baluard

carrer del baluart, 38.

baluard—just a few blocks from the sea in barceloneta—is one of the few places in barcelona at which good bread may be found. at 7.15am, the shop is full of people buying bread and pastry, the shop van is stuffed with sacks of bread.

recuit

not a cheese but a traditional curd dairy product of catalonia. fresh, unsalted whole cow or goat milk is coagulated with vegetable rennet derived from cardoon flowers (C. cardunculus) dried and crushed in water in a warm mortar, the curd then partly drained in a rag pulp sheet that serves as a packaging material. note the patterning on the surface of this specimen of recuit de vaca from granja armengol—the result of the rag wrapper. the pressed curd is moist, dense, and finely textured, perfectly sweet and intensely delicious. clotet, mestres, and ponsati are the authors of an article titled "la problemàtica dels formatges de xerigot a catalunya" ("the problem of catalan whey cheeses")—worthwhile for those seeking clarity in the matter of coagulated dairy products.

some exceptions

to five months of mostly unmemorable beverages.*

















* neither a comprehensive nor an ordered listing. japan was the anomaly: a mostly unnavigable sea of delicious and drinkable novelty. ultra-low-alcohol cocktails that abandon the bitters model of flavouring in favour of amino acid savouriness, a profusion of what might be thought of as low-intervention terroir sakes, an entire world of umeshu.

in the country

dark cherries and dust, from 2010. with thanks to h-farm.