rosamunde's and then went for a walk at Crissy Field, where it was unusually sunny and characteristically gorgeous. I've never done that before, go somewhere in the middle of cooking an elaborate dinner for anything other than a missing ingredient.

So when we ended up being late getting home, and Anne had to stir the citrus risotto for another hour after all the guests arrived, I didn't really care. I did care how good the Zuni pistachio "aillade" was on the roasted asparagus, which required Lika to pound away at 2 ounces of pistachios for a good 20 minutes, pulverizing them to a dust that I could bind up with a couple of tablespoonfuls of olive oil, a mashed garlic clove, a splash of grappa, orange zest and salt and pepper. If you have a friend with a powerful arm, I can't recommend this enough. The flavors blend together as you let it sit, and it's so much more complex and delicious than you could have imagined. We were torturing Elena, who's allergic to raw nuts, with our oohing and ahhing. The citrus risotto, also a Zuni recipe involving sections of grapefruit and lime, was also surprising and tasty, the tartness cutting the usual heft of risotto in my stomach. It eased the pain when it turned out the scallops were pretty low-grade.



But I think the star of the show was the meyer lemon ice cream we served with anise-almond biscotti and early strawberries. Happy birthday to me!

Saturday in Bilbao

The Mercado de Ribera in Bilbao, two floors of fish, meat, fruit and vegetables.



And a sugary bun filled with whipped cream before my train ride to Guernia/Gernika. Such a lovely Saturday morning.

People in Galicia are so nice

I bought the bread and cheese at the Mercado de Abastos in Santiago de Compostela. The bread is “pan de maiz,” or cornbread, though nothing like the cornbread we know in America, and the cheese is “tetilla” cheese, a mild, tangy, Galician cheese. The pan de maiz is crumbly like soda bread and the cornmeal is definitely mixed in with flour, but it has that characteristic, hearty flavor of “honest bread,” as M.F.K. Fisher would say. I ate it for days, even on the 12-hour bus to Bilbao; neither bread nor cheese went bad just sitting in my hotel room.

Even more than the cheese and bread, and the green-skinned freixoa fruit I tried, I liked the way the women at the market smiled at me when I bought it. Maybe I am getting starved for company, but people in Santiago de Compostela are so nice! People started asking me again where I was from and telling me that I spoke Spanish well and smiling such warm, genuine smiles at me. It was almost like I was in Mexico again. I wonder if it means anything that so many Galicians emigrated to Latin America.

Reserving a donut at La Boqueria

(I’m now in Ronda with Becca, having spent the last week traveling through Andalucia, so I’m playing major catch-up. Lo siento!)

I liked Barcelona so much more than Madrid. Largely, it’s because in Catalonia, Anne and I stayed for a chunk of time with our friend Mao-Mei and her husband Isaac in Vilafranca, a small town outside of Barcelona in the heart of cava, or sparkling wine, country. And partly, it’s because I had massive culture shock coming to Spain from Mexico. After Mexico, I expected salespeople to greet me like I was a long-lost cousin, waiters to smile with approval at what I ordered, and everyone to be complimentary about my Spanish. It turns out that’s just a Latin American thing. In Madrid, until we met up with a friend of a friend who lives in Madrid, Anne and I lived in a little tourist bubble, moving silently among the madrilenos.

But being who I am, one of the big reasons I loved Barcelona was the food. Despite our morning adventures, breakfast was not Madrid’s strong suit, whereas in Barcelona, I had some of the most memorable breakfasts of my life at La Boqueria, Barcelona’s famed market.



Our first morning in Barcelona, Anne and I went straight to Pinotxo, the most famous bar/food stand in La Boqueria, which is immediately visible the moment you walk in the Ramblas gate. Juan, the owner, has been greeting locals and tourists for many years. There’s no menu, so I tried to hold off ordering for as long as possible, to see what everyone else was eating.



We got a big plate of chickpeas in a strong, olive sauce; some ham croquetas that melted away, and two little glasses of café con leche. But we were still hungry. “Could I have one of those donuts over there?” I asked.

“No, they’re not available,” the counterman said. “They’ve been reserved.”

Reserved! We inquired about their name, xuxo, pronounced “chu-cho,” Anne and I looked at each other. The solution was obvious. “Please, could we reserve donuts for tomorrow?”

“Two?”

“Yes, two!”

“Okay, I’ll remember!”



