Seafood Feasts in Mallorca & Barcelona | Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes | BBC Documentary

[Music] [Applause] I'm just very filled with how lovely all this interior of me your careers it's just a delight to drive through all the olive groves are well tended in the almond tree similarly and it attracts me and it attracts a lot of other people and I just think of Majorca as an example of a sort of mature of tourist destination because in the sixties and seventies and right into the eighties it was all about package tours to the coast and what happened was that all the people working and the farms around here went for jobs in the bars and restaurants and hotels and this place became sort of empty but they used a eec muddy I have to say easy money they didn't subsidies for goats for sheeps for olive trees which everybody jokes about but it's worked it's created this lovely area in inside Majorca and not only have they created a visual splendor but you can eat very well eat good traditional New York and cuisine also [Music] one of the slight weaknesses in the launcher I love them dearly but the turning circle the turning circle there's a lot to be desired I have to say I'd sooner be in a London taxi just the moment I think it's true to say that intrepid German hikers with their knapsacks on their bugs were the first to enjoy the fruits of this farm up in the mountains at lro people came here for the roasted mountain arm cooked by this feisty lady Antonia every morning she fires up this ancient oven before getting a meat ready well I must say it was quite a performance getting up that long and windy road in the Land Rover this morning people come up here on bicycles Wow but it's well worth a trip because the lamb here is famous all over the island the best lamb you're gonna taste just looks exquisite and as soon as I arrived you could smell lamb everywhere and would smoke and I mean the atmospherics in this little restaurant are superb health and safety forget it this isn't by any stretch of the imagination fancy cheffing I've never seen lamb prepared quite like this before using the lager top top with water but you live and learn and this is the way Antonia has done it for years she says it's this wood-fired oven that gives the dish its particular character and because the llamas got to stay in there for some time about three and a half hours all this lager and water keeps the flesh moist and if I was that sheep I wouldn't sit there [Music] above the farm there's a ruined castle once the domain of two brave knights Cabret and basa King Alphonse of Aragon laid siege to them and called for their surrender Cabret cheekily said in majorca an Alphonse is a fish best served grilled and quick as a flash Alphonse said a Cabret is a young goat best roasted on a spit and that when the siege ended is what happened to the hapless Knights they were roasted alive in the village square in the valley below so much for having a sense of humor do you know when I came here in the 60s I had no idea that any of this existed I just thought New York was all about beaches but I suppose that's one of the real benefits and privileges of making serious like this looking for food all over the place and you find this and one other thing I've just noticed there's my lunch and I'm so hungry nearly everyone who makes it up here orders the lamb which is a good job because that's practically all there is it's served with a salad sauteed potatoes and a glass or two of Antonia's red wine i [Music] cooked lamb this way with beer and water when I got home to Cornwall with great success simply because of this lunch wow that is quite the moist disrobe roast lamb I ever ever tasted I just watched the way she'd put all that water with it before she were roasted it and a little bit of beer and it's all cooked down very gently and I insisted on having some of this broth as well which is the very essence of alarm it is so tender it is absolutely wonderful so I'm not going to say any more if you don't mind just tucking so if you come to me Yorker and you're not afraid of a hike then this is a must but history hasn't quite finished with pork a Breton basa and their diabolically agonizing death apparently when the Pope got to hear of their dreadful demise he was so angered he made them Saints so 800 years later the spirit of these two cheeky Knights lives on in this festival surrounded by fari imps Miguel Morel told me that story about the history of this island he's a guide when we said we wanted to film a specially authentic New York and family meal he said look no further meat casa su casa so he came to his casa and enjoyed a Moroccan feast great local wine and also things that look very much like pizza but here they're called coke ass so what you know there's no curse you know just looking at that that's a really traditional order yes one of the signs of the poor Mediterranean cuisine then now is not for the pores if you know what I mean well is it like in Italy like polenta poor people's yes normal working-class people what traditionally they used to eat 40 50 60 years ago now has become a local delicacy and what about the suckling pig right this peak is eight and a half kilos Wow he's a Mallorca one but I mean the thing about it isn't it is that skin is so perfect well you consider go we won't know if it is perfect until he's on the table deceiving is the crackling is correct or not this is a real delicacy a real luxury that yes is not imported from China he's born and bred here before he roasts the pig he puts it in brine for about two hours he says that once it's dried and put in the oven it helps make the skin crispy I think suckling pig is one of the most deliciously tempting treats ever devised by man I would guess this is right at the heart of New York and cooking but how would you sum up my York and cuisine traditional