San Sebastian Gastronomika - Cooking in Portuguese Taverns

Yes, this is another post about food. No, we don't and won't apologize for writing so many posts about food. Food is really a way of life here.

The San Sebastian Gastronomika event is really an industry conference, but it is open to the public. The total event is expensive and would have interfered with school, so we chose a couple of sessions to attend: Cooking in Portuguese Taverns: a sample of "petiscos" and Portuguese products, which involved a tasting of traditional Portuguese foods; and The National Grill Competition where we rated eight different grilled txuletas (the Basque word for chuleta, which is a beef chop).

The Portuguese event was first, and it was really fun for us. Conducted entirely in Spanish, we felt we were able to follow the discussion fairly well because the emcee was not a native Spanish speaker (he was Portuguese) so he did not speak as fast as many native speakers.

The emcee wearing a traditional beret

The food was really good (and interesting). We started with a plate of Portuguese sausages and a bit of dense bread. The sausages were really tasty and the bread was really different, but we both liked it. So far, nothing too out of the ordinary, but that would change. The second dish was Piso Sopa, a traditional soup made with bread, oil, cilantro, octopus, and a ton of garlic. Really tasty, but maybe a bit too much garlic.

The next dish had two items: really interesting red carrots (an apparently ancient varietal) and a traditional Portuguese goat sausage known as maranhos. The sausage is made with rice and is wrapped in tripe. While Shana did try the octopus in the first dish, she did not brave the tripe wrapping.

The fourth dish was pataniscas of bacalao (bacalao in Spanish, cod in English). Basically, these were fried fish sticks, but they were really tasty.

Fifth, we had orejas de cerdo (pigs ears). Yes, that is correct, we tried pigs ears. Basically, we cannot figure out why people like these. It was like trying to eat a ligament - literally. Jeff choked down one piece while Shana spit out two. Definitely not on our list of favorite things, but in the name of completeness, here is a photo:

And finally, we had Sarapatel Portugueses. There are apparently many recipes for sarapatel, but the one we tried was a rich beef soup with a lot of pieces of tripe in it (for those of you who don't know what tripe is and didn't look it up when we mentioned it earlier, tripe is stomach lining - usually from a cow, but can be from any animal). I suspect some of you may be disgusted that we ate this, but Jeff loved the sarapatel and Shana liked the broth despite what it contained, although she was less sure about the tripe itself.

Each dish came with a paired wines, and all of the wines - one rose, three whites and two reds - ranged from good to great. After the six dishes, there was a cheese table with four strong Portuguese cheeses. All-in-all, a great event. Now, we can't wait to visit Portugal for more of the same.

Hasta luego,

Jeff and Shana