CATALAN DAYS, BARCELONA NIGHTS

Chano Dominguez Weird things taste wonderful on small pieces of bread. Until May 17th, you will find Isma Prados in the basement kitchen of the Jazz Standard in New York. He’ll be cooking lots of beef cheek, black salt cod, pork-belly confit, duck and eel paella and sweet coca deserts; food from his native Catalonia to accompany jazz from the same.

Catalonia is a place of varied environments, climates and gastronomies. In an hour you can ski down a mountain and then suntan on the beach. A small part of that world has been gathering in New York over the past month for the Catalan Days festival, full of dance, film, food, literature and music, sponsored by the Institut Ramon Llull. The Catalan Jazz Festival is the grand finale, a party of fabulous dining and jazz music at the Jazz Standard. (Though there is one final event at Carnegie Hall: the Sylvan Winds quintet on May 20th.)

On May 13th Chano Dominguez (pictured above) performed a solo piano work to preview his quartet’s weekend performances. While we stood by the kitchen in anticipation of the evening’s tastings, he wove a lovely dance into the room, soft at one moment and invigorated the next. Each night offers a new group from the Catalan region. Later in the evening Triphasic (pictured below), a cool trio, tore up the small stage with electronic riffs, explosive funk drumming, driving typewriter bass (where the fingers move as fast as a typist’s), saxophone and video projections.

The Catalonian wine was good, the beer excellent. Poured from a mysterious dark bottle into ample wine glasses, the Estrella Damm Inedit has its roots in barley and wheat, yet tastes profound. Designed to accompany fine gastronomy, this is a very special drink (Ferran Adrià, Juli Soler and El Bulli’s sommeliers’ team helped create it).

Triphasic The first plate to tour the room was salted cod on wild mushrooms with aioli. The cod was somewhat like sushi, yet served warm, very soft and entirely new to my palate. The following dish combined pork-belly confit with a plump shrimp tail over some ganxet beans--a Catalan “Surf 'n' Turf”, Prados suggests in his menu. These were so popular that I was often grabbing the last one off of the tray, under the smouldering eyes of those with slower reflexes.

Alas, I had to restrain myself from the paella of duck, eel and rice (owing to a lethal nut allergy). But I did ask other attendees for their thoughts. Loth to take a pause from eating, they searched for the right word, gave up, and called the entrée “very… very delicious”. I noticed every plate return to the kitchen spotless. The beef cheek, cooked slowly with a “precious” gelatine, was gratifyingly greasy, like something you would taste in a dream about roasting meat on an ancient Mediterranean beach.

In each of these dishes the meat (fish, belly, cheek) was cooked as tenderly as possible. The results consistently soft and flavourful, with a wonderful texture surprise. The Catalan festival has done us a lovely gift in inviting Prados to New York.

The food pairs well with the beer, wine and jazz, and all of it is cheaper than a one-night stay in Barcelona.

~ COLIN BAKER

Photo Credit: apey2f (via Flickr)