one the court has been cooked since effort with the ingredients available and it been a miracle because sometimes what was available wasn't very much I mean so it's a sometimes the Moroccan cuisine like I support the same in the rest of the Mediterranean is a miracle it depends on the ingredients available at the moment to know how to use them how to meet them and how to enjoy them obviously just tell me what you think about sort of modern cookie about modern trends in the restaurant cooking particularly about you only to be naughty yes well I'm not very keen in critique cuisine and nouvelle cuisine I'm sorry but there is a market for everything as you know absolutely specked I respect it but you think I mean I don't spend my money in it when I came to Majorca last time I remember having so Brasada a type of sausage with almost every meal this is the oldest factory on the island making this piquant sausage it's so important here they even have an apple accion controller which means it can't be made anywhere else it's made from the meat of the New York and black pig mixed with quite a lot of paprika and it's hung up to dry in the air for as long as eight months it's not firm like chorizo or salami but soft and the majorca pnes tend to spread it on bread or use it to spice up ordinary dishes of chickpeas and lentils the gusto would show that we thought that is lovely this amateur about 45 to 60 days and during that process it actually ferments so the flavor develops and it's it sort of firmed up a bit from when it was made it's funny when I came in here it's not a bit like beer so I presume that's the fermentation now this is chicken with so Brasada butter beans and courgettes now the thing about solder solder is you have to like it if you don't you're not going to like the dish but I do anybody that's been to New York or I think will probably like it because you can't really avoid it it's in virtually every savory dish that you get first of all you fry the chicken skin side down and season them I had a similar dish on the island but it was maybe rabbit and really nice it was - but I thought it would work equally well with good free-range chicken and it's a dance are easier to get than rabbit now just a sprinkling of dried chili flakes and then the Sabra solder look how soft it is it's so soft is difficult to cut but it doesn't matter because when it goes into the pan it just seems to melt into an instant source [Music] now I'm going to put whatever is in season well courgettes are perfect I like the texture I like the color in fact I think the colors green gold red and white seem to celebrate the Mediterranean dishes let them cook for five minutes and then for that splash of white I'm using butter beans and then a homemade tomato sauce which are made with fresh tomatoes garlic white wine and olive oil a simple reduction let that cook gently for another quarter of an hour and it's done this is a perfect summer lunchtime dish and all it needs is perhaps a glass of white wine that buiness our lamb which is lovely a much respected here on the island to go with a piquant saw Brasada it's a taste of Majorca [Music] when I was here in the sixties I was well aware that Robert Graves was living here in daya I mean to me in my generation goodbye to all that which was his autobiography about his life in the trenches in the first world war was up there with well Jack Kerouac saan the road Catcher in the Rye and of course catch-22 which I actually read when I was here the thing that really attracted me people people told me about this literary figure India and it seemed to fit with the whole sort of romance of the Mediterranean I read in Porter's book about the Mediterranean the Pillars of Hercules that before he came to live here in 1929 he asked Gertrude Stein no relation I'd like to point out whether what it was like here and she said it's paradise if you can stand it now I know exactly what that Aaronic praise means because Cornwall's a bit like that when I started off in my restaurant in Cornwall and really wanted to live there because it was so beautiful but I was so short of chums so what did Robert Graves do well he invited everybody here and there's sort of not really a man or woman of arts or letters that didn't come to stay here and didn't enjoy these fabulous lunches here in there that went long long into the Mediterranean afternoon and that sort of image to me it's so attractive it and it's so much part of my Mediterranean [Music] robert graves his son thomas lives here and has written a book about the traditional food of the element and considers pam Boley bread and oil the cornerstone moroccan cuisine and he's the spitting image of his dad everybody's very passionate about about Parvati because basically it's the last thing that's left which is authentically my yukine because everything else has been sort of adapted to tourism you know even even the fiestas you know you have I'm Duluth horse shows sangria and paella and you know what people think is my routine in fact is is from underneath you so pom Bali is basically you know the real hands-on you know back to the earth thing and it's also it's the staple food that saw everybody through countless you know droughts and famines basically just bread and oil and garlic before before the tomato arrived in Lisbon oil and garlic this may orchid bread is made without salt Thomas drizzles olive all over it and then rubs it with tomato and usually garlic as well in fact Thomas is so fond of this he's called his rock band Pam Bali bread and oil elemental like Earth Wind and Fire and that's the basic par Mali Patrol on [Music] it's delicious a minute it is true that the simple things are so hard to get right no and that is just perfectly right to me the bread is wonderful the lack of salt actually is an improvement in listening because you've got the salt on top