It’s our last night on this luminous stretch of coastline and we are sitting on the verandah of the Hurricane Hotel near Tarifa, having watched the sun set on the North African shoreline.
We’ll be making the short crossing to Tangier tomorrow, but for now as we gaze at the moon through the palm trees over Playa de los Lances, it’s time to enjoy a ‘Tinto de Verano’, relish the barely believable lingering warmth of an early November evening, and take stock of the week we have had discovering that this region has so much more than an Indian Summer to recommend it. Only this afternoon we were exploring nearby Baelo Claudia, the most intact Roman urban complex in the Iberian peninsula and the most spectacularly situated archeological site we’ve visited in Europe.
I can completely understand why my sister and her family returned to this part of Andalusia every year for over a decade, and now that Sabrina and I are finally up to speed we can well imagine spending a few weeks in Tarifa Old Town, holed up in an ancient whitewashed building with a roof terrace. It’s a beguilingly charming postage stamp of narrow, souk like streets and alleyways not dissimilar in atmosphere to Ortigia’s Jewish Quarter (which we fell in love with in Sicily this Spring), but with a delightfully relaxed surfer vibe. Strong winds here are a year round presence- a gift to the kite surfers that throng the beaches but also to the area’s micro climate where temperatures rarely rise above 30 degrees in high summer when the rest of southern Spain is sweltering, or venture below 15 in the depths of winter.
Our starters have just arrived and having wondered if we weren’t being a little unimaginative ordering mussels, we’re thrilled at them being the fat, green-lipped variety and overjoyed at the completely unexpected curried cream sauce they are bathed in. This prompts a discussion about which of the many sublime dishes we have enjoyed since we came south from Madrid should take pride of place in this story. My vote is for the Black rice with langoustines and garlic aioli at Bodega Gitana in Sanlucar de Barrameda which we ate on a covered terrace next to piles of old sherry barrels, while Sabrina favours the Risotto with mushrooms we had at El Espejo, in the town’s Parador.
Risotto with mushrooms, rocket and root vegetable crisps: Serves Four
Naturally I have pulled rank on Marco in selecting this dish, but it was a close run thing. Sanlucar de Barrameda is Spain’s ‘city of gastronomy’ this year, so the choice is surprising for such a small place. There’s even a gluten free bakery (one of the first things I search for in a new town or city), though the owner had clearly never served a non-local before “Are you sure you want to buy these madeleines?” she said, “They’re gluten free!”
1 small onion, diced
400 gm wild mushrooms, sliced
300 gm carnaroli rice
1/2 cup white wine
50 gm butter
50 gm parmesan cheese, grated
1 litre of vegetable stock ( you may not need all)
E V olive oil
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
A few rocket leaves
Store bought root vegetable crisps, for garnish
Heat a fry pan on medium, add 3 tablespoon of E V olive oil the add the mushrooms, gently fry until golden and all the moisture has evaporated. Add the parsley and cook another minute or so. Set aside until needed.
Heat another 3 tablespoon of oil in a large saucepan, add the onion on medium heat cook until golden then add the rice to toast stirring all the time to prevent from burning for about 5 minutes. Now add the wine and stir until it has been absorbed, adding a ladle of stock each time and stirring continuously to prevent from sticking; before the rice is done add the mushrooms (reserving some) and stir through; the rice is done when it is al dente, obviously testing before taking it off the heat. Now add the butter and the Parmesan cheese and stir through, this should be creamy.
Serve on four plates top with the rest of the mushrooms and scatter a few rocket leaves with the root vegetable crisps.
Sanlucar sits on the Guadalquivir estuary and its beaches look out over the Parque Nacional de Doñana with its pristine wetlands, wild horses and flamingos. There’s more than a hint of the raffish, slightly ramshackle riverside suburbs of our former home of Buenos Aires to this place, especially on the waterfront.
There are tourists of course, but mostly they seem to hail from other parts of Spain and what we love the most is the locals’ zest for hanging out at all hours, seemingly every day of the week. With the exception of the late afternoon ‘dead zone’, cafés, tapas bars and restaurants are thronged with young and old alike, all joyously talking over one another while nursing Espressos or Estrellas.
Musing over our mussels we decide that if we have a slight regret, it’s that we didn’t really make the most of this region’s so called ‘Sherry Triangle’ (beyond the occasional Manzanilla aperitif) especially its origin and apex point, Jerez de la Frontera. This fine and handsome city has a historic core anchored by the Alcazar fortifications and surrounded by numerous bodegas (sherry distilleries).
Again there are echoes of Buenos Aires, but this time of its older, statelier centre where as in Jerez, giant fig trees dominate many of the plazas. If we’d been wondering where all the foreign tourists had disappeared to, here was our answer and this sent us scuttling prematurely back to Sanlucar, after a lovely lunch of grilled sea bass.
We are snapped out of this debate by the arrival of two massive entrecôte steaks, grilled to pink perfection on an open fire at the far end of the verandah. Clearly if we are going to eat like this I will have to honour the promise I made to myself yesterday on nearby Valdevaqueros beach, to learn to kite surf!
Another evocative article from the versatile Marco. Reminded me of the wonderful Sharon van Etten song, Tarifa, which describes her vacation in Spain with her ex-partner. Van Etten remembers this holiday as “probably one of the happiest times we’ve ever had”.
Soooo Jealous!
I had planned to to travel from Cadiz to Granada in February. Headed to Peru instead...I'm definitely excited about that trip, but I need to get back to Spain soon!