Oh! Tacos!

I have been telling everyone back home that my favorite thing about Europe so far is the food. Last night was no exception. First off, some background. There is an open air market in Girona that you can peruse pretty much every day of the week. You can find everything from coffee, to jamon serrano, to monkfish ("a staple of the Catalan diet prized for it's gelatinous flesh..")don't ask.... to fruit and lots, and lots, of vegetables. Blake and I have been cooking dinner most every night since I have been here, I think I have eaten out twice....This says a lot because in Girona you can't buy all your ingredients in one place, so you have to plan ahead. And 4000 kilojoule rides in 30 degree heat don't exactly add up to standing in the kitchen preparing a meal. Last night, legendary.

We decided a couple of days ago that we were going to make fish tacos this week. Yesterday we spent a couple of hours at the market picking up the things we thought we needed. The star of our Mexican-Rubio's-anything-to-remind-us-of-home feast was the fish. Last week in Portugal, the place where we were staying cooked us a great fish one night....head, tail, everything. We knew what it looked like and decided that was what we were going to eat. This market is cool because you pick out your fish, then the monger guts it and will cut it anyway you like, we got ours be-headed and gutted. When we got home we called a couple of teammates to come up and eat with us. Then we tackled the fish. Neither of us had any recent need to know how to cut a fish...just not one of the things you have to do as a cyclist. We found a website with a how-to page, even pictures......This sounds neat and tidy....it wasn't. An hour later Blake knew for certain, from experience, that the most important tool for preparing freshly caught dorado is a razor-sharp knife. He ground it out and we egged, breaded, and fried the fillets in olive oil. I found a receipe for chipotle mayo, the most important ingredient....mmm...mayonnaise...and we whipped up some guacamole as well. The absolute crescendo of this delicious symphony was Blake's homemade cornmeal tortillas. So easy! Nonetheless, a dawning realization that was an integral step to our success this night and in the future. 'Twas the most beautiful meal in recent memory...

One thing to remember about this meal is the freshness, I haven't had the day-to-day pleasure of buying produce straight from the farmer/fisherman, and I think that it is worth it to have so much invested in what you are about to eat. You can taste the Spanish sun in this food and by god, it is satisfying.