of the tomato and the oil it's I could just eat that whatever in fact I'm going to and I'll get ready slip I'm in and ruch in the southwest of New Yorker it's pretty upmarket here but I can't resist this it's only the second swim I've had in the Med while making these programs and the last time and Sicily I got stung by a jellyfish but let's face it this water is the reason we come to the Mediterranean here there's a restaurant that was operating long before anyone coined the word tourists they specialized in a great squid and rice dish are off ala Calamari's one who has been cooking here for 40 years fries the squid and garlic and oil and then he seasons it the whole dish is made from start to finish in the one pan and he's very adept about how he does these things I just really like watching good chefs work so I pick up ideas all the time to see how he's pulled the squid to the side like that he's going to add all the other ingredients in the middle now if you read in a cookery book that they would say remove the squid from the pan and fry the peppers but this is a proper kitchen where you haven't got time to do that now he puts in some chopped and deseeded tomatoes I had this heretic Calamari's that last night and I just thought it was so good because he's gonna put the rice in in a minute and the rice was really really to the firm the whole dish is really firm and I hadn't actually tasted anything quite like it and to be honest to me its tasted better than the average paella of course this is a sort of food I loved about Spain paella is all these seafood and rice dishes this is where it's truly at for me then in goes some powdered saffron which is common in Spain and then good fish stock now just talking to one about the rice they use which is the same sort of racism as paella different dish of course it's called bomba and the thing about these Spanish Rice's is he said they swallow lots of stock I thought that was really nice obviously absorb as much stock as possible and that's where you get the taste in these dishes now and this is really important that's to put it in the oven this way the heat of the oven bakes the rice and the surface comes out almost crackling these are local prawns Gambas the port of our Dutch is famous for them one says the best way to cook them is to cover them in sea salt on a hot griddle plate for 5 minutes or so and they keep all their flavor and succulents I cook sea bass and bream this way packed in salt back at home so I know it works but these local Gambas fresh out of the sea were outstanding the boss here is one someone the first of all Greek I must say the way we eat Gambas yoga first well we break the we separate the head from the body and then we stop that the head mmm-hmm as delicious is the real taste of Majorca Wow look at that this is Rick that's what I was telling you look at this guy comes in every day maybe he brings one fish maybe one long there's nothing maybe nothing well he's always hostak always happy now you can see how all the flavor of those ingredients has been swallowed by the rice but it's still very moist this is one of the best seafood dishes I've had for an awful long time you think it is it was is it when your colonel as it were mmm I say tell you know I am the third generation and we've been doing this rice for 80 years and my son when he takes over he will do the same I mean we we want to show all people I mean the how good this is and that's why so many people comfortable okay well I can think of a few other reasons too but if that dish was over 80 years old this next one in the old city of Parma comes from out of the mists of time it's called Ensenada and noemy york and feast is complete without it the king of New York and LA decayed because that's what it reminds me of is Miguel poo hole and it's just a light fatty sweet pastry dusted with castor sugar Miguel has been making these since he was a youngster and considered himself a bit of an ambassador of this culinary icon so what Miguel's done here has just made a very rich there were lots of eggs in it and rolled it out really thinly and now he's just rubbing the dough with lots of lard now I really like that I mean if you said to somebody that these enceladus are made with pig fat they tell no I won't don't like that but it's that's the sort of thing I like to find because it just gives the gives the finished product a real individuality the heart of this pastry is a jar made with pumpkin and it's very fibrous here there fer to it as angel-hair he lays it down the entire length of his sticky soft dough so it gets rolled into the middle I asked him what this whole process means to him and his life here in Majorca I ain't a meal either he says the enzyme ardor for him is his life ever since he was a little boy he was involved in the making of Ensenada and he considers himself its promoter on the island ye so for him it means everything I feel the same about Cornish fish it when when baile it requires a great deal of skill it would have been an excellent challenge on the generation game anyway it's coiled onto a baking tray and then allowed to rise in the prover and then some twelve hours later it becomes well like a Python that's eaten quite a few rabbits and it's ready to go straight in the oven for about 20 minutes Miguel was doing this for us on a Sunday afternoon he didn't want us there when he was busy he normally makes dozens of these everyday oh it's good that's lovely I just wonder why people get so sort of het up about Lord what's wrong with large I mean girls just said we'd be making these for 600 years and we're all still alive Jojo there's nothing worse than butter or cream what is bad for you is the hydrogenated fats you know there's industrial fats in sort of crisps and things but but not lard I'm it's just like lardy cake it's got this really distinct flavor which I