The next day, there they were, waiting for us on top of the espresso maker. (TIP: if you get there early enough, around 9:15, there will be some unreserved donuts left, but you’ll have to move fast.) Anne and I hadn’t even really known what they were when we reserved them, knowing only that they were beautifully brown and dusted with a good quantity of granulated sugar. So imagine our surprise when we bit into them and found a lovely, light cream inside. The outer layers were as flaky and crisp as a good croissant. It was like someone had taken the idea of a Boston cream donut and made it 1000 times better. Later, when we talked to Bego, our cooking teacher about them, she nodded knowingly and said, “Yes, Pinotxo is the place to eat xuxos. You’ll see them elsewhere, but they’re not the same.”

Would it be wrong to name a child, “Xuxo”? Perhaps a dog would be better.

Oaxacan breads and sweets, part II

I take back everything I said about the bread being bad in Oaxaca.

Two Saturdays ago, I’d mainly perused modern bakeries, selling traditional breads in part, but very different from the bakers in markets with their goods on trays or in deep woven baskets. My experiences with the breads in the markets had been mixed—good pan de yema in hot chocolate making class, but sort of stale and dry at other times, and then other moments that were so lacking I can’t even remember what I ate.

But last week, I wandered up to Mercado Sanchez Pascuas to buy some fruit and decided it was time to take the plunge. There were several bread vendors there, on the white counters near the west end of the market. I chose the man furthest north, a few meters down from the vegetable seller. I would eat the bread with the pink sugar on top. And then for good measure, I asked for another plain, dark and wheatier looking roll. 4.5 pesos, total.



Well, let’s just say I’m not going to be wasting any more of my hard-saved money on “European artisanal bread” at Pan & Co. Mexican bread is good enough for me! The crust on both was hard but not tough, and the bread inside chewy yet soft and flavorful. The roll with the pink sugar on top had a sweet glaze all over the top that made my plastic bag sticky immediately, but it was a pleasant combination with the plain texture of the roll inside and more soothing for an early morning meal than something like a cinnamon roll or a muffin, which are both sweet and heavy with butter. The roll also had a big hollow inside, the tell-tale sign that yeast had been given time to do its thing.

The other roll, with its sprinkling of sesame seeds, was even better. It perhaps could have used a tad more salt, but it had no need to be embarrassed that it was otherwise unadorned. It didn’t rise to the level of a great French baguette, but then, very few breads do, even in New York. This flat little roll had more flavor than most of the bread in the U.S., and probably most of the bread in New York, too.

Two days later, I went back and got another flat, plain roll with sesame seeds and then something that looked like a brioche with its little topknot. This time, sadly, the roll was a tad stale, but with a strong enough flavor to stand up well to slices of avocado with salt and a bit of pepper, a simple and filling breakfast I learned from Erin. The brioche, though, blew my mind. There was whole wheat flour in it, but not enough to keep the crumb tender, and then surprising ribbons of cinnamon and dots of raisins.

This vendor is clearly something special. When Mimi and I went back to get a bag of bread, hoping to soothe Alex's stomach with something relatively bland, we bought a few rolls from the woman next to him and then a big brioche roll and a little flat roll with sugary sesame seeds and crushed nuts on top. The big bag of bread from the other baker was fine, but this guy's stuff just shined.

I’m so glad. I hated not liking a whole category of Mexican food.

Oaxacan breads and sweets, part I

This is for my sister, who can happily spend a day looking in bakery windows and display cases, maybe tasting a mouthful or two, but really just happy to see rows and rows of sweet things.

Mexican sweets and breads are a mystery to me. There are so many varieties, each with their own name, and I have yet to find a source that will give me all the information I crave. In the markets, a stall may specialize only in pan de yema, an eggy bread with a light anise flavor, or in a chewy, flat roll with a hard crust and pink sugar sprinkled on top. Then there are sweet sellers, with little stacks of honeyed, sticky cookies and cones filled with white cream. By the doors of Mercado Juarez and on corners around Oaxaca, there are several women selling alegrias, “joy” bars made of amaranth and piloncillo, the brown sugar sold in little cone-shaped cakes, and similar bars made with peanuts or pumpkin seeds, as well as round flats of pecans embedded in a crumbly brown sugar. I’ve seen several street vendors sitting around with cases filled with bright gelatins and little flans, clearly specializing in anything that can quiver. Then there are those women with the huge glass jars of stewed fruits in syrup. I haven’t even begun to describe the more modern bakeries and their enormous range of offerings. And apparently, if I go to Puebla or San Cristobal de las Casas, I will find sweets that can’t be found here in Oaxaca, trays of caramels and candies and things I cannot even dream of. The only thing I have really grasped so far are “nieves” and “paletas,” the sorbet-like ice creams and popsicles that taste proudly and intensely of fruit.

