Xanthe Clay. But what makes San Sebastian (or Donastia as it is known in the Basque language) especially appealing to the gourmet traveller is the quality of the everyday food, in particular the hundreds of pintxos bars, simple drinking dens selling everything from traditional rustic snacks to high-end gourmet dishes in small portions – and with miniature prices.
Inspired by all this culinary excellence, expat John Warren, the founder of San Sebastian Food, has for some years been running tours of the pintxos bars (a lot of fun and a great way of getting your bearings on the first night in town). Developing the theme, he has now opened a swish cookery school beneath San Sebastian’s best hotel, the elegant Maria Cristina. Built at the turn of the last century for the much-loved Queen Maria Cristina, and headquarters for Franco’s men during the civil war (there are still bullet holes), it has rooms with balconies overlooking the Urumea river.
I joined a class that started with a visit to the famous Bretxa Market, a few yards from the cookery school. There were just three of us that day, although groups can be larger. We strolled across as our guide, Lourdes, explained how good food was central to the Basque culture. Even the McDonald’s (opened 15 years ago when the 19th-century market building was redeveloped as a mall, to the disgust of the locals) has a patisserie at the front.
We started at the small outdoor market, a dozen stalls tucked along the side of the neoclassical building. Lourdes decoded the mass of fruit and vegetables, pointing out the tomatoes from nearby Getaria, where the salty soil makes them particularly intensely flavoured, the bags of black alubias (beans), and Tolosa beans that cost three times as much, but will cook to a deep burgundy colour and won’t break. At the end of the row, a woman was podding a local speciality, tiny lacrima, or “tear” peas, which fetch €20 (£14.60) for a small jar. Not that prices are posted on any of the stalls, and Lourdes advised, “Ask first – prices fluctuate during the day and can come as a shock to locals, too.”
Downstairs in the indoor market Lourdes talked us through the butchers’ counters, with tiny milk-fed lamb and fresh chorizo – San Sebastian is too damp to make dried sausages – as well as the offal (not for the fainthearted), including sheep’s heads and pigs’ ears. She showed us the creamy, crumbly cheese that is eaten with txakoli, the sharp local wine that is poured from a height to reduce the acidity, and myriad varieties of ham at Jesus Maria Brusan’s stall, demystifying the cures, cuts and diets that differentiate them.
Elsewhere, women prepared fish from the gleamingly fresh displays. “Here the men go to sea and the women sell,” explained Lourdes, as she took us through the piscine offering, including monkfish splayed upside down, their highly valued livers on show. I learnt that the best monkfish had pale pink, not beige, livers and that the lobsters without claws, langosta, fetched twice the price of the bogavante, lobsters with claws. Even less familiar were the bowls of tiny, threadlike elvers, or Anguillas, and hake throats called kokotxas to make the classic Basque dish kokotxas pilpil. Strangest of all were percebes, or goosefoot barnacles, which fetched high prices as the harvesting, in the rough seas, is so dangerous.
Back at the cookery school, a cool modern interior of polished concrete and stone, we went to our own stations, each with dedicated equipment. The menu included the famous Galician steak, squid in its own ink, and fresh anchovies.
We started with pantxineta, a Basque puff pastry dessert, with Lourdes translating for local chef Teresa. She showed us how to seal the pastry with water as egg would weigh down the layers, and then stretch the top pastry over the almond filling. It was put in the oven, and we prepared asparagus, peeling the spears from the top until they were pearly white, and cooking them in water seasoned with sugar as well as salt – another tip.
We chopped red piquillo peppers, onion and green pepper to make a dressing in the colours of the Basque flag, then moved on to the clams, dropping them in a pan with sweated leeks. “A little bit of salt, olive oil and txakoli – that is very important,” said our teacher.
Finally we sat around the wooden table, feasted and, perhaps most importantly, in true Basque style, we talked. For as Lourdes pointed out, for the people of San Sebastian, their attachment to food is not just about going to restaurants: “We eat because it is a way of socialising.”
Essentials
Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000; coxandkings.co.uk) has a three-night stay at the Hotel Maria Cristina in San Sebastian from £675 per person b&b including flights with British Airways to Bilbao and four days’ car hire. MasterChef Travel (020 7873 5005; mastercheftravel.co.uk) has a three-night foodie tour to San Sebastian, including a cookery class at the new San Sebastian Food cookery school, priced from £995 per person.
Includes British Airways flights, transfers and accommodation with breakfast daily, one lunch and one dinner. The next trip departs on October 1.
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