which I love mind you I could murder a cup of tea to go with it I came here to Barcelona because the Balearic Islands of which Majorca is one take much of their character and essence from the avant-garde capital of Catalonia after all it was the people from here who populated New Yorker after the Moors 800 years ago and of course this is where Columbus left to find a new world which later gave the Mediterranean tomatoes sweet corn chilies and peppers avocados and even potatoes [Music] the city has a left bank feel to it it's where artists like Nero Picasso and Dali cut their teeth I suppose I should be feeling a bit daunted really by all the sights that I should be seen like the sacre de Familia gaudi's famous cathedral still not finished for a hundred and twenty years and there's a thing though there they call a bullet or the cucumber that really modern office blot and there's all the squares and the fantastic buildings and the mirrors and the Picasso's but I don't need to worry I'm here for the food and all my friends say the best market in the whole of Europe is here the Boqueria and the unique thing about the Boqueria is that it's arranged in circles and right at the center and the nucleus of those circles is the fish then you've got the meat then you've got the vegetables I think that reflects the true true interests of Catalan cooks but the next circle uh a little bit different is all the shellfish and this is the best shellfish store I've ever seen it's got every type of clam you could possibly ever come across got Venus shells which are called sq pina here got these really weird things which are called cajeta just mean little boxes type of clam these are called talar ena or in french they're called tellings or in Australia they're called Pippi's and every type of prawn you could prove possibly one they call those longest Dino's will either call those and prawns and those a roar of course and then some tiny little gamba Blanca winkles of course nothing much to be said about them but these these are the best clams in the world to me the al maka or the vongole or pallid in French and finally gooseneck barnacles a real speciality from mag Alicia where they they have to go down at low tide in a rough Atlantic and pull them off the rocks and occasionally sometimes they get drowned well a little further out we've got a whole counter a preserved fish again I'm in heaven but the main part of this counter is of course the chords and I mean look at that that I guarantee that comes from Iceland that's the only place you can get caught as big as that anymore sadly and that's actually been soaked it is bacalao it is salt cod boots been soaked and here we've got various different qualities and cuts of salt cod some soaked some not I'm really interested in this is their filling for a deep-fried fish ball very unlike our fish cakes made again with salt cod eggs oil garlic and parsley I'd love to try that and over here well this is what it's all about this is a whole fill it of salt cod quite a thin one so not not expensive and the whole point of bacalao of salt cod to the Spanish wheat goes back before refrigeration they ate fish in land it had to be salted and that's why there's so many recipes for this is very similar to the fish ball mixture in the market I've soaked the cod to get rid of most of the salt and poached it for 10 minutes and so as not to lose any flavor I add the potatoes to the same water I think it's true to say that salting and or drying virtually anything produces something different but equally as good I was thinking actually freezing doesn't very often produce anything as good except for perhaps frozen peas the originally salt cod came to the Mediterranean from Newfoundland because they had no refrigeration in those days they had to salt the cod and all the peoples virtually all the way around the Mediterranean had an addiction to it I mean we used to have salt cod but we could get the fresh stuff as well but in the Mediterranean because it was far away from the source of the core it had to be salted and this particular dish is Spanish very Spanish fritters of salt cod with allioli garlic mayonnaise is absolutely fantastic the way the Spanish make batter is hot water olive oil flour in this case about four heaped tablespoons and eggs over the years salt cod has moved up from being a staple food where most families had a large chunk of salted cod hanging in their kitchen which they used bit by bit to expensive restaurant food because I suppose Cod has become so scarce once the batter base is made add the mashed potatoes they'll provide the bulk for the fritters and now for the succulent Cod flakes some crushed garlic and a good handful of parsley well know what you think this is never gonna thicken up but of course because you've got lots of egg in there it will as its got up to about the temperature of custard and it's really starting to thicken and I'm looking for a texture like mashed potato quite thick mashed potato [Music] once it's settled down and cooled it's easy to take spoonfuls the size of walnuts and deep-fry them in light vegetable oil they're like little golden nuggets let them drain and dry and serve them with a dish of alioli this to any seafood lover is sheer temptation actually if I had to choose my top ten Mediterranean dishes this would be I think number three well I can't be extravagant in my prose about this recipe because it's not mine it's actually a guy called Coleman Andrews who edits a great magazine called silver it seems to me to sum up everything that people like about Spanish food ruggedness got lots of garlic salt cod brilliant I'm just gonna cook this again and again and again but there's another side to the Boqueria market this is really good I love these little tapas bars in the market and this is Troy which not a lot of people like I do understand but I love