To be honest, I’ve been reluctant to really try and taste, as I will generally pick eggs over pancakes, a slice of pizza over a cookie, a piece of levain bread over a tart. And if I do have something sweet, I want it to be small and perfect, like a piece of very dark chocolate or a scoop of ice cream from Il Laboratorio del Gelato. I hadn’t gone out of my way to try more than the few desserts that had come my way, as there was so much mole to be eaten and I feared wasting time eating things that were sugary and sub-par. But considering that I’ve been going around saying I don’t like Mexican desserts and breads, without trying more of them, I realized was being quite unfair. I’ve been missing my sister so much, I wanted to do what she would do, if she were in Oaxaca.



So I decided to spend Saturday afternoon perusing 3 different bakeries in a 2-block radius around the zocalo. I found two more bakeries in this area on my way home, but decided to save them for another day, as my hands were full of bread. I had also started frequenting the enormous bakery, Pan Bamby, on Porfirio Diaz at the corner of Independencia, and so I’m adding that to this post, too. I only bought one pastry or bread at each bakery, so I can’t really speak with authority, but at least I am starting to get a sense of what is out there.

Pan Bamby is the largest bakery I’ve seen in Oaxaca. In the evenings, it’s full of people piling their trays high with bread, buying 10 or 20 rolls, loaves, and pastries. It sells what is expected, the same stuff I see at the giant supermarkets and the smaller weekend markets, but in greater varieties and quantities. So they sell bolillos, the torpedo-shaped white crusty rolls, for a peso a piece; conchas with their swirl of crumble on top, numerous kinds of flaky pastries filled with chocolate or jam or just dusted with sugar.



Their bolillo was terrible, even though it was fresh and warm and the crust crackled promisingly. It just didn’t have any flavor.



But then I had a sweet, soft croissant-shaped roll, with a very tender crumb and such an appealing, lovable flavor, like Hawaiian bread or Portuguese sweet bread. I also had a very good bandilla, a long, rectangular pastry of flaky layers, topped with sugar, a perfect light cena with tea. My neighbor had left me a bag of their garlicky breadsticks when she went back to Iowa, and they were strangely addictive, as well as scarily durable.



Fidel Integral, which specializes in whole-wheat breads, is on the same street further south, except that at that point, Porfirio Diaz has become 20 de Noviembre. Located between Hidalgo and Trujano, just north of Mercado Juarez, Fidel isn’t as large but I could get a sense of what breads must be available by seeing what Fidel chose to make in whole wheat form. Fidel also sells bolillos and conchas and bandillas. They also make a fantastic whole wheat roll, just a simple dinner roll that has great flavor, so great that it’s oddly addictive for something so plain. I also tried something a hard, crumbly sweet bread, shaped like a long, oblong stick, because it looked so much like these “butter sticks” in Korean bakeries I used to love. It tasted just as I had imagined it would, sweet but with a real wheaty flavor, and very good with a cup of coffee in the afternoon.



Walking south from Fidel, if you turn a left at the next corner, you will find yourself in front of Tartamiel. It definitely has the cutest logo, a smiling yellow bee with the tip of its tongue sticking amiably out of its mouth.



It calls itself a “pasteleria frances,” and it did seem to be aiming for a different tone. The English language is poor in only having one word, “bakery,” to describe a place that sells baked goods, when Spanish and French both distinguish between places that sell breads, panaderias or boulangeries, and places that sell cakes, pastelerias or patisseries. There was no way I could buy a cake to taste, but I did buy a little “tartaleta de queso,” and it was really quite good. The crust wasn’t so noteworthy, though it was sturdy and correct, but the cheese part I liked a lot. It was firm, like NY-style cheesecake, and it clearly wasn’t relying just on sugar to make itself appealing.



The last bakery, at least for this post, is Vasconia on Independencia, between 5 de Mayo and Reforma. This place is a little different, selling slices of creamy cake in a window swarming with bees, as well as empanadas with various savory fillings, bread rolls filled with chorizo and cheese, and your usual conchas and donas or donuts. I bought a little empanada filled with champinones, which weirdly is the Mexican way of describing basic button mushrooms, calling them by their French name to signify their high-class ways. “Hongos” describe the gorgeous wild mushrooms you can find in the Sierra Norte during the rainy season. I got excited when I took it out of its bag when I got home, because the top almost caved in as I pressed it, it was so delicately flaky, but overall, I liked it the least of everything I ate today. It felt right and looked right, but the flavor was a little off, probably because Mexican butter just isn’t great, and this was probably made with margarine anyway. I think it must be easier to get away without high-quality butter if the pastry is sweet rather than savory. The mushroom filling was pretty good, though, mixed with tomato sauce.



So it was a very good day! But I miss my sister more than ever.