Tag Archive for: Basque

, ,

The Book of Pintxos – inside story of Basque small plates

In a recent The Rest Is History, on the build-up to the Great War, podcast pals Tom and Dominic reached a quirky consensus on their dislike of Russian Salad… a view I share. You’ll have to listen to episode 3 to discover the context. Clue – a Serbian ultimatum that was hard to stomach,


This digression just happened to coincide with my perusal of The Book of Pintxos (Artisan, £30), Marti Buckley’s wonderful, San Sebastián-heavy follow-up to Basque Country, her indispensable guide to that great foodie region. I have to believe her when she writes: “Ensaladilla rusa is, after tortilla española, the most ubiquitous and popular pintxo in Spain.” For pintxo also read tapa, that small plate rival across the rest of the Iberian peninsula. Indeed it remains a restaurant mainstay in (its disputed birthplace) Russia and in old school diners across the globe.

Russian salad – a mutual bete noire

Marti, raised in Alabama, schooled in Louisiana, has spent well over a decade as the adopted daughter of Donastia (local name for San Sebastián). She’s the go-to gal to message the States that Italian and French are not innately superior cuisines to Spanish and her beloved Basque. But, as witness for the defence, Russian salad? Albeit, it HAS to be made with home-made mayo and hopefully the tuna might be canned ventresca in escabeche. Which still doesn’t in my eyes excuse a salad combining cooked potatoes, carrots and canned peas.
The author adapts her recipe from one of San Sebastián’s most acclaimed pintxos spots, the Bar Ezkurra, dating back to 1933 and physically little changed. It shifts, from its dark wooden counter, 175 pounds of rusa on busy days.

The joy of The Book of Pintxos is its depth of historical research, and pen pictures of the folk who keep the legacy alive, some by radically ‘elevating it’. A spin-off perhaps from a region boasting the highest per capita concentration of Michelin-star restaurants in the world. There’s a place for many approaches.
What unites many dishes is the toothpick. Pintxos was first promoted properly in North West England by Ramsbottom’s sadly missed Baratxuri, where at the end of a night full of bar snacks they tallied the bill according to the number of little sticks collected.
Before pintxos evolved to knife and fork this was the standard serving of simple snacks such as my old favourite to accompany a glass of tzakoli wine – Gilda. Arguably the original pintxo, this is just an anchovy fillet, pitted manzanilla olives and sharp pickled guindilla peppers threaded onto a toothpick. Hardly molecular gastronomy but at its core pintxos remain bar food.

The simple guilda
Burnt Basque cheesecake

Some of the 70 recipes are more complex as Marti traces the historical evolution, interviewing all the key players. Take Santi Rivera. In 1988 he took over the kitchen at his parent’s San Sebastián Old Town bar, La Viña, and perfected the one Donostian dish recognisable worldwide – Burnt Basque Cheesecake. Since then he has won a Pintxos Oscar’ in 1998 for his anchovy and cheese stuffed cone, but it is the cheesecake that shifts in vast numbers to this day – pan-burn crust on the outside transitioning into the creamiest of soft cheese custards, “the interior all jiggly and loose” in Marti’s words.
The author spreads her net beyond San Sebastián (or Donastia as the Basques call it) and covers my favourite places in Bilbao, a city I know better and have more affection for. One of my home page images was taken in Bilbao’s Plaza Nueva.

Certainly the Gure Toki’s truffled eggs and mi-cuit foie gras nougat are a step up from th humble guilda. Quality of ingredients has a role to play in the bar scene. La Vina Del Ensanche in Bilbao’s Old Town offers not just an encyclopaedic wine list but majors in the the world’s best jamon, Joselito Bellota.