it and this is made with sharifa and ham and a soft Rito of garlic and tomato and parsley very good now I've got a plate of peas cooked with onions in olive oil and some off cuts of serrano ham chopped up and tossed with it utterly delicious here I've got some some pitches Storer there pawpaw pork sausages labor with pimenton and some clams I'm going to go on to them and a friend of mine said that the Boqueria market was the best place to try Catalonian food and I think it's absolutely right and it's just upsetting lovely going around to all these little tapas bars and having a plate of chickpeas here plums there some tripe in another one it's just been great for me and I believe it I think this is where the best Catalan food is simply because it's all cooked to order the lunch lasts a couple of hours fresh food eaten gone and off you go this is Tortosa a famous town in the south of catalonia on the river Ebro it was here in the Spanish Civil War that a dreadful battle raged between the Republicans and the Nationalists Franco's hatred for the Catalans unleashed itself on the banks of this river and thousands died the fascist eagle erected by General Franco still hovers over the all-important River Ernest Hemingway who is here as a journalist observed chillingly about the surrounding countryside here today there are onions tomorrow there'll be bombs it is blisteringly hot today must be 40 degrees but what makes this city is that River the Ibero or in Catalan the Eber a it's like it just looks so beautifully green and clear and it's really interesting because over there there's a sign that says Laurie OS Vida and that means the river is life and it's a protest a successful protest by the locals here because there was this government plan to pipe maybe half the water in this river way waste after the much more dry regions of Spain to build golf courses and little groups of sort of holiday housing what would what do the Americans call them condominiums but anyway the local said no you're not having our water that water is life and good for them the water is life - their agriculture here because this is a major rice growing area all the way down to Valencia where paella Spain's most famous dish was created the whole business of rice growing was started here by the Arabs when they governed most of Spain and this was the most northern part of their empire see now I have to be honest with you maybe the research was a bit askew but we didn't realize that the rice wasn't ready to be harvested so here we are in a field of extremely green were eyes but the fact of the matter is I've never ever seen a rice field or a paddy before and I just find it fascinating what it looks like and I mean as we know all corn wheat barley oats and rice comes from wild grass and that's just what this looks like and how anybody ever in the mists of time saw a load of grass and thought I could turn that into rice make paella out of it I don't know but they did and where there are rice fields you're bound to find eels I was invited to lunch by Gloria Sagara eels are a real Catalan delicacy I'm very impressed with this outdoor cooking arrangement I wish we had a hot enough climate to cook everything outdoors three hours three hours okay my in-depth knowledge is Spanish I can tell you exactly what she said yes she's gonna leave that in the brine for three hours okay after that she's just gonna give it a like some flavoring with pimento with paprika and pepper and then she's gonna hang him up in the Sun it's important to hang the eels out in the fresh salty air here but she says you must pay she said the cats will get them well this is unbelievable I don't think anybody back home would see that washing lines wrecked for doing anything but hanging up the washing but not in Spain usually they'd hang until they were pretty dry and firm but these she's virtually cooked straight away I suspect mainly for my benefit but however they're done they're a great delicacy and one that has become sadly rarer as less at the little eels make it across the Atlantic from the Sargasso where they're born who knows eating eels might be as exclusive as tucking into a bowl of caviar see very good idea to salty or just I mean the taste of the I love eels that I love the fatty meals it's so succulent but actually the salt has brought it out though very nicely and also it's quite just quite a bit of chilli in that time in that paprika it's absolutely delicious I think what's so special about it to me is how really simple it is a couple of ingredients bit of salt on them cooker and cooking it over some charcoal perfection I love it now if you go downstream and travel a little way south along the coast you'll come to a place called San Carlos de la rapido being part of the Ebro Delta it's all very shallow and there's a place where for generations they've been catching fish in the most unusual way I'm with my aunt Zaragoza a local fisherman here he looks so fit I thought I'd keep my shirt on well only because I have a touch of sunburn you understand Mayon had laid a long net which he gradually pulled into former corral which we'd previously scared the fish into by making a lot of noise then he simply strolls amongst a little fish and picks them up at his leisure like you would strawberries [Music] yes wish [Music] it's not as easy as you might think [Music] think I'm gonna leave it okay these people skillful but it's such fun it's such good fun but Mediterranean day [Music] my Anna and his fisherman friends were so hospitable they didn't really know us at all but they invited us for dinner aboard one of their boats and a fish don't come any fresher than this we so want to film an authentic fish stew made by the fishermen that I've actually had to pull this out to show you what because there's not enough room for the camera in there the basically he's making a sofrito