Queso de Cabra | Travel

Madrid, Spain

Once or twice a year, I spend a couple of weeks guiding a group of high school students through some magical place in the world for a cool travel company called Walking Tree Travel. I have guided adventures in Costa Rica, Peru, Spain, and Morocco. Yes, it’s an awesome gig. And sometimes I stay in the country a few extra days to get a little solo adventure time – which is usually primarily focused on the pursuit of local eateries serving the best, most authentic, and most creative foods of the region. Last month, I spent 10 days with a group of rad students from Santa Fe, New Mexico, in Spain. We began and ended the trip in Madrid, an absolute inspiration of a city. Madrid is brimming with life. And fantastic eats. In general, Spain is a gastronomic dream, especially if you’re excited about the traditional, so anywhere you end up in Spain is pretty promising as far as eating goes. And Madrid most certainly does not disappoint. So, on my last night there, I set out on a self-guided tapas tour in the hopes of getting one last bite of all my favorite Spanish treats.

Mercados are my favorite thing about Spanish food culture – grand buildings of every shape, style, and era, filled with purveyors of tapas, pintxos, paella, jamon, vino, desserts, fruits, veggies, and cheese. Some are stylishly modern, some are super old school, all seem to be busy all the time. Aside from the everyday celebration of food and camaraderie that happens in a mercado, it’s a wonderful way to get all your favorite foods into one meal. The first Spanish mercado I ever visited is the Mercado San Miguel near the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. I was there with a very dear friend who just happened to be in Spain at the same time and had come to the city from Bilbao to play. Spain was still new to me but she knew the drill, so after equipping ourselves with the obligatory glass of wine we made the rounds of the mercado. It was like a crash course on traditional Spanish food. It’s exhilarating. Cured ham legs hanging in a line behind the counter, pyramid-shaped piles of croquetas waiting to be ordered and fried,  a thousand bite-size toasts topped with fantastically prepared seafood… Then there’s all the happy, maybe-a-little-drunk people you have to cozy up with just to reach the counter to order chorizo, or bacalao, or manchego, or paella, or tortilla… You get the idea.

My other favorite thing is the portion sizes. Tapas are meant to be eaten alongside other tapas. It’s like a culinary choose your own adventure. You don’t have to commit to a plate that has two particular sides, no substitutions, even if you want the fancy sh*t. Madrid isn’t the best or most accommodating place to fly solo because it’s such a social culture, but the tapas do make eating alone un-boring.

I happened to be staying at a friend’s apartment about three blocks away from the Mercado de San Miguel, so I started my evening there. And, naturally, I started with wine. Normally, I’m not much of a rosé drinker but it seems more beloved and glorified in Spain than it is in the US, so I figured it had to be pretty good. (Full disclosure: I love wine. I love the way it makes my food come alive. It’s delicious and vineyards make me swoon. But I am in no way any sort of wine connoisseur). It was fantastic. And you know what? Even though you’re about to turn around and walk around a very busy market, they pour you that glass of wine in a proper wine glass. Which is just so nice. Anyway, the rosé made me want seafood so I went in search of bacalao, or cod. If it’s not simply piled on to a plate, the seafood is often served on teeny, crunchy toasts with some great sauce, as was the case with this bacalao. To my utter delight, the sauce del dia for the bacalao was a lavish honey mustard, which is my favorite dipping sauce in the whole wide world. That went so well that I simply moved right over to the pulpo, or octopus, also served on a tostada but with just a little olive oil as sauce. Perfection.

After leaving the market, the only thing on my mind were padrones, which I had seen in one stall of the market but only as a very large portion (called a racion, instead of tapa). While peering into the window of a small, simple eatery, the friendly waiter caught me and asked what I was looking for. I told him that all I wanted, hombre, is a little tapa of padrones. Because, you see, I’ve been in Spain for almost two weeks and still haven’t had any! Of course, guapa, get in here. Great. I sat at the bar and with one wave of the waiter’s hand and one word, the wonderful humans behind the bar were cooking up my padrones. These small, green peppers are not spicy at all. These babies are just slightly sweet and wonderfully savory and with just a little olive oil and salt in a frying pan, they’re the most delightfully satisfying snack. Their skin blackens a bit, the flesh gets tender, and they’re the perfect size to pop them right off the stem with your teeth, one by one. When the waiter asked if that’s what I had been looking for, I pointed to my empty plate and said, “Obvio.”

I knew I only had space in my belly for one more thing but I knew exactly what that thing would be. I had spotted it on the menu at a restaurant a few doors down on a walk earlier that day. What you should know first, though, is that I love goat cheese. Remember when I said earlier that I loved wine? Yeah, no, it’s not like that. This is a different kind of love. I’ll do almost anything for good goat cheese. I lived in the Bay Area for several years and one of my favorite weekend adventures was going to a goat cheese farm called Harley Farms in Pescadero. Aside from being a lovely place, their goat cheese is next level. That’s where this love affair began. I’ll eat almost any goat cheese, but some are most certainly better than others. In Spain, however, there is a fabulously high standard for goat cheese AND it’s on every menu. I ate so much goat cheese in those two weeks. Of course, it’s called queso de cabra in Spanish, and I am hereby dedicating this blog post to queso de cabra. Sweet treat for my soul. The dish I had spotted had not only queso de cabra but another of my favorite Spanish foods as well – chorizo. A slice of baguette topped with a dark red mini-chorizo, and a big, fat slice of semi-soft queso de cabra with my final glass of rosé. Ya está.

I believe that every day should begin and end with a good meal, no matter how big or small, complex or simple. And I definitely believe that every good adventure should end with an amazing meal. Because it’s true that your heart and mind need to be ready to move on, but never forget about your belly. And if you find yourself in Madrid, I highly recommend tapas-hopping on your last night.