Eating is difficult

Real August weather (he wrote bitterly): warm to hot, muggy, overcast, but in the tradition of off-days in Catalonia, brightly dull.  Were this Britain, I would write off the day – but Catalonia isn’t and therefore I expect better things weather-wise later.  Please.

Meanwhile there is the prospect of lunch.  And, more importantly, the new Thai restaurant in town.  Catalonia is not noted for the quality of local Indian or Asian restaurants.  The problem is that people here are not given to spicy foods.  Yes, there are types of local cold sausage that are piquant, but nothing like the solid fire of an after-drinking ‘Indian’ in any typical British late-night restaurant.  I am still trying process Toni’s sister saying that her first British Indian meal in Rumney in Cardiff was too hot for her – and she was attempting to eat a chicken korma!  With that in mind, it is hardly surprising that the blander ‘commercial’ Chinese food found in virtually any moderately priced Chinese restaurant is much more acceptable to the Catalan palate.

I have checked out the new restaurant and there is no indication that they have a menu del dia.  The a la carte offerings look to be quite expensive for this area and I am not prepared to pay evening meal prices for a light lunch, but it is worth trying to find somewhere that can give me an ironic ‘taste of Britain’!

As it is the height of summer many menus offer the cold soup of salmorejo.  This is a very simple soup to make, but its very simplicity means that each person’s take on it is distinctively different.  It is usually very thick and is a different colour from the more recognizable cold soup of gazpacho.  Salmorejo usually has cold chopped egg mixed with bits of Spanish ham as an (essential) garnish and is delicious.  Here is a recipe to try!

Ingredients

Ingredients for 4 people: 1 kg tomatoes, 1 clove of garlic, 200 g bread (preferably a day old), 100 g extra virgin olive oil, 10 g salt. Optional: egg and ham.

Method

Wash the tomatoes, blend them and strain them to remove the skin and seeds. Add the bread (before this, leave to soak in water or in the blended tomatoes), extra virgin olive oil, garlic and salt, and blend again.

Presentation

Serve in individual bowls and garnish with chopped hard-boiled egg and bits of ham.

Perhaps the greatest culinary news for me this month occurred in Aldi.  Our local store has undergone a refit to accommodate an in-house bakery and a reorganization of the aisles.  Considering the way in which retail management has now become one of the dark sciences I don’t know whether the creation of bottlenecks at various points in the store, together with the narrowing of some of the aisles to make the passing of shopping trollies difficult is engineering or incompetence, but I am prepared to overlook those because I have discovered that Aldi is selling Taramosalata and Tzatziki in little plastic tubs.

I have tried, in a desultory way through the years, to find Taramosalata in Castelldefels and did indeed find it (or something like it) in a so-called Greek restaurant – though they looked at me blankly when I called they called the ‘salsa rosa’ Taramosalata.  The taste was near enough for me to kid myself that if not back in Greece on the beach in Mykonos, I was at least back in Wales where it was easy enough to get!  After a few visits to the restaurant, the staff there began to deny that they had ever had the stuff and my weary search continued.

In the way of the taste of Catalonia, humus is easy enough to get – in my view the least tasty of the trinity of Taramosalata, Tzanziki and Humus – because it is the blandest of the three.  Admittedly you can now get a piquant version which raises the taste level by a notch or two, but by itself, it is insufficient.  At least for me.

I am tempering my delight in finding these delicacies by my belief that with Aldi nothing lasts.  Buy it when you see it because tomorrow it will be gone is a commercial necessity with the discount stores.

I certainly did my bit when humus was introduced by buying quantities of it to try and ensure that it became a staple.  And I am now doing the same with the neophyte tara and tzanziki.  I am relying on the fact that there are substantial numbers of my fellow countryfolk in this area to make their retention a retail fact.

Not (as Toni continually reminds me) that I should be eating any of the above.  The fat and salt content is way beyond my limits, but I have convinced myself that the psychological satisfaction I can get from their consumption outweighs (a moot word) the deleterious effects on my physical health.

Talking of which I am steadily working my half-pill-a-day (except for Sundays when it is three-quarters) way to my next Control on the 21^st.  If my results are within the limits then the next Control could be in Castelldefels rather than in a more distant hospital.  It will be cheaper (you have to pay for parking in the hospital), quicker because I can use my bike for the short cycle of my health centre, and a damn sight less wearing.  The rat poison that I am taking is supposed to ‘thin’ my blood making coagulation less effective – this means that the clot in my right leg will thus be gradually dissipated and things will be well!

The key to my continued health is in getting the thinning component in my blood to register between 2 and 3, that is, my blood is between two and three times less likely to coagulate than normal.  This sounds dramatic (and I hope it is for the thrombosis in my right leg) but has little effect on normal life.  The advice from my doctor was, “Don’t fall over.  Don’t cut yourself!  Don’t run for the bus!”

Before you think that I have become the living incarnation of the Tsarevich looking for a modern-day Rasputin, my condition is nothing like as dramatic and I have indeed cut myself (accidentally) and did not bleed to death!  Or indeed, in my view, bleed any more dramatically than normal.  After all, I tell myself, they do prick me for a spot of blood for my Control and that in itself must tell you something!

So, as part of my regimen I am now off for my metric-mile swim.  On my bike.  Even though my bike is electric and has five levels of motor support for my pedalling, the battery level is very low and (horror of horrors!) I might actually have to rely purely on pedal power to get me to the pool.  As we are on the coastal plain, I do not worry too much, but the bridge over the motorway is officially classed as a hill in my book and is an obstacle to be overcome.

But, at my father was fond of repeating: “If it is easier to walk with the bike then pedal, then walk.”  It took me a long time to work out that the advice was not purely for the bike, but was more generally a view of life.  Making pointless effort because of peer pressure or how something looked was, well, pointless.  It links with Occom’s Razor and gives the sort of obvious direction that we frail humans are often too loath to take.

Which, philosophical musing aside, will get me to the pool somehow.  1 ,500 meters here I come!

Well, the swim took place, but the restaurant was a washout.  It turns out that the restaurant has suspended the menu del dia for the month of August.  So, we looked elsewhere for sustenance.  Unfortunately, we settled on an establishment that provided us with a sub-standard set of tapas.  Not a place to go back to.  But I am too lazy to find the receipt to give a name to the guilty.  Perhaps I can edit it in later.

A stint on the beach after Irene left and the threat of a concert at eleven thirty at night of non-classical music will bring an eventful day to an end.

Roll on tomorrow.