Essex Eating in Seville

A few weeks ago, I descended on Southern Spain, like an Essex accented pestilence stripping bare their bars of tapas, beer and sherry whilst leaving in my wake dazed, starving Spaniards who didn’t quite know what had hit them.

A major part of my ‘Essex pestilence tour’ was spent in Seville. An ancient city of culture, oranges, flamenco, tapas and errr…shoe shops. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many shoes for sale anywhere on the planet, but I digress, my entire focus was on eating and drinking, muchos, and that’s an aim I achieved for the three days I was there.

The budget didn’t stretch to fine dining and to be honest, that’s not the sort of place I’m after in Spain, because you can eat and drink incredibly well for relatively sod all at the less salubrious end of the scale. I’m at my happiest propped up at a bar, with a glass of sherry at 1.5 euros a glass, and with tapas just as much of a giveaway bargain, tipping both into my mouth, conveyor belt style, all night long.

So, bearing that in mind, here are the places I enjoyed the most on my brief visit.

La Brunilda

The food I ate here was without a doubt the best food I ate in Andalucía in the two weeks or so I was there. It was so good in fact, despite only being in Seville for three days and having a whole host of restaurants to try, I ate there twice.

Chef, Diego Caminos’ menu features traditional tapas with a modern slant, such as a take on Salmorejo featuring orange, raisins, mackerel and cress.

Other stand out dishes I wolfed down over the two visits included a beautifully flavoured and textured risotto (in fact one of the best I’ve eaten anywhere) which featured the unlikely pairing of a sweet red wine reduction, truffle oil, orange and asparagus.

Excellent salt cod fritters with pear alioli.

Foie gras cooked ‘a la plancha’.

A slider style veal burger, which was delicious.

In fact, everything I ate here from start to finish was superb. Nothing disappointed, and as you can see from the pics, I gave the menu a pretty thorough going over. Even better, it was incredibly cheap. If you’re visiting Seville, I can’t recommend this place enough.

La Brunilda

c/ Galera 5

(near Mercado Arenal)

Telephone: 954 220 481

Eslava

I had a cracking lunch at Eslava, standing outside on the pavement basking in the warmth of the Spanish midday sun. When I arrived, it was rammed, with more people turning up the whole time. It’s definitely a popular joint. The prices are ridiculously cheap; hardly anything on the tapas menu is above 3 Euros. As you can imagine, I happily took advantage of the fact.

My ‘I’ll stick anything in my mouth’ outlook demanded that I started off with some of the Sangre Encebollada (a sort of black pudding made from fried chicken blood). To be honest, I can’t say I was a massive fan; it was quite flavourless and had a texture somehow reminiscent of biting into a lump of Plasticine.

Shaking my head to clear horrific flashbacks to childhood culinary experimentation, I moved onto the much more agreeable, roasted pork ribs with rosemary honey glaze. These were excelllent. 

Green Pepper stuffed with Hake was also pretty damn nice as was a piece of roasted mackerel.

Scallops with seaweed puree and rather pretentious sounding kataifi noodles (turns out it's a type of finely shredded filo) were also good.

Finally, if you thought the noodles sounded a  bit special, how about a slow cooked egg served on a mushroom cake with caramelized wine reduction? Posh but peasant(ly) priced at 2 Euro 50 (see what I did there?) In case you're wondering, it was pretty nice actually.

Eslava

c/Eslava 5

Telephone: 954 906 568

La Azotea

La Azotea felt somewhat similar to La Brunilda with regards to the modern take on traditional tapas. No surprise then that I liked it so much.

Croquettas with an Oso Buco filling. Errr....Hell yes!

Even better, Iberico Pork cheek and goats cheese gratin.

A plate of Morcilla with caramelized onion and quails egg was similarly delicious.

