Andalucía Day at Binomio

Lunch at Binomio in Sevilla
[click on image to enlarge]

This past Monday was Andalucía Day and, as I spent the long weekend in Sevilla and Ronda, it was fitting that we had a special lunch on Monday that was made entirely of products and wines from Andalucía. At the suggestion of Shawn from Sevilla Tapas we went to Binomio and I was delighted to see that they not only had Botani on the wine list (both by the glass and bottle) but that they also had Botani 2010.  After talking with owner Juan Luís we decided to go with a “tasting menu” of his own devising, which included a few dishes that weren’t on the menu.

We started with marinated sardines on sesame toasts, followed by a delicious soup made of tomatoes and langoustines from Sanlúcar de Barrameda. After that came the best bulltail croquettes I’ve ever tasted, and Juanlu recommended a lovely Gobernador oloroso from Jerez to go with it. He was right, it paired perfectly with the strong flavours in the croquettes. After this we returned to our Botani and had grilled mackerel with mango compote and an elaborately prepared marinated & baked tomato – all delicious – and then a swordfish tataky with tomato tartare sauce, grilled presa with courgette “raviolis” and a creamy wild mushroom risotto. We finished off with a wonderful selection of desserts and were left totally satisfied.

It was my first visit to Binomio and I will certainly be back. The food was amazing, as you can see in the photos, and the service very professional and personable.

Binomio
Juan de Zoyas 5
Tel. 955 54 57 23
41018 Sevilla

Vineyard Visit

Yesterday I had the chance to meet a friend of my brother Jorge’s, Dana Street, who runs the Fore Street Restaurant in Portland Maine. He was in Spain with his team, Sam Hayward, Riley Shryock and Ken Thomas, to do research on Spanish food and wine for their new tapas restaurant and we had arranged to visit the vineyard and have lunch together. As Shawn Hennessey from Sevilla Tapas was also in town I invited her to join us.

We started off at the vineyard in Almáchar, and then had a quick Botani wine tasting up at one of the farms before heading back down to Málaga to have lunch at one of my favourite restaurants, Andrés Maricuchi.

Below you can see some photos taken by Shawn. In this one you can see both mountain and sea views from the vineyard (click on image to enlarge).

Here is the wine tasting up at the farm where we sampled some Botani 2009.

By this time everyone was starving and, as usual, Andrés Maricuchi served up a wonderful feast, and personally served us the salt-baked pargo.

Here is Andrés Maricuchi showing us some biznaga that had been made for a party that evening. A biznaga is a small floral arrangement made of jasmine flowers. The little flowers are mounted onto the dried stalk of another Mediterranean plant known as “ammi visage” and then set into a cactus leaf. The jasmine flowers are picked at dusk when they are still closed so that it is easier to string them together. At nigthfall the blossoms open up creating a beautiful white ball of fragrance.

As you can see, we all had a great time. It was lovely meeting Dana & company and I wish them much success with their upcoming venture. Also many thanks to Shawn for taking these photos.

Lunch with Debbie & Randy Lewis

A few photos of my visit with Debbie and Randy Lewis, mutual friends of Master Sommelier Sara Floyd, and the owners of Lewis Cellars, a family-run winery that is considered to be one of the best in the Napa Valley. They were in recently on vacation in Andalucia and I joined them for lunch at El Caleño in Pedregalego Playa, the fisherman’s quarter of Málaga. It’s the best place for fresh pescaito and seafood … and we really had a lot! And guess with which wine.

Wonderful seafood lunch at El Caleño in Málaga.
[click on photo to enlarge]

Debbie & Randy at the barbeque boat.

Málaga Book Club

Believe it or not this is a reading club: very intellectual guys who love talking about books over a good meal and even better wines. The gatherings are at my apartment, less frequently than we would like because of my constant travelling. The books we talked about on this occasion were: Il Giorno Prima Della Felicità by Erri de Luca, about the initiation into adulthood of a young boy in Naples through his friendship with Don Gaetano, the porter of the condominium where he lives, written with an austere, direct style which is very much to my taste; and Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes, author of Flaubert’s Parrot. We also talked about his brother Jonathan Barnes, the philosopher, who is present in this novel about the fear of dying. I read this author for the first time because of my love of Flaubert who is one of my favourite novelists, along with Nabokov and Thomas Mann. But at the top of the list is the king of the psychological novel, Natsume Soseki. I’ll go back to this author in another blog post, he deserves it. We also discussed Tierra desacostumbrada (title in Spanish for Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri). I haven’t read this book yet, but my friends say it’s a very moving, very well written collection of stories about Bengali immigrants in the US. And in spite of this it’s a best seller!

We finished our meeting, as always, by reciting poetry. This time Spanish poems: Elegy by Miguel Hernandez (this year we celebrate 100 years of his birth); Coplas a La Muerte de Mi Padre by Jorge Manrique, one of the most precious jewels of Spanish literature ever; and Federico García Lorca, some poems from Poet in New York.

Of course we talked about many other things during the 5 hours that our tertulia lasted, and as you can see, a good time was had by all.

What are some of your favourite books?