You can just call me Meadowlark …

I have been meaning to write about our trip to Bilbao, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Am I just too busy to keep my loyal minions apprised of my doings?

Not really.

I must admit that I’ve been a little lazy with this blogging stuff of late. So when I saw Wilhelm’s question show up in the comment section I decided it was time to fess up, so here goes…

Four of us traveled to Bilbao, Spain over a long weekend last month. The main reason for going to Bilbao was to see the Guggenheim Museum there. Two of the four are architects, and wanted to see this famous building. The other two of us are engineers and just wanted to get out of town for the weekend and see some stuff.

On Friday morning we caught a cheap flight on RyanAir into Santander, Spain and then rented a car and drove the one hour to Bilbao. It was a nice drive along the northern coast of Spain, and we saw some nice scenery &c. The weather was pretty nice for the length of our trip, but it was a little bit chillier than I had expected.

Saturday we went to the Mercado de la Ribera. It’s this awesome two story market. It has virtually every type of fish and meat, with some fruits and vegetable thrown in for good measure. The lower floor is nothing but fish.





The upper floor shares the meat vendors with the produce vendors.







Now multiply these pictures by at least 20 and that will give some idea of the magnitude of this place. There is a third floor, but it appears to be unused at present.

This is my haul from the market.



I only purchased cured and vacuum packed meats, because I would not get it to a refrigerator for a couple of days. I wanted to buy some Morcilla (Spanish blood sausage), but the woman said it needed to be refrigerated. The meat at the upper right of this photo is about one kilogram of jamón ibérico de bellota . It is not quite as expensive as gold, but I believe it surpasses the price of some precious metals (and trust me, it is worth every penny). The piece on the lower right is called lomo, it is cured loin. The sausage on the left is Spanish chorizo. Spanish chorizo is a dry and cured sausage. Mexican chorizo is a fresh, uncured sausage. They are entirely different products.

Saturday afternoon we took the train up to Portugalete to see the Vizcaya Transporter Bridge.



The bridge is the first of its kind and was built in the 1890’s. The upper part of the bridge is 50 meters above the water and transports vehicles and people across the river in a gondola hanging from cables. Like a ferry.



There was a walkway constructed across the upper portion in the 1990’s. One of the others and I took the elevator up and walked across, while the others took the gondola across. The view from up there was incredible. It was a little hazy, so the pictures did not come out great.







On Sunday we went to the Guggenheim. We went there Friday afternoon too, but did not go in until Sunday. The building is impressive.





It is especially impressive if you are overly fond of expensive, pretentious, and just plain weird buildings that look like huge titanium dog turds. Architects though, tend to get all gooey when they talk about this and other buildings by Frank Gehry.

When you go inside they give you a small speaker thing that you carry around and listen to facts and commentary about the museum and the artworks. If you listen in the main lobby it gives you way too much information about how Frank Gehry never picks his pencil up from the page when he is “conceptualizing” a building.

The permanent exhibits are just as pretentious as the building. In one room, the “artist” was explaining these mazes of iron. “…when you transverse the spiral, you’ll notice that it is made of concentric ovals. These are not the same as conic sections …” I turned off the speaker because I just couldn’t take listening any more. I had the distinct feeling that he had recently purchased a math book and a thesaurus.

The featured exhibit was “300 years of American Art”. Aside from the irony of my traveling to Spain to see American art, it was a pretty nice exhibit. Aside from the standard Warhol-type-crap they had a couple of Winslow Homer pieces, a few each by Whistler and Eakins, and one large portrait by John Singer-Sargent. So it was not a total bust.

And it is actually a pretty neat building. Impractical as all hell, but neat to visit (once, I don’t think I’d go back unless there was some exhibit I really wanted to see).

Spain was fantastic, although it did not seem like it was as much fun in the north (compared to the Madrid-Sevilla trip I had in September of last year). The food and wine were excellent. I had turkey leg confit, beef liver, calf’s tongue, baby eel, a variety of hams and sausages, and various tapas that included God-only-knows-what. Everything was wonderful, and tended to be washed down with some good local wine. Did I mention that Bilbao is just north of the Rioja region? That may explain why all of the local wines were pretty darn fair.

And maybe someone out there can explain why I had this weird drinking fountain next to the toilet in my room…



On Monday, while driving back to the airport in Santander, we stopped off at this little fishing town for some breakfast. I had the Iberico platter, which as it turns out comes with two beers. It was not yet 10 AM, but I wasn’t driving. The waitress was giving me the hairy-eyeball. “Do you still want the coffee?” she asked. “Oh yeah”, I replied. It was just an espresso sized coffee anyway.

When we were at the airport, I noticed that the guy at the x-ray machine stopped and reversed the belt when my bag was going through. I looked at him and said, “jamón”. He just smiled and sent me along my way. We made it back to Germany without incident.

The next weekend, which would be last weekend (if anyone’s counting), I performed an experiment that I’ve wanted to do since I moved into my apartment. I smoked a piece of pork loin and a small portion of lamb’s leg with grape vine.

The vintners trim back the grape vines a great deal every spring. They leave the trimmings on the ground between the rows of good vines, and eventually run them over with some type of lawn-mower/mulching machine.

Before they completed the second step in this process, I went into the vineyards under the cover of dusk. The plan was to abscond with enough vines to sufficiently test the smoking capability. Clippers in my hand, I proceeded to cut up a bunch of vine into 6" to 9” pieces, and put them into a grocery bag.



The resulting smoke was thick and sweet.



The rub I used was about equal parts (by volume) of kosher salt and whole peppercorns (itself a mix of about half and half black and Szechuan peppercorns), about a third part each whole fennel seeds and rubbed sage, a pinch of cayenne, and a little onion and garlic powders. I rinsed and dried the meats, coated them with the rub, and placed them into the smoker. They were smoked at around 250 degrees F (plus or minus) for about 4 hours. A handful of new vines were tossed in every 30-45 minutes.



Next time I will soak the vines in water to make them smolder instead of just burn. Maybe then I won’t need to add as many, as often. Here’s a picture of the meat cooking away…



And here’s one when they were finished…

Check out the smoke ring on that lamb! There is one on the pork too, it's just too light to show in the photo.

The conclusion? Grape vines produce a much milder smoky flavor than hickory or apple does. You definitely need to use charcoal or another wood as a heat source, because you’re not getting any lasting heat out of the small vines. Both meats had a very nice flavor (I let quite a few people try them, and everyone was suitably impressed). I thought the lamb turned out better, but when I went back and made sandwiches out of the leftovers I think the pork stood up fine. It is a method definitely worth repeating.

Yesterday I was up in the vineyards again with my clippers. Only this time I had two bags with me…

Tomorrow I start my whirlwind, globetrotting, world tour. Mon-Fri this week I’ll be in Kaiserslautern, Germany, Saturday I fly back to Florida for a class, the next Saturday I return to Germany, and leave Sunday for a week in Italy.

I will be one beat puppy when this is all over.