The only dish that didn’t quiet come off was a special of avocado and cucumber salmorejo (so basically guacamole, yeah?) with fried baby squid. It was incredibly rich, thick and cloying. It didn’t matter though, as with the other places I’ve recommended above, the menu was priced so you can romp through it to your hearts content and not really have to worry about the bill too much. Got to love that.

La Azotea

Jesús del Gran Poder, 31

Telephone: 955 116 748

Casa Morales

Finally, how about something a bit more traditional? A proper bar, which does excellent, old school tapas. They must be doing something right, it’s been open since 1850. It’s very atmospheric, battered, noisy, packed and most importantly, cheap.

This is the perfect place to stand at the battered age worn bar, necking bargain sherry or a cold beer and topping yourself up with jamon.

Casa Morales

Garcia de Vinuesa 11

Massive thanks to Shawn of Sevilla Tapas for all the tips.

Essex Eating in Spain - Núñez de Prado Olive Oil

The surrounding countryside on the hour long bus journey from Córdoba provided a constant reminder of why I was travelling on this ageing coach in blistering heat. With my head resting against the glass, I watched reflected a continuous vista of olive groves stretching up and down in beautifully neat lines over the gently undulating hills, nothing else but olive trees, trailing off into the distance in every direction.

Stepping off the bus, in an incredibly louche manner, I took in my surroundings, the rather sleepy Spanish market town of Baena, destination for a fair amount of the olives I’d seen on the journey, there to be squashed relentlessly and mercilessly at the hands of Núñez de Prado, makers of some of the finest organic olive oil you can get your grubby mitts on, which was exactly what I had in mind.

Taking a swig of water and bemusedly studying the map on my phone, I wandered off aimlessly into town, accompanied by Elly, in search of the famous olive oil mill, determined to bluster, cajole, bribe or threaten my way in (as it turned out, there was no need for any of this, they happily let anyone in).

Arriving unannounced in the oil mill office and enquiring about the possibility of a site tour I was a little taken aback to have the President of the company, Francisco Núñez de Prado (or Paco to his pals) stepping up to act as guide.

Joined by a handful of fellow olive oil tourists we were led around the mill by the extremely entertaining Paco, who explained the process in English, Spanish and French – with a little German thrown in, just for the sheer hell of it.

The Núñez de Prado family have been making Olive Oil for seven generations and have eschewed the use of chemicals in the growing process since 1986 being subsequently certified organic in 1990.

Harvest season runs from November-January with 160 employees picking the olives entirely by hand ‘working really fast’.

The olives are crushed in terrifying looking, rolling, heavy granite presses which date from just after the Spanish Civil War, in 1944 and were installed by Paco’s father.

The resulting paste is then hydraulically pressed. They only produce Extra Virgin Olive Oil and there is only a 1st cold pressing.

The company’s primo product is Flor de Aceite or ‘Flower of the oil’ a free run EVOO that is produced by squeezing the crushed olive oil paste between mats, 10 kilos between each mat with a total of a tonne being pressed at a time. The end product is the oil that seeps out. 11 kilos of olives are needed to make just 1 litre of this oil.

After pressing the olive oil is pumped into glass tanks that are hermetically sealed to prevent flavour contamination. As the oil sits, it separates naturally from the water, which is then pumped away. Nothing is wasted, this ‘black water’ and the leftover crushed, tasteless olive oil paste is combined and used on the olive groves as a fertiliser.

The finished oil is then rested for a couple of months before bottling.

And that is more or less that. We then got the opportunity to purchase some of this exceptional product at almost ridiculous knock down prices £4.25 for a bottle of the Flor de Aceite. Thank you very much, stick me down for a case.

I found the whole thing fascinating, probably because the process is so beautifully simple, just like me. Also, I hadn’t really considered how olive oil was actually made, I mean, I had intelligently surmised you squashed the olives, but had absolutely no idea what the actual squashing operation looked like. Now I do. Artisanal squashy.

Afterwards we had a quick wander around Baena, noting that olives, somewhat unsurprisingly for a town surrounded by the things, are sold absolutely everywhere.

