Language, Food, and Books

I went to my second French class this morning. For preparation I read about 90 pages of Alex Garland’s La Plage this week. It was slow going but I understand almost everything and I like the story enough to want to continue. When I say slow going I mean really slow and at this rate it will take me a month to finish this 490 page novel.  I studied every day this week for at least an hour.  I think that I will be pretty diligent about my French this time around as I now know a lot more about how to learn a language than I did a few years ago when I last studied French.  I think that it could be completely passable very soon.  I also watched a bit of French TV (we get two channels here) although I didn’t understand much.

I told my French teacher that I wanted to learn how to make my way around a kitchen in French. To that aim I started looking at some French recipes. In just one recipe I came across the following new verbs (new for me):

Éplucher – peel    

Saupoudrer – sprinkle

Émincer – slice      

Écumer - skim

Verser – pour        

Foudre – melt, dissolve

Écraser – crush

It took me a while to get comfortable with kitchen Spanish so I don’t plan on making that mistake again. I figure that I can learn quite a lot of the necessary vocabulary in a few weeks. I already know most of the vocabulary for food so I’m not doing too badly. For my first dish I plan on making boeuf bourguignon which is a lot like coq au vin which I have made before (see my video).  I’ve been looking for something new to cook so tapping into the French classics should be a gold mine.

I haven’t stopped learning Spanish and to that effect I am getting on the Stieg Larsson bandwagon. Today I’ll start reading the first in his Millennium trilogy called Los Hombres que No Amaban a las Mujeres.  I saw the movie dubbed into Spanish so reading the book should be fairly easy. However, I still read rather slowly in Spanish (as compared to English) and at 665 pages this could take me a while. I also have the next two books in the trilogy on my shelf if I choose to continue with the saga. For me the important thing is reading, no matter what it is. Someone else wants to read this book after me so I’d better get cracking.

In the Kitchen, En la Cocina, Dans la Cuisine

Summer supposedly died over a week ago but someone forgot to give it the bad news here in Valencia. I haven’t put on anything but flip-flops since May (besides my cycling cleats). I have the flip-flop tan lines on my feet to prove it. My long pants haven’t left the closet since I can’t remember when.  I woke up this morning and it was overcast and cool, not cold but cool and I thought that I at least need to put the glass back into the big picture windows in the back of the apartment. I have really enjoyed how open the place looks without the glass in the windows.  It has been like living in a beach cabana all summer.

I think that summer is a good thing and they say that all good things must end. The good news here in Spain is that this good thing ends really, really, slowly, especially this year. As much as I love the fall weather—it’s great for cycling—I am  clinging to summer like a shipwreck victim grasping a piece of driftwood.


I do hope for a little bit of rain. Granted, I am hoping that it only rains at night when I'm sleeping but we need the rain if we are going to have a successful mushroom crop this fall. Last year it was so dry that you barely noticed mushrooms in the market. I saw a few kinds of mushrooms at the market the other day and they were horribly expensive. With a few good rains we will be up to our chef knives in these delicacies. Now that the hottest weather is behind us the spores are just waiting for a bit of water to offer themselves up.

Another basic ingredient in my kitchen is sun-dried tomatoes. A friend gave me a big bunch of tomatoes his father made this summer that I have been using in everything. I find that the tomatoes now aren’t quite as amazing as they were only a couple weeks ago so sauces requiring tomatoes definitely could use a little help from the sun-dried variety. I even used a couple in the sofrito for my paella the other day. The ones I was given were salt-cured so you need to soak them in water a bit before using and then adjust the dish you are making as they will still retain a bit of their saltiness.

I have been searching for my next dish to prepare. In the meantime I have been making paella almost every Sunday for the past month—a very Valenciano thing to do I might add. I love paella but I love making it even more.  I have been using an old Valencia trick when making paella on the stove top. I place newspaper around the stove and on the floor when frying the chicken and rabbit parts so I don’t have so much grease to clean up afterwards. Probably not the smartest  thing to do as far as fire safety but once you add the water to the pan you just have to throw away the paper and your kitchen is pretty much back to the state it was in before you started. I actually have a fire extinguisher in my kitchen—not that I would think that fast if I went up in flames but still. I like to look good at least on paper. I meant that figuratively and I wasn't saying that I like to look good while going up in flames while standing on oil-soaked newspaper.

As I’ve been writing this I have been thinking about what I will work on in my French class this morning. I want to talk about cooking. As it turns out I still remember most of the vocabulary so now I need to work a bit on tying all of it together with the proper verbs and their forms.  In the area of foreign foods, maybe I'll make another video in Spanish as the last one I did was a couple of years ago and now it makes me cringe to watch it.  I’m rather embarrassed by my performance so if you want to see it you’ll have to look for yourself but I’ll give you a hint: How to Make Fabada Asturiana (I changed the title to Fabada Valenciana after a few complaints from Spanish purists). It’s not like I made a lot of mistakes but I just talk so slowly and deliberately.  So today I will work on my kitchen French. À bientôt. 

*The photo shows my new sun-dried tomatoes, fresh rosemary I picked with blossoms, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. What more do you need? 

Enjoying It While It Lasts

The “it” here is the fact that Valencia CF is in first place in the Spanish Liga and first place in group C of the Champions League. Not bad considering that we sold off our two best players—David Villa to Barça and David Silva to Manchester City.

