The late, late dinner party

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 7

Alec and I wanted to have Manuel (my mentor, and the person who made our posts here happen) to dinner with his wife, Emma.  He has done a tremendous amount for me, and for us, and is also a delightful person.  I asked Manuel if we should invite anyone else and he suggested one of the top guns at the university, Jordi, who Alec and I had met with and liked.  I knew all of their schedules would be tougher than ours, so I asked them to give us a couple of dates that would work.

Manuel’s assistant emailed me to tell me that the 15^th would be the day---at 9:30 pm!  Perhaps this is the time to tell you about eating hours and habits in Spain, and let’s just say that Spain and I don’t exactly see eye to eye on this one.  Folks tend not to eat much before they leave the house in the morning—maybe a coffee and some bread.  Then around 10 or 11, they have a little something—a bocadillo, perhaps.  No one, and I mean no one, eats lunch before 1:30 pm.  The real lunch “hour” is 2 – 4 pm.  It’s so serious here that you don’t even have to feed your parking meter between 2 and 4, and most restaurants don’t open until 1:30.  Many businesses close during these hours also.  So much for running errands during lunch time—you are supposed to stop and eat.  And not at your desk.  I was talking to one of the graduate students one day and the topic of lunch came up.  “I heard,” she said, “that some people in the states sit at their desks and work while they eat.  Is it true?”  “Yes,” I told her, “It is.”  And I have eaten more lunches at my desk, wolfing down the food and hardly tasting it, than I care to admit.

Lunch is a real meal.  In fact, nearly all restaurants serve a “menu” at lunch time, which consists of three courses for a set price and is a much better deal, price-wise, than ordering a la carte.  I once walked into the university cafeteria to get some lunch at 1 pm.  It was open, but the lunch ladies had to cart stuff out for me, and I was the only person in the entire place until I left at 1:40, when folks were beginning to trickle in.

Tapas are for after work time, around 7 or 8 pm.  But if you are like me and you want to eat dinner before your sleepy head is nodding into your plate, tapas it is.  Most places don’t open for dinner until 9, and if you actually show up at 9, you feel like you’re a senior citizen showing up for the early bird special.

All of which begins to explain how we ended up having a dinner party last night that began very late.  In fact, Manuel poked his head into my office on Thursday and said, “Lisa, I’m sorry, but we need to change the time for the dinner.”  I had been worried about the lateness of the hour and was relieved, assuming that he wanted to move it earlier.  Wrong again.  “Let’s do it at 10,” he said.  “I need to be at an event downtown, and I’m sure I can get to your home by 10.”  “Are you kidding?” I said.  “Okay, but I might be in my pajamas, and the kids will definitely be asleep.” “Then I will wake them up!” he said.  And so 10 pm it was.

We decided to cook from our new favorite, Spanish cookbook (The New Spanish Table, if you are new to this blog).  Alec spent the morning shopping at the market.  Friday morning the market is pretty empty, which would seem to make it a good time to shop.  However, according to Alec, everyone there is an elderly woman, and they are not fast shoppers.  Which brings me to another point about local culture.  When it is your turn at the cheese counter, the post office, the bank, it is your turn.  You might take a half hour asking questions and getting served as the line behind you grows longer and longer, but no one seems to notice.  The person serving you will take as long as you need and never, ever appear impatient.  It is as though no one exists for the server except the person being served.  The server does not even make eye contact with anyone else in line.  No one in the line behind you will grown or plead that they only have a really quick question.  It’s really striking.  I found this out myself the other day when I arrived at a yoga studio 5 minutes before class started and needed to pay.  There was one woman at the counter, and one woman in front of me in line.  She was interested in perhaps joining the studio, and asked questions, filled out forms, looked at brochures.  I stood behind trying to practice breathing in and out and suppressing my urge to ask if I could just pay for the class.  “I’m not in New York City,” I told myself.  “Calm down.”  It didn’t really work.  Finally the woman in front of me turned to me and asked, “Are you in a hurry?”  Which gave me the opening to ask if she would mind terribly if I quickly paid. 

Suffice it to say that Alec was gone more than three hours, but at least he enjoys that kind of thing.  He had gotten up before 5 am to take Darryl and Matt to the airport, so he caught a nap in the afternoon while I picked up the kids and took them on a playdate.

By the time we got home, he was in heavy duty prep mode.  Given the late hour for the dinner, we decided not to start with a lot of heavy cheese.  Instead we served some olives and pistachios, and took advantage of the fact that it’s mushroom season to make one appetizer.  It’s a Catalan dish that consists of wild mushrooms (we had three kinds), sautéed with some garlic and finely chopped jamon serano—we made a nice dent in my birthday pig leg with that dish.  You serve the mushrooms on toasted country bread with a little dollop of aioli (the Catalans put aioli on everything) on top.  I couldn’t stop eating them they were so good.

Then we moved to the table for a first course of chard and baby carrots, cooked with chile and smoked sweet paprika, over rice.  Very subtle but nicely spiced.  Spanish food is much less spicy than you might think.  Alec cooked a Basque merluza dish (merluza is hake in the US) with green sauce and served it with roasted potatoes for the main course.  He had made the merluza once before and it totally rocked.  This time, he cooked it in our new cazuela—a large earthenware pot that you can put on the stove or in the oven.  We had bought in last weekend in Cadaques, and the first thing we had to do was to soak it for 24 hours.  It’s pretty big, so it spent an entire day and night in our bathtub.  Alec was not so happy with its performance last night—he could not get it hot enough to get a crust on the fish, but no one noticed the missing crust and it was absolutely delicious.  For dessert, I made the fig tart again.  I think it will be one of those things I make whenever I can get good figs—like the recipe I use for peach blueberry cake in the summer.  It’s that good.

We kept the kids up, which they thought was terrific and which made Manuel happy.  Over dinner we talked about everything you’re not supposed to discuss—religion, politics, money.   We spoke Spanish the entire evening, which was good for me although I missed some of the nuances of the conversation and had to ask for translations of some words, like pederasta translated (it means pedophile).  Round about 2 am everyone decided it was time to go home—although Manuel, who had been working all day and given a talk in the evening, was fresh as a daisy while I was seriously considering putting toothpicks in my eyelids to keep them open.  We called a taxi for Manuel and Emma, and Jordi hopped on his scooter.   Alec and I cleaned up enough to not dread what it would mean to face it in the morning, and managed to stay in bed until nearly 9.  We’re all a little ragged today, but what’s a little tiredness in the grand scheme of things?