here and that's just a garlic olive oil onion tomato and I think he's going to put a bit of vino Blanco in there and in a second and then some potatoes and then I imagine the fish and water but let's get on with it so he had the bream that we'd caught and someone else brought mullet but while my Anne was cooking the main dish the other fisherman got round to making pungent allioli by pounding up a few cloves of garlic a couple of egg yolks and some olive oil and remember these are fishermen not chefs all fishermen the world over create their own dishes in France brevis in Greece Bianco in Boston chowder in Britain bacon sandwiches but here a sofrito of fish now this is what I want to see I want to do some of this mash with our Lee so there's alioli in that now yeah sensational yeah I'm in heaven I mean the combination the flavors here are so perfect I can't think of a better way of eating fish I mean it's dead fresh anyway but I just think the center or of it all is the allioli the garlic and olive oil sauce that's with everything and the potatoes well on the fish and and the broth it's it's just it's absolute perfection and what is so nice it's the fishermen that make these dishes my own it's muy bueno absolutely it's this beautiful food and to all the people particularly the fishermen of san carlos de la rápida salud [Music] the next day the fisherman invited me to a festival of bulls with lots of very nice food I've learned that in Catalonia they don't like the type of bullfighting with all the blood the agony and the sheer morbidity that most Despain seems to take a delighting so when the next ball was waiting to come out I made an extremely nervous - across the arena - an Ireland of relative safety where I could observe the general flow of testosterone [Music] so the overall idea is to hold your nerve for a few seconds and then run away it's the oldest game in the world really a slightly more dangerous form of tired with only occasional bloodshed which is largely caused by alcohol leading to a painful lack of judgment must say watching all this food be prepared I'm just it's lovely I mean first of all the self feature just a lovely pork sausage and then this cheese store which is some sausage flavored with payment on but above all this botifarra which is the local black pudding which has rice in it as well as obviously the blood and the Lomo that's a marinated pork done on a on a spit and flavored with marjoram we're just thinking this is what for me coming to festivals like this is all about and I was also thinking I might be a convert a football if you could get food like this in football matches they also had trip us tripe which they cooked in a sauce made with tomatoes and garlic and there were eels done in a similar way but I think they thicken the sauce with almond flour and then snails now these snails are made with almonds tomato parsley garlic and hot pimenton hot paprika now I'm not joking when I say I'm a great fan of lost Kerry Collis snails but I've noticed it's quite a good observation I think that when I sit down with some of my gastronome friends to share a plate of snails like this they say something like actually the tripes very nice or have you tried the eels and miss out on the snails funny that isn't it now this is something I really found quite moving this little ball has been charging around the arena for about five minutes or so and because they're just little balls they tar very easily when they first come out there like torpedoes but after a while they want their mummies or dad is in this case so this ox is here to say come along dear you've had quite enough excitement for one day it's now time for beddy-byes [Music] this is a slightly different type of fishing at least 10 miles from the coast of La Mettler de Mar in the Gulf esand George [Music] well oh it's rather hoping to be on that fake boat over there there's nothing I like better actually than being on a stationary fishing boat in waves like this very good for the the stomach I think you'd probably agree but people think that so the Mediterranean has got no fish in it but it's not something that the fishings particularly good here in the Gulf of st. George near Tarragona and the reason for that mostly is this about eight or ten ships mostly British ships sunk here in the First World War sunk by u-boats in fact as you probably know fish love wrecks is like sort of houses for fish and what they do is just drop the net all round and the the wreck and pick up lots of lovely Hey what I'm particularly looking forward to personally though is getting back ashore because we're going to have lunch of a su ke de peche which is a hake fish stew so like many dishes here it all starts in the mortar and pestle it's made by Rosa Boris Estrada a restaurant owner and it's salt parsley garlic oil and tomato and a spoonful of paprika I'm really enjoying this she's some chatting all the terms today that sometimes in Spanish sometimes in Catalan and sometimes in French but she's I think she's a bit so they're concerned that what she was doing was too simple but I reassured her this is the simple Catalan food which is actually what I've come to see then it's oil in a pan and all the contents pounded together in the mortar get tipped in and fried off a little next some water to make it deep enough to cover the fish I think there's a shortage of dishes like this in Britain but there are lots of dishes like this sookay around the Med this really fresh hake has been dusted in flour which will thicken the dish and that's really all there is to it all Rosa has to do is to turn the fish and after around three minutes it's ready to eat that's a meal safer for cooked in well ten minutes it's a great restaurant dish you know in restaurants in can improve on those sookay de Poisson and wonder you sort of it first I can't wait to try that I can