I've enthused about the Mercat de Sant Antoni before, a beautiful Victorian building in the shape of an X between the old part of town (Ciutat Vella) and the newer Eixample. That building's undergoing a massive renovation but they've moved the food vendors into a block-long big tent.
These include multiple fruit vendors; separate vegetable vendors; poultry and rabbit merchants; Spanish ham and pork purveyors; beef, lamb, and goat; bacalao vendors and fresh fish mongers. Interestingly, all the fish mongers use this amazingly scary tool to skin, debone, filet and otherwise prepare the fish upon request. As Crocodile Duneee said, "That's a knife!" Check the depth of that blade, it's seems like it'd be hard to control but they use them with precision, like scalpels.
The market was heaving today, a Friday before a long weekend. The fish counters were especially busy. After waiting 10 minutes to grab someone's attention, they asked for my number -- but I didn't realize I needed one -- next!
We hit another one who was less busy, someone Irene had purchased from before. We didn't know what the fish was but a lot of folks were buying them from other vendors, cut into steaks, and this was her last specimen. We asked what it was (in our best Spanish) and were told it was Merluza (hake), and that was line caught. Turns out that the Spanish eat more of this than anyone else in Europe. The price? under €10/Kg (less than under $5/pound). She asked how we wanted it cut -- like steaks? -- but Irene hates bones so we gestured for filets, skinned. She asked if we wante the head -- for soup? -- and I overrode Irene and said yes. She ripped the gills out of the head, cut out the other unwanted bits, expertly fileted the fish in an unusual way (cutting the bones off the flesh, instead of the other way around) chopped up the spine for the soup, and wrapped it all up. Probably took 5 minutes; would have taken me 15 or more myself, but we don't have knives that would do the job where we're staying.
She also had great piles of monkfish liver, "hidago", which we'd only seen in pricy Japanese places: at €4.50/Kg, we got a big lump to play with. She indicated we'd just do it simply on a plancha, a grill, with a bit of oil and salt. Very direct presentation, allowing the flavor to speak for itself.
I really love the personal service we get here, and appreciate a chance to practice Spanish.
We wanted something else for later in the weekend, and with the holiday coming, figured that markets might not be open. We'd been seeing these golden skinned chickens, and thought we'd have the time over the weekend to roast one. These aren't tortured factory chicken with their beaks cut off -- in fact, they had their heads on when we bought them! We asked our butcher to cut off the head and remove the backbone, and she volunteered to clean out the gizzard, split the neck and spine for soup, and give us the liver. Again, our butcher spent 5-10 minutes, with knives and heavy shears, preparing our bird exactly as we needed. It was under €8 for a chicken with deeply golden skin, like it had been eating something other than what our pallid birds back home get. We plan to oven roast it simply, with a bunch of garlic; maybe we can find some rosemary growing around here to stuff under the skin.
It's crazy but we haven't had the famous jamon all the time we've been here. Everyone's got it, legs of ham hanging, even in your basic grocery store. Some you can buy whole, some you can buy by sliced by the butcher. They're very, very careful with their technique: this stuff's precious. We noticed the great attention he paid as he trimmed it, then shaved thin slices off, parallel to the bone, incorporating the intramuscular fat that melts on the tongue like butter, contrasting with the salty, rich, porcine taste of the flesh. We splurged on the top-shelf Jamón Ibérico de Bellota, the black-footed pig; at €85/Kg ($43/pound), we got 100 grams, worth every penny. I'd love to figure a way of getting one of these entire legs back home. (OMFG, these aren't cheap in Spain by any stretch, but check the price from La Tienda, the first to be allowed to import it into the US: $900). For a special snack, we didn't need much. As he was slicing, we asked how we say 100 grams properly, "cien grammos o ciento grammas"; it's the former. I like getting a Spanish lesson with my ham.
It's so refreshing to get personal service, exactly what we want, and some preparations that would be tedious or difficult for us to do, though we're fearless cooks. It's actually a joy to watch such expert craftspeople (over half the vendors, mongers and butchers were women) ply their trade. The care that the merchants put into preparing their products, and the time they take to slice, cut, quarter, gut, clean the food is wonderful.
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