Catalan Food Coma

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 5

I checked the New York Times website when I got up yesterday morning, as I often do, and learned of the ferocious storm that had hit New York City.  A tornado?!?  How odd.  At that very moment a wall-shaking thunderclap sounded and the living room was lit up by the glow of the lightning that followed.  Suddenly I felt as though my two homes were strangely aligned; parallel universes perhaps.

It is the first rain we´ve had since we got here, unless you count the downpour in which we got stuck when we were hiking in the Pyrenees.  Normally heavy morning traffic slows to a crawl, if this first experience is any indication of what happens in Barcelona when it rains.  My rainboots and slicker have not yet arrived from New York City—any day now, they tell us—so I donned my platform sandals in order to raise myself as high as possible from the puddles.  It worked, sort of.

Once I got to my office I found myself a comfortable chair in the Open Source Room, which is furnished with couches and good reading lamps, and a coffee makers.  And then… I started to read a book.  This may not seem like such a big deal to you, but it is one of the first intellectual books I have read in many months.  I have started some, skimmed others.  But this one I intend to finish.  Sharon Zukin´s The Naked City: The death and life of authentic urban places, which is about the transformation of New York City over the past few decades, and it has an interesting resonance in Barcelona, which has a real air of authenticity about it but also shows indications of threat by gentrification.  You can see the Mediterranean from this particular room—it is beyond the urban landscape, but it´s there.  And for me the sea is life-giving, so I like to put myself within its range whenever I can.

I have a colleague in New York who once told me that when he was on sabbatical after a particularly gruelling turn in administration, he put himself on a schedule to train himself how to read again.  I am so accustomed to moving quickly from meeting to meeting, to reading many things at once, that my attention span has diminished.  I revel in the opportunity to read for long stretches, but I am not sure I remember how to do it.  So it was a good idea for me to move away from my computer screen and phone, and isolate myself with the printed word.

At lunch with Alec and a colleague I ordered the merluza, a sweet, flaky white fish.  It came not only whole, but presented in such a way that it was curved into a circle, it´s mouth open and positioned to chomp on its tail.  This was unfortunate for me, and also seemed ignominious position for the fish who, at that point, could do nothing about it.  Once I convinced myself that he was not giving me the evil eye, it was quite good.

After a brief respite from the rain, it poured again in the evening, right when we headed out the door to go to dinner with Doc.  We ate at Cinc Sentits, which means Five Senses in Spanish.  You have to get one of two tasting menus there, and we all had the Menu Essencia—6 courses—rather than the 8 course Menu Sensacions.  The chef uses only ingredients he can get in the market, and cooks a lot of things sous vide, a technique where the food is sealed—often with juices and spices—into a plastic sack and cooked in warm water for a very long time at a very low temperature.  The method has been a bit controversial because some believe that the food can’t be safe unless it’s cooked at a higher temperature.  But let me tell you, the results were outrageous.  Very tender and highly flavoured meats, like my pork belly that had been cooked for 12 hours and melted in my mouth.  What else did we have—squid and beef albondigas with romesco sauce and squid ink foam; Crema catalana flavoured ice cream bathed in cold, creamy citrus soup.  And a little plate of sweet delectables at the very end, one of which looked just like a sunny side up egg on a spoon.  You put the whole thing in your mouth and suddenly got a burst of passion fruit and white chocolate.  Amazing, and I don’t even like white chocolate. 

It was a memorable meal, although I have to say I think I’m getting too old for these multi-course tasting menus, especially when you don’t start eating until 9:30 at night.  After 4 or 5 courses I begin to feel like I’m saturated with richness.  The courses are small, so it’s not really the quantity of food, but rather the practice of boiling down a bushel full of mushrooms to get a thimble full of sauce.  I had to go straight to bed when we got home, even though I felt too full to sleep. But I did, slipping into a

Catalan food coma until C.C. woke me up to change the batteries in her video camera. She’s been busy, so stay tuned!

www.cincsentits.com