actually say this these hape were the ones we were out this morning catching so it's going to be so fresh parfait doing a jolly good job nevertheless well I had it with a hake fisherman and our interpreter Geordi Cassini in Rosa's restaurant in LA Mettler damar where the boat came from [Music] so this dish is this a sort of thing that fishermen cook here yeah here in La Mirada Mar and also in of the post in Catalonia Mediterranean coast fishermen when they finish the work when they arrive looking for the wife they try to to have good the stomach then they have some things very interesting that I am easy to do simple products like garlic like geometry and then one thing that of course they have the Hague so your fishermen like fish Spanish Catalunya and fishermen like eating fish and then one thing that is is very important also not only they like fish even they are very good bukas Cook's oops a little sweetness well I'm saying goodbye to Spain because I'm taking a ferry to Morocco from the southern port of Algeciras we didn't bring the Land Rover because the official advice was not to so having had the vehicle stolen once in my book it's once bitten twice shy thank you very much I was hoping to find a little fish restaurant on the beach somewhere just outside the town maybe with a view of Gibraltar in the background and perhaps have a pyre and a and a glass of vino Tinto and talk romantically about everything I've seen but to be honest this is what a lot of the Mediterranean is beginning to look like somebody described it as an absurdly small sea and sometimes in my most depressed moments I think of it just surrounded by concrete blocks with nary a fish in the water perhaps the old Shore looking around for summer to eat well certainly to us in the Western world this has to be the most important little stretch of see anywhere the Straits of Gibraltar and the reason for that is with Mediterranean meant middle of the earth and middle of the world the Mediterranean was the only place that mattered and therefore the Straits were incredibly important strategically so you had lots of battles going on in Gibraltar and you had Paris over in Morocco all trying to control this little bit of water just noticing that low brown smudge of pollution between one of the pillars of hercules over on the north african coast in gibraltar over there it's sort of rather symbolic joining africa and europe in a sort of miasma of pollution and of just thinking about that poor little mediterranean gradually been throttled by industry and buildings and pollution [Music] well this is quite meaningful moment to me I've been back to Tangier for about thirty years and when I was here then I was I think a little bit sort of provincial because I hated it we all hated it the girls all had their bottoms pinched and we're all frightfully upfront above that it was dirty the food was awful you couldn't get a drink everybody was smoking and marijuana which I didn't care for at the time yeah I was a bit of a sort of prude I suppose and it was Ramadan and he couldn't get anything to eat everybody was very grumpy because as you know you can't eat during the day but since then I've read a bit about Tangier and you know a lot of famous writers have lived here notably Paul Bowles who I'm very fond of who wrote the sheltering sky and in my case particularly Robert carry a because I think Robert Carey who who lived here at the towards the end of his life did more to introduce British people to foreign food than anybody else and notably of course the food of Morocco [Music] Tangier has a particularly good fish market it's to do with its proximity to the Atlantic that flows the great force through the Straits of Gibraltar and brings with it not just life for the Mediterranean but lots of good fish [Music] I just recall a holiday in Paxos a few years ago that's a little island at the bottom coffee lovely place I remember one morning beautiful Mediterranean morning going down to the little port there in them gosh and there's a couple of local fishing boats coming in and there's a queue of people but mostly elderly women and a few chaps just waiting for the fish and there's a sort of thing a bit like a domestic sink and they just come in and they pour the fish in there and it's not even half full I mean there's some rockfish a few sardines a couple of octopus and that's it you know about five minutes all sold and gone well that's the eastern Mediterranean here in the Far West of the Mediterranean things are a lot better thanks to the Atlanta well I've just been watching that swordfish being unloaded and 1215 years ago and I started making fish programs and have been really excited I mean they're beautiful fish they've got lovely big eyes and I've found there all day boat fish they were only caught 10 hours ago or less and then fetch good money for the fishermen and each one of those bigger ones probably about a thousand quid now though because of worries about overfishing and particularly swordfish we've heard a lot about it I'm sort of thinking is that the last boatful how long can this go on it's a bit depressing I don't think I've ever been to a fish market with so many people in it I mean there's not just the fishermen there's Porter's there's people that just appear to be hanging around but also it's a poor country there's people trying to get scraps of fish fully enough it makes me think not of some Mediterranean scene but but almost of old sepia prints of fish markets long gone fish markets in Britain places like like Grimsby like Yarmouth right up it Wyck right in the north of Scotland you know those pictures where there's tons of people and that's something somebody said to me about Morocco you keep bumping into the last century you see scenes that are long gone in the rest of Europe and it's so exciting the cafe is close to the market serve up fried