Another Great Sandwich

Somehow the weekend flew by, without me doing much. And yet I didn’t feel so rested at the end of it all. I got home from dropping Ann at the airport by 7:30, and lay on the couch until the kids begged for pancakes. After breakfast it was time to get the kids ready for their soccer game and head out the door. C.C., who was very clear in the fall about not wanting to play soccer, recently decided that she did, in fact, want to play. Milo´s team is for kindgergarten and first graders, and C.C. is in second grade, but even though the club has a girls´team for her age group, she only wanted to join Milo´s team. Spain is pretty relaxed about these things, so they let her join. As the only girl, a latecomer to the team, and Milo´s sister, she had a rough first couple of weeks. One evening she reported to us that she overheard one of the kids ask Milo, “Who´s that girl?” And Milo replied, “That´s my sister. She´s not very good.” You can imagine how C.C. felt about that. Milo, fortunately, expressed his remorse.




As it turns out, it was their last soccer game at the place they’ve been playing. The place has been so disorganized that the parents have revolted. It seemed as though we had a new coach every week, the kids were getting bored, no one ever told us when the games were. Once the lead scorer decided to move to another club, everyone else followed. The team won its last game, on penalty kicks, and we took a team photo to memorialize the era before moving on.



Alec went to the market and I brought the kids home, monitoring them from the couch while they played. When Alec returned I took a nap—yes, that would be two naps in two days—and was so out of it when my alarm rang that I actually thought it was 7 am, not 7 pm.



Sunday should have been restful, but we set our clocks ahead, and C.C. had a birthday party to be at by 11 am. It was raining and we were disorganized—I had to stop on the way to pick up a gift at OpenCor, and had mistakenly thought the party was on Carrer Argentina (close to our house) when it was actually on Carrer Argenteria (much farther). Dolores, our GPS, kept telling me to go the wrong way on one way streets in the rabbit warren that is the Born. We finally found an illegal parking spot where I could pull over and put on the flashers; we were already a half hour late. I cursed Dolores under my breath and apologized to C.C. for getting the there so late. “That’s okay, Mama,” she said. “I can see that you’re doing the best you can. But if you are frusterated [C.C. gives the word “frustrated” four syllables], maybe you should take three deep breaths.” So I did.



A French kid in C.C.’s class had invited the entire class to a hospitality school, and I rushed her up the steps and into the impressively professional, stainless steel kitchen, where all of her classmates stood around a long table wearing chef hats and aprons, stirring bowls of cookie batter. C.C. suited up and I headed home, to a date with Alec and Milo.



If we had known where the party was, we would have planned it all differently. But we didn’t. After many long conversations, Alec and I had made the difficult decision to move Milo from the wonderful, international Spanish-language school he attended for the two years prior to our Barcelona move to the fabulous public school in our neighborhood that his sister attends. We figured that this would be a good time to break the news to him, without C.C. hovering nearby. We gave him our best sales pitch and he seemed fine with the whole plan; he and C.C. have really enjoyed being at the same school this year.



By then it was time for Alec to go back to the Born to pick up C.C.; Milo and I walked around the corner to pick up his friend, Peter, and I took them both swimming. The plan was for Alec to pick the boys up and leave me to have a workout. We had a phone date with a family in Brooklyn who are thinking of coming here next year. But it turns out that Barcelona’s version of the Tour de France was also happening, and between the time that I dropped C.C. off and Alec picked her up, all of the streets anywhere near the Born were closed, and traffic slowed to a standstill. Which meant that I had to rush home to make the phone date—no workout for me.



Sunday, the day of rest, took my stuffing out of me. But I did make a delicious and easy dinner—sandwiches. Not just any sandwiches, but Flower Market Eggplant Tortilla sandwiches from The New Spanish Table. Here’s the recipe:



Ingredients:

• 2 medium size green bell peppers, cored, cut in half, and seeded (see NOTE below)

• Extra virgin olive oil

• 1 small eggplant (7 – 8 ounces), peeled and cut crosswise into 1/3 inch thick slices

• Coarse salt

• 5 large, very fresh eggs, beaten together with a pinch of salt

• 2 pieces (each 10 inches long) crusty French bread, or focaccia, split horizontally

• 1 ripe tomato, cut in half

• 2 – 3 tablespoons Allioli



1. Preheat the broiler.

2. Roast the green peppers. NOTE: I skipped this step and used roasted red peppers from a jar instead. If you do this, dry them well or you will end up with a soggy sandwich.

3. Place the eggplant in a colander and generously sprinkle salt over it. Let stand for 30 minutes, then rinse off the salt and pat the eggplant dry with paper towels.

4. Heat 3 Tbsp. olive oil in a 10 inch skillet (preferably nonstick) over medium heat. Add as many eggplant slices as will fit in one layer. Cook until soft and golden, 3 – 5 minutes per side, adding olive oil as needed, 1 tsp. at a time if the skillet looks dry (resist adding too much). Pour the eggs over the eggplant and cook until the bottom is set, about 3 minutes, loosening the tortilla with a thin spatula. Reduce the heat to very low, cover the skillet, and cook until the top is set, 2 – 3 minutes longer. Using the spatula, loosen the tortilla from the skillet and slide it onto a plate. Cut the tortilla into strips/rectangles about the same width as the bread.

5. Brush the cut sides of the bread with olive oil and toast under the broiler or on a grill pan until lightly charred and crips. Rut the cut sides of the tomato halves over the cut sides of the bread. Place the bottom half of a piece of bread on a work surface and spread some of the allioli on it. Arrange tortilla and pepper slices on top, then cover with the top half of the bread. Serve immediately and enjoy!

Anya von Bremzen, author of The New Spanish Table, ate these sandwiches at Barcelona´s flower market when she was living here and researching the book. One of these days I’m going to have to get myself to the market and track down the original.