Sample the best of Sevilla’s towns and villages in the heart of the city.
Starting today the Diputación de Sevilla will be the site of the annual exhibition (this is the 5th edition) of wines, liquors and anis produced in the province. It’s a great way of getting to know new local products and enjoying old favourites.
Last week I was invited to a rather unusual tasting event at Milongas Restaurant in Calle Campo de los Martires. It’s been a while since I was last there, so I was happy to accept, and duly arrived around 9.30 pm.
Milongas is one of Seville’s best Argentinian restaurants, which basically means it specialises in beef, so no prizes for guessing that this was a Cata de la Vaca (literally a cow tasting), supplemented with a wine pairing/tasting organised by Fran León featuring wines from Bodegas Salado in Umbrete, a small town in the Aljarafe to the west of Seville. The invited guests were from the worlds of journalism and social media, and it was nice to spend an evening of wine and food with a few old friends (and put faces to a few names, too) in convivial surroundings.
The tasting was of five different cuts of beef, ranging from the well-known to the obscure. These were paired with the local Salado wines. I was impressed by the Fina Paloma Blanca, a sherry style wine made from Pedro Ximenez grapes and aged under flor but my favourite of the night was an oak-aged white wine called Astarte.
entraña, punta de picaña,
entrecôte, tenderloin, lomo alto
Many thanks to the organisers for a terrific evening. It was great fun and I learned a lot too.
Sevilla’s first tabanco is celebrating its first anniversary today.
Be there or be square!
So this happened while I was away in Madrid last week – Sevilla’s first ever street-food event, #StreetFoodAndalucia by @AndalucíaPopUp, which was held on the roof terrace of the Oasis Backpacker Hostel @OasisHostels. In my opinion Sevilla has probably the best bar-food (ie tapas scene) of any city in the world, and it’s great to see good quality “street food” from kiosks and trucks finally coming of age here, starting with the recent arrival of Sevillas first food truck La Cayejera @lacayejera.
Anyhow, since I couldn’t be there my friend Peter Tatford @SVQconcierge said he would stop by and have a look (and he even took these photos!). I’m told that, although modest in scale – the rooftop venue itself was a bit limited in space – the event was well attended, and got quite buzzy. And the four participants all did a great job of preparing everything from sushi to burgers at their stalls and keeping everybody well-fed. Looking forward to attending the next one. Here is a video of the event, and there’s even a small cameo by Peter about half-way through.
[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-fAQXRosWU”]
It was definitely not your average Tuesday morning. I had been invited (along with a few journalists, bloggers, photographers and friends) to a “ronqueo”, the skilled cutting of an almadraba tuna. The almadraba (Arabic for “the place of striking or beating”) is an age-old technique for catching blue fin tuna that continues to the present day. Every year during the tuna migration from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean (May-June), mazes of nets are set, creating a channel of nets which direct the tunas to a larger “floor net” which is then raised to the surface, enclosing and capturing the tunas.
La Azotea had arranged to have a tuna delivered to their Jesús del Gran Poder location to give us a demonstration of the traditional cutting art know as as the “ronqueo” – the name comes from the rasping sound made when the knife cuts through the spine (from Spanish “roncar”- to snore). The 233 kilo tuna arrived and, with some difficulty, was transferred from the truck to the restaurant, which had been stripped of all tables and chairs and had a protective layer of plastic covering the floor. The master cutter then wasted no time in getting down to work.
First the head was removed and it was discovered that the tuna had been killed “Japanese style” with a bolt to the head while still in the water. Then the belly (ventresca) was removed and shortly afterwards we heard the rasping sound of knife against spine. The massive upper and lower loin and tail sections were next to come out and then the cutter went to work on the head, removing the cheeks, mormo, morillo (don’t know how to translate those last two).
Then we were treated to the freshest tuna tataki ever – straight out of the fish and onto the griddle. It was a fascinating experience and, as with jamón cutting, it was easy to see that hand-cutting the tuna in this way is truly an art form. I’m so glad I got a chance to see my first ronqueo. Thanks Juan!
This is pretty much the end of the almadraba season for this year so make sure to get over to La Azotea this week while the fresh tuna lasts.
La Azotea
Jesús del Gran Poder 31
Zaragoza 5
Mateos Gago 8
chefs Jesús and José María with La Azotea owner Juan