sardines and horse mackerel but you can get anything here well this is completely delicious it's pork Tamara well they take a roasting tin I think actually it refers to the little dish in tagar over hey this is reality they take a roasting pin put slices a carrot potato a green pepper and then sardines on top of that then slices of tomato lemon and then some cold chilies on top of that put a lot of parsley then they put salt and they put cumin paprika and what looks like some powder but I doubt it is it's probably just something suffering color to give it a nice orange --red but seriously is very very good indeed this is an extremely popular dish in Tangier and the restaurants in the town do very elegant versions of it but I doubt if they taste any better this to me is the very essence of Moroccan food from its vibrant color right down to the hot spiciness which hits you after each mouthful a friend of mine said if I was going to Morocco I should meet up with Tim Buxton who's an old Morocco hand Tim why do you think it is that so many writers and artists have come to Township tip the European and American British writers well I think in general I mean it's quite a you're right it's been quite as a creative artistic crowd that's been drawn to Morocco it's such a visually rich country you get to see so much with colour tell me often I'm walking down the street like I'm convinced I'm on a film set you know all these strange outfits parading around and it just feels you know extraordinary so I think that might be one of the explanations and obviously it's got that exotic feel I mean you can you can throw a wild party I mean as you know Rick you can have belly dancers to the house while you're having dinner so and also singers that sing stories in the old oral tradition exactly exactly so you know that's much more difficult to organise back in Europe and I think people come here to live out their dreams you know I think what I really enjoy about living here is this it's always unpredictable and and rich in so many different ways we're blessed with sort of you know atlas mountain ranges desert you've got the Mediterranean coast here in Tangier the bland tip Coast it's just a fantastic variety Tim I feel a bit sort of shame face now because after 9/11 of course people in Britain sort of regard Muslims and Arabs as sort of dangerous and threatening and I didn't part they didn't bring the Land Rover because I thought it'd be nicked and I thought we're gonna have a terrible time here and it's not like that not at all and it's great shame because of my experience of living with Muslims and in close quarters is that they're just incredibly hospitable generous and sort of warm-hearted and I was drawn enough to to to actually convert to Islam in the end and I feel much much safer here and you know if I was walking down a high street in Britain on a Saturday night I'd feel a lot more nervous and I've never had a problem here with crime so I mean you know to anyone that's worried about coming here really it's just complete nonsense Tim told me about a fish restaurant on the outskirts of a soup which he thought has made quite a good entree for me to get to know the food of the place all they do here is fish mainly grilled fish flavoured with charmoula usually that's coriander ginger cumin garlic and mint but there are many variations that's rubbed inside and out and then the sea bass is stuffed with all sorts of other fish before it's cooked over a charcoal grill for around five minutes on each side I would guess they cook everything on hot charcoal here tajines grill vegetables spicy sausages but I don't personally think there's anything better than a bass cooked on the barbecue it's only about a dozen miles as the crow flies to Andalusia in Spain but already you can smell and taste a completely different world well this is proper fish cooking I mean this is no farm sea basses it's a wild one and the taste it's in a different league and I really like the stuffing I mean there's shrimp there's calamari and a little shark in there plus chamula which is I think Shamu is whatever you make it really I mean I keep seeing different recipes for it but this time it was there's some ginger garlic spring onion and lots and lots of parsley and more important coriander it's really exceptional and I mean that sadly I was only in Tangier for a day as it's not strictly on the Med it was a jumping-off point before going to the mountains of chef show and we can get you a big in the car now sir yeah no I didn't want to leave because already I could see what the writer Gertrude Stein who seems to have been everywhere in the Med sore in the place will come with us bye bye sir who is this man sir it is a chef okay what he did what he do exactly he cooks things okay very good why exactly you should Morocco because he likes the food here they would just put or something more architecture okay very good and now we are doing used to you took me that you are going to so yeah that's very very very nice you will see everything there of traditional Moroccan and mountains be huge mountains you would like this place so much nice to see you sir and I hope if you come to mr. Houghton again thank you very much y'all will come he cooks things I didn't have a film that but next program is color tajines spices and heat [Music]

Channel: BBC Documentary

Views: 556,702

Rating: 4.8270788 out of 5

Keywords: bbc documentary, documentary bbc, bbc, bbc full documentary, bbc full episodes, cooking documentary, food and drink, food documentary, mediterranean food, rick stein, rick stein chef, rick steins mediterranean escapes, tv chefs, Mallorca documentary, barcelona documentary, mallorca, barcelona, la boqueria, catalan food barcelona, rick steins spain, lamb

Id: fkZTu1j5q9Y

Length: 58min 51sec (3531 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2019