I don’t normally write about football this much, I swear, but Valencia CF is kicking ass, taking names, and, as I said, sits at the top of the Spanish Liga after game #5 in the season. Valencia managed a heroic 1-1 draw with Atlético de Madrid at home on Wednesday evening and then thoroughly trounced Sporting de Gijón 0-2 on Saturday. In other big news Real Madrid crawled away from Valencia after a 0-0 draw with recently promoted Levante UD here on Saturday. Sevilla was beaten by another promoted club as they lost 2-0 against Alicante’s Hécules. Hécules also beat Barcelona 0-2 this year.

Valencia CF fans also have a great Champions League match this week here at Mestalla against Manchester United on Wednesday at 21:00. I am predicting that Valencia will lead their group. Not only that, I think we won’t be beat in our group C which also includes Glasgow Rangers and Bursaspor.

Más Música Española

Probably my favorite Spanish group is Ojos de Brujo (Eyes of the Soccerer). There almost seems to be a Mason-Dixon line here in Spain as far as flamenco goes. It isn’t too popular here in Valencia but my last roommate was from Murcia and she turned me on to all of this great music. I suppose that Murcia is more Andulucía than Valencia as it lies between these two large and influential provinces. I think Ojos de Brujo exemplifies the best in this sort of new flamenco. Their music is technically complex (There are at least nine members playing at any given note in the song) and charged with a sort of hippie politics, although—at least from what I can discern—nothing really overtly political. The urban legend is that the band lived in a squat in Barcelona back in their early days (defying the North-South divide in flamenco). Great music for cooking.

Sultanas De Merkaillo

Agüita cristalina es lo que quiero
Fuentes de Alhambra mora pa mis adentros
Hogueras de cariño sin posesiones
ay! somos indigentes de mil amores.

Dunas y arena fina de cobre dorao
Levantan la mañana lunares y morao
Sultanas de las calles y de los montones
Fuego y metales calientes de mil canciones.

Corazones llenos, bolsillos vacíos (hearts full and pockets empty)
Tesoros de rumba y fuego, sultanas de mercaíllo
Mi casa donde me encuentro chabolillas por los caminos
"sound sistem" en las paradas, improvisando con chatitos de vino
Y es que la vida es así, la vida es así...
Cada una vive como puede o como le dejan vivir.

Pasa, pasa, tristeza pasa, pasa
Pasa por un momento y entra calor
Fuego y abrasa, pasa!

Pasa, pasa, tristeza pasa, pasa
Pasa por un momento y entra calor
Fuego y abrasa, pasa!

Siguiendo la cadencia desmesurada
Espera en compañía que llegue el alba
Viajeros de la noche y de las pasiones..
Fuego y metales calientes de mil canciones.

Pasa, pasa
Riqueza de verdad no tiene precio ni se compra, ni se vende
Rumba y entra calor
Libre, "Techarí" que no manda ni obedece "jala, jala"
Pasa, pasa, "jala, jala" "jala, jala, jala"
Rumba y entra calor, fuego y abrasa, pasa!

Pasa, pasa, tristeza pasa, pasa
Pasa por un momento y entra calor
Fuego y abrasa, pasa!

Pasa, pasa, tristeza pasa, pasa
Pasa por un momento y entra calor
Fuego y abrasa, pasa!

Hurry Up and Slow Down

I have been thinking lately that the one thing that I hate above almost all else in life is being in a hurry. I really hate being rushed. I hate not having time to linger over a cup of coffee in a café. I hate riding my bike like a maniac across town because I’m late for something (riding fast because I love riding fast is OK). I hate not having enough time to savor the moment because I think that I have to be somewhere else that is somehow more important. I always say that if you’re in a hurry it means that you just planned poorly. I try not to plan poorly.

Hurried car drivers are the bane of my existence here in Valencia. Someday I will totally lose my shit and kill a driver for nearly killing me. Just the other day some capullo on a really big motor scooter almost cut me in half as I was pedaling through a crosswalk. I detoured, humped a couple of blocks up the road, and caught him as he was stopped at a traffic light. I stopped next to him and knocked on his helmet to get his attention (sort of an asshole thing to do I’ll admit). I asked him where he was going in such a hurry. Was he delivering a transplant organ? Was he a fireman racing to save lives?

The mere fact of being in an automobile seems to make people in a hurry. Even though cars are supposed to be such a great way to get around quickly they don’t seem quick enough for most drivers. Riding a bike doesn’t turn me into a raging asshole so perhaps the lesson here is to just stay out of cars. I remember back when I had a car what really drove me crazy was looking for a parking spot—not a problem on a bike, of course. Being in a hurry really is at odds with Mediterranean life. They should make you leave your car 50 kilometers from the coast.

It may seem ironic to write about pressure cookers while raging against people being in a hurry but I like my pressure cooker for many reasons and not just because it’s fast. Among other things, the energy efficiency is remarkable. I have begun to use it more and more. Before I primarily used my pressure cooker for making beans as it cuts the cooking time down from several hours to 22-24 minutes. Now I am using it for meats. I browned a chicken in the pot the other day. I removed the browned pieces and removed the skin. In the same oil I sautéed carrots, onion, garlic, celery, and freshly grated tomatoes. Grated tomatoes are something you see in a lot of Mediterranean cooking and a process I had never seen before. You simply chop the tomato in half, squeeze out the seeds, and grate it over a cheese grater and discard the skin. They use this grated tomato, along with chopped onion and garlic, sautéing it in olive oil to make sofrito (sofregit in Valenciano), a simple sauce which forms the base of many dishes.

I added a cup of red wine to the vegetables and when this cooked down a bit I added the chicken pieces. When most of the fluid had evaporated I added about two cups of water and put the lid on the pressure cooker. For seasoning I added pimentón (Spanish paprika), bay leaves, and a bit of cumin. I cooked this at medium pressure for 12 minutes.