Feeling a bit sharp-set and having an hour or so to kill before our bus back to Córdoba we wandered into a bar down the road from the bus station, where the bocadillos we ordered (despite taking an age to arrive, what with the kitchen actually making a tortilla from scratch for the filling) were each about the heft of a midget’s arm. These combined with some patatas and a bottle of water came to10 Euros. Bar La Tella, I salute you and your two-fingered attitude to proportion.

I have much to share with you all about Spain in the coming weeks. I basically ate and drank my way non-stop around three cities, no doubt forever ruining my health, just for this blog and its readers. I really hope all 3 of you appreciate it.

Essex Eating does Jerez - Part 2

Whenever I happen to be abroad, one of my favourite pastimes is wandering around a supermarket. It can keep me amused for hours. On my recent sherry jaunt to Jerez, I had ample opportunity to indulge. It doesn’t have to be a posh delicatessen, full of premium produce, I’m more than happy playing the tourist in the foreign equivalent of Co-op. I find it endlessly fascinating. Marvelling at the shelves stocked with exotic ingredients and staring uncomprehending at all kinds of no doubt mundane, yet intriguingly mysterious items with suitably unpronounceable names. I mentally compare prices with the UK; study the locals and what they’re buying (in a totally non creepy way) and just generally be a total supermercado geek 

So, bearing this in mind, imagine how I felt when confronted with Jerez’s massively impressive indoor market. Jam packed with locals shopping, gossiping and bustling around a huge hall filled with fishmonger’ s counters, each piled high with a bewildering array of fresh seafood of every kind imaginable.

Massive prawns, (which as fans of comedian Stewart Lee will know, signify quality of life). Tiny little jumping shrimp, heaps of beautiful looking fish, next to heaps of ugly ass sea monsters. Flat fish, fat fish, catfish. Gigantic cross sections of ruby red Tuna and something that looked a hell of a lot like shark. Basically the whole cast of Finding Nemo, caught, gutted and displayed on ice for your viewing pleasure. I was endlessly impressed.

Radiating out from the fishy heart of the market, surrounding areas specialise in fruit and veg or charcuterie, whilst outside, there are small ramshackle looking stalls selling foraged herbs and greens. Out back, in an alley, there’s a small café seemingly frequented by market traders. At 11am, I notice approvingly, they’re already knocking back the sherry.

Although it’s hardly surprising when you consider that Jerez is sherry city, and an ice cold glass of Fino in any bar will set you back around 1 Euro 20, (96p). Being an absolute sherry fiend, and with the sun beating down in an appropriately scorchio fashion, I took full advantage of the fact and drank frigging gallons of the stuff at every opportunity. Don’t mind if I do.

Obviously, all this amazing boozing needs accompanying grub to soak up the alcohol and the Spaniards have it totally covered in the form of tapas. As with the sherry, in Jerez it’s ridiculously cheap. Around 2.5 Euro for a small plate, which meant that as well as spending most of my time suitably leathered, I was also stuffing my face silly, pretty much constantly. As you can imagine, it was hellish.

At this point, I have to mention one of the best things I ate, Chicharones, deep fried rendered pork offcuts flavoured with rosemary. Extremely porky, meaty and surprisingly soft and ungreasy. These were crazy cheap and sold by the kilo. Holy Moly, that’s what I’m talking about. Despite realising that my arteries were noticeably hardening as I stuffed one after the other into my already addicted gob. I just couldn’t leave them alone and kept going until I’d eaten the whole frigging lot. Disgusted with myself, I vowed to cleanse my innards with more sherry.

I’m pleased to say that as well as eating whilst walking around, I also found time to munch sitting down. 

There were a couple of places I particularly liked. Although a little touristy perhaps, the rather impressive looking El Gallo Azul, right in the centre of Jerez, just across from the market served up some lovely tapas. We spent an entire afternoon there, sitting in the sun, perched at a barrel, eating our way through the menu, drinking La Ina Fino and people watching.

