We try to conduct our daily lives in Spanish as much as possible, including trips to restaurants, bars, theaters, grocery markets and other types of stores. Because everything is generally so fresh here, and our refrigerator is not full size, we tend to shop more than once a week. This is typical in Europe. We enjoy the local farmer’s markets and various specialty stores, including cheese shops, bakeries, and butchers. But there is one place with a high intimidation factor due to our less than perfect Spanish – la pescaderia.
It is much easier to tell the butcher what you want than the fishmonger, for a few reasons. First, the butcher already has done a lot of the work before you order and generally you only need to tell them how much you want. Second, you can tell what kind of meat you are seeing. However, because we are most familiar with fish from the Pacific Ocean as opposed to the Cantabrian Sea (part of the Atlantic), and the names of fish in either Spanish or Basque are not familiar to us, and fish is generally displayed whole, these principles don’t apply at la pescaderia. You need to be able to do more than point and count, especially if you don’t want the fish head, tail, and entrails going home with you.
We’ve written about our wonderful and very helpful Spanish teachers before. They really want us to succeed and enjoy Spain. This past Saturday, our newest teacher, Begona, who also happens to be a neighbor, went above and beyond the call of duty and took me to Pescaderia Isabel, our local fish market. She was kind enough to walk me through the process, introduce me to the fishmonger, explain which fish are sold whole and those in portions, help me select from the various offerings, and even provided cooking suggestions. The only thing I had to do was pay for my fish!
I selected two kinds of fish to make on Saturday and Sunday nights – Txitxarro, a blue fish, and gallos, which we know as John Dory. I had never made either before. I did some internet recipe research to help me decide how to prepare each type of fish. My Spanish is good enough to read recipes in Spanish, if I want to do so. In this case I found recipes in both English and Spanish.
On Saturday night I made the blue fish in the oven over a bed of crispy potatoes. http://www.onthewater.com/
On Sunday night I made the John Dory, sautéed in olive oil, white wine, garlic and lemon https://cookpad.com/es/
Now I know how to shop for fresh fish at la pescaderia and can stop in any morning to buy fish for dinner. Fish is brain food. And we need it as we continue our Spanish studies!
Just keep swimming,
Shana
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