If you must – Ensaladilla rusa recipe from The Book of Pintxos

Ingredients
Salt
3 large Yukon Gold potatoes peeled
1 medium peeled carrot, ends trimmed
7 large eggs
3 cups mayonnaise, preferably homemade*, divided
¼ cup drained canned green peas
¼ cup drained canned tuna ventresca in escabeche, or any good-quality oil-packed tuna, flaked
1 baguette, sliced on the bias into 15 pieces

Method
Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes and carrot and cook for eight minutes, then add the eggs and boil for 12 minutes more. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the eggs to an ice bath. Pierce one of the potatoes with a fork; if it slides in easily, drain along with the carrot and transfer to a cutting board. (Alternatively, continue boiling until the potatoes are fork-tender.) 
Peel the eggs and finely chop five of them (set aside the remaining two whole eggs). Cut the potatoes into ½-inch pieces and the carrot into ¼-inch pieces; transfer the chopped eggs, potatoes, and carrots to a large bowl. Add 1½ cups of the mayonnaise, the peas, tuna, and ½ teaspoon of salt and use a silicone spatula to gently combine. Fold in more mayonnaise (up to ½ cup) until the mixture is creamy and soft. Season to taste with more salt if needed. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. 
To serve, scoop generous portions of the salad atop the baguette slices, using a butter knife to form little mountains. Remove the yolks from the remaining two eggs (reserve them for another use), then use the small holes of a box grater to grate the whites over the pintxos. Using a pastry bag fitted with a decorative tip or a zip-top bag with a corner snipped off, squeeze a generous teaspoon of mayonnaise onto each pintxo.  

/by
,

Txuleton and padron pair up for Baratxuri/Levanter al fresco feast

As I pen this al fresco appreciation of conjoined Ramsbottom restaurants Levanter and Baratxuri, both are preparing to re-open inside for the first time in many months. More choices again. Inside or out? It was difficult enough pre-Pandemic to pick which of the Botham family’s Iberian destinations to drop in on. 

Latterly (it’s only relative) it was Baratxuri’s bar with its flurry of Basque pintxos that won out, but the pedestrian conversion of Square Street meant a joint reservation system and shared menu outside. So was a sunny Saturday lunchtime under the awnings the best of both worlds? Definitely.

The glory of Baratxuri, writ even larger at its Manchester Escape To Freight Island site, is Joe Botham’s way with fire. Yes, more wood-fired grills (check out my Heady Basque Mix of Woodsmoke and Wild Turbot). How then could we resist, from the asador, the Galician Xuleton, giant rib steaks from 10-year-old Capricion de Oro oxen dry aged for a minimum of 45 days? 

There was a raft of on the day prices, dependent on weight from £51 to £80. We asked for the £60 for three of us. We were just charged the £51 for a serving that was easily enough – after a succession of support act pintxos. The txuleton (bone-in cut from former dairy cattle) came simply with padron peppers and dressed tomatoes.

The menu description uses the word ‘malty’. Not a word I’ve used about steak, but now I’m a convert. The dish was stupendous. Well rested, the charred flesh had a slight chew to it but was intense in flavour, the salt enhancing this rather than distracting.

What else did we have? Also from the wood-fired oven a tranche of that favoured Spanish fish, hake done a la gallega, ie Galician style, which involves spuds, garlic, chorizo and, in this instance, pea emulsion (£12).

Chorizo featured again inside the Baratxuri bar favourite, txistorra sausage rolls (£4.50), but this time took second place behind another snack at the same price, the sobrasada pintxo. Here Mallorcan soft cheese and PIco blue cheese are melted on tostadas with honey and walnuts.

We had started with an £8 plate of jamon serrano plus bread, oil and balsamic and salmorjo for dipping. I’m glad I saved some bread to mop up the goo of ember-roasted scallop, salt cod whipped potato and Iberico lardo – a clever little dish, again £8. Coliflor bravas (£5.50) hit the spot too.

The three of us shared a bottle of supple, complex Madai Mencia (£35), the great Northern Spanish red that isn’t Rioja and finally with the txuleton, which we knew we had to wait 40 minutes for, some actual Rioja. A belter of a Rioja at £8.40 the glass. The Carpess crianza was a spicy, cherryish dude, cloaked in the smoothest of oak overcoats. Bravo.

Levanter, 10, Square St, Ramsbottom BL0 9AT.

/by
,

Getaria – heady Basque mix of woodsmoke and wild turbot

Chewing the fat, not literally, on a dinner date with a fellow food critic (her review bosses were paying) we inevitably strayed into the territory of ‘What’s been your most memorable meal?’, knowing on both sides of the table there had been plenty of contenders over the  years.

Memorable can mean many things, of course, not all of them positive, but we’ll pass on the shockers. And when we are just seeking superlatives, there is so much to factor in – setting, service, food and wine obviously, company, though if you are reviewing professionally that shouldn’t be taken into account. 

