Welp, this is a really late “this week” post, but I didn’t have access to a computer on Sunday and I was also really busy holidaying and eating out, as you’ll see in a second ?
Monday
Last Monday was quite horrible and stressful and the only highlight of my day was to eat more of the tofu omelette I made for dinner on Sunday ?
Tuesday
Nothing interesting.
Wednesday
I made a gift-loaf for my sister and the smell would have driven me absolutely bonkers (because we couldn’t eat the bread) if it weren’t because I thought of that in advance, and so I also made a sourdough pizza which we did in fact eat!
It was also the first time I made a sourdough pizza, and I was quite pleased with the result (and that I got to put in action the pizza making skills we learned this summer in Italy ?).
Thursday
I flew to Valencia for a few days. I did sort of live blog a bit (at the airport, and later), but the highlight of the day was undoubtedly the Calabrese salad at Palao:
Friday
I had a cute breakfast… and tapas for lunch.
Saturday
We visited Russafa Market and totally mingled with the locals, adopting all the customs in order to acquire delicious goods. My live blogging stopped there.
Later, we had lunch at what I think is a chain called La Tagliatella. They seem to be doing some sort of American style pasta, judging by the portion sizes. If I ever come back, instead of sharing a salad, we’ll be sharing the pasta dish!
Speaking of salads, the one we chose did feature something wildly intriguing to me: basil ice cream! That was quite weird; it felt a bit like frozen butter. I’m not sure I can get into this whole ‘savoury ice creams’ fashion…
Sunday
My sister tortures me with pictures of the bread loaf I gifted her, sliced, while I’m condemned to a slow and unpredictable hotel breakfast. This is cruel!
Thankfully we were having churros and chocolate later, at traditional Horchatería Santa Catalina.
By the way, this is how I expect hot chocolate to look like, not like that pale imitation from Cadbury ?
We went to the IVAM to see Paco Roca’s installation (very recommended if you’re in the area—he’s made great use of the walls to create a sequential story not fully unlike comic books, but using extra dimension to add more playfulness to the medium). Then we somehow found ourselves near the town hall square… hungry and verging on angry. We decided to try our luck on this new place called Bastard Kitchen and somehow we all chose a salad!
Mine was good and the ingredients tasted fresh:
… but the ‘home made lemonade’ was super sour and unbalanced, and I still can’t accept the fact that their ‘cortado’ is served in flat white size cups, and the ‘flat white’ I got was more like a big latte. I actually thought the cortado was the flat white! Blasphemy!
I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that feels wrong about this place; I think it is trying too hard to target aspiring hipsters and foreigners. In contrast there’s also La manera pretty close by, which I went to on Friday, and although they seem similar on the surface, La manera feels a bit more confident and less fake. That said, I asked the waitress and she told me they’ve been open only since September, so maybe they’re still finding their foot?