Salmorejo, a southern Spanish dish, like gazpacho but much thicker, was excellent. As was a deep fried piquillo pepper stuffed with oxtail. A tuna steak assemblage with grilled vegetables and alioli was also cracking. In fact, everything we ate was decent and so ridiculously dirt cheap that when the bill arrived, we both instantly broke into disgustingly smug grins.

El Almacen, a little battered looking but atmospheric bar situated down a cobbled street was another great find. Sat up at the packed bar in the evening, drinking glass after glass of Tio Pepe Fino, snacking on bowls of picos (small bullet like, breadsticks) and wolfing down hot, battered, deep fried aubergine slices drizzled with honey, I couldn’t have been happier, evidenced from a general instability when I finally slid off the stool and staggered out into the evening air, which being Jerez, was fragrant with the smell of orange blossom.

Another evening saw us in the nearby coastal town of El Puerto De Santa Maria, and eating in a seafood restaurant called Romerijo, which features a long refrigerated cabinet with pretty much every creature that calls the sea it’s home, laid out in it’s fluorescent glare, ready to be pointed at, selected and scarfed in the restaurant out back.

We got to try all sorts of fresh seafood, razor clams cooked a la plancha, hot deep fried Hake with alioli, Tortillitas de Camarones (fried shrimp pancakes) and unusually, percebes or goose barnacles, ugly ass, expensive crustaceans that could be best described as looking like a kind of alien pigeons foot. Apparently, harvesting these from the rocks can be incredibly dangerous, and people have died in the process. Personally, after having an experimental nibble, and finding them a bit chewy and briney, I’d say they aren’t really for me.

On Sunday, ‘E’ and I, feeling a bit adventurous managed to exercise our entirely non-existent Spanish language skills and somewhat surprisingly, found our way onto a bus to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a city about 25 kilometres West of Jerez, where famously Manzanilla sherry is produced (like Fino, but with a touch of saltiness due to the sea air). 

As we made our way into the outskirts of Sanlúcar It was interesting to note the localised allegiance to Manzanilla – and in particular to local producer, La Gitana, every bar displaying their livery, whereas in Jerez, It’s mostly Tio Pepe. 

Unfortunately, on a Sunday all the Bodegas (wineries) were closed, so with the sun’s rays tanning my bronzed Essex hide, we gravitated towards a central square with a fountain and absolutely packed with locals. Enclosed on all sides with tapas bars. I decided it could have been worse. 

Working our way around the square, drinking ice cold Manzanilla and eating a few things there, a few things here I managed to stuff myself with excellent pork cheeks braised in sherry, some kind of local seafood stew, like a really wet paella, and only served on Sundays, Oxtail croquettes and a sort of grilled fish that the menu reckoned was hake, but ‘E’ and I weren’t so sure.

We also, once again, encountered a perennial problem for Pescetarian ‘E’ whilst in España. The Spanish do like to stick ham in absolutely everything, entirely unannounced. Even a safe looking dish titled ‘Aubergine La Gitana’ ended up being a kind of pork mince lasagna, much to ‘E’s dismay. Obviously, I feigned sympathy whilst happily stuffing the lot. 

It was a muchos Manzanilla marinated duo that fell back into the return bus later that afternoon.

Jerez is probably one of the nicest small cities I’ve visited, anywhere in the world.  The plentiful sherry at bargain prices and the generally excellent tapas, which happily, is also dirt-cheap, makes it a real destination if you’re into good food and wine. I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, Jerez airport is served from the UK by RyanAir who, I think most would agree, are frigging abysmal in just about every regard. So grit your teeth and take the pain or tranquilize yourself silly for the flight, but do go. At the other end, it’s bloody lovely.   

*Once again massive thanks to everyone at Gonzalez Byass and to @justinjerez for introducing me to Chicharones*