So when I say ‘boning’ clinched it for me I am not being naughty about my all-time favourite. I was swept off my feet by the whole ceremony of separating a turbot from its skeleton. Not just any turbot but the legendary wood-grilled rodaballo (wild turbot) of Getaria on the Basque coast. Elkano was the shrine we sought, arguably Spain’s finest fish restaurant. Unique for a Michelin starred establishment with its cast iron grills glowing intensely outside the front door.

There are several wood grill rivals in this working fishing village but all will doff their berets to this prow-like restaurant way back from the harbour where the legend was born 50 years ago. Founder Pedro Arregui’s magic formula – the fish sprayed with his own oil and vinegar elixir and then grilled for a precise 12 minutes.

Of late the rodaballo dish has travelled far. It’s the calling card of Brat in London, where chef Tomos Parry readily acknowledges its Basque origins; up north it’s a speciality of Joe Botham’s Baratxuri in Ramsbottom and Manchester’s Escape To Freight Island, while a steady stream of 4kg turbot are shipped up from Cornwall to the mighty Pennine grill of the Moorcock at Norland. 

All quite rewarding but in situ? Accept no substitutes. We had managed to get an Elkano lunch booking on a Monday. It was for 2.30pm, giving us plenty of time for a limbering up hike along the wild sea front to Zarautz and back through vine-clad hills producing the seafood-friendly, tart local white, Tzakoli.

Settling into the comfort of Elkano, we asked Pedro’s son and keeper of the flame Aitor to pick a Tzakoli for us from a dozen on the list, all at very affordable prices. He  recommended one particular example, whispering “it’s the only one not from the Getaria area. You’ll love it.” We did and it was a perfect match.

We did. It went well with an unforgettable ‘warm-up’ parade of seafood – notably txangurro (spider crab meat, sautéed with leeks and garlic, spiked with brandy, put back in the shell and browned) and the classic Basque treat, kokotxas (hake throats in a salsa verde). “Just tip them down your throat – it’s all about texture,” said our mentor. 

Yet, of course, this was just the supporting cast for our Wild Turbot to share. It had arrived on the quay at 8am with the rest of the catch. If it had been landed a few hours earlier it wouldn’t have made the cut. Elkano only sticks the freshest fish on its embers. 

Did our rodaballo rock? You bet. We were introduced to the fish by our server before it was salted, sprayed and grilled

Encountering the result on the plate was magical. Aitor, who now runs today’s more stylish restaurant, gave us a masterclass in the various constituents of the fish as he carved them – from the delicate fillets and dark fatty back sections, ribs from which he leached the gelatin with his knife and the succulence of the cheeks. The simple accompaniment just the sweetest of roasted red peppers. 

At dusk we walked off the long lunch around the San Anton headland, known as Getaria’s Mouse because of its shape. It protects the working harbour, once a famous whaling port,  from the Biscay swell. 

Our lodging was the Pension Katrapona. We had arrived the previous evening via a 50-mile shuttle from Bilbao Airport. Equidistant is San Sebastian. The Getaria grills greeted us. At nightcap time the wood smoke from two floors below forced us to retreat indoors from our balcony with its great view of the harbour. We found supper refuge at Jatatxea Iriba in the old town where we devoured a supper of house-cured anchovies, then langoustines and monkfish – from the outside grill naturally.

How did Elkano get its name? From one of Getaria’s two great sons. Balenciaga and Juan Sebastian Elcano make an unlikely pairing. One, the gay son of a sailor and a seamstress who rose to be Paris’s 20th century king of couture, the other an iron man mariner, who after Magellan’s death completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth with a skeleton crew. 

Born 400 years apart, both men are honoured in the town. Balenciaga with a vast modern museum housing 3,000 of his creations, attached incongruously to a palace once home to his aristocratic mentors. Elcano with two statues, the more impressive crowning an old bastion overlooking the port, and his name on the restaurant shrine to the blessed rodaballo.

He’s buried in a less secular place of worship, Getaria’s fortress-like seafront church, San Salvador, which dates from the 14th century and slopes oddly as if it’s about to launch like some fantastic Gothic galleon. How appropriate.

Factfile

Neil flew from Manchester to Bilbao with easyJet. Below, nearer home, a ‘wildharbour’ turbot at the Moorcock and expert carving at Baratxuri.

/by