Stomachs on legs are proud to present

I read Phil's post on the SBS blog about Bellota Iberico ham, so thought I should post this Bellota ham shot for posterity.

I actually think Iberico ham is kind of over-rated when you consider the range of meats available to man kind: give me head sausage any day.

We were in Barcelona recently to work at Sonar Festival, and this place was the feeding-our-faces highlight, discovered by accident in the Born area where we were staying, at midnight.
So we went there for lunch on the day that we were leaving, as well. Because we are - in a word - pigs.

It's called Set de Born, and if you are interested in sampling a range of Spanish cured meats, I really recommend you check it out and ham it up 'til you drop. There's a veritable waterfall of cured meats hanging behind the counter.

We had some of the ham above later, on the plane, sandwiched in airport croissants, and it elevated that dry and sad pastry into a whole new stratosphere.
Or maybe it was the aeroplane that did that.



After you've been in Barcelona for a few days, you get a bit sick of Iberico ham. Once you've been eating it every day, in little baguettes, you don't really care if it's the expensive version or not.

That's when you start to crave a different type of thin sliced meat.

Voila, the wild boar's head sausage, above. Sliced very thinly, it reminded me of a little bit of fine Italian mortadella (because of the pistachios I guess) but had a distinct meatiness. No spam vibe. Delicious cheeky goodness!



Mmmm... the 'patatas bravas', a typical Catalonian tapas dish, which I believe is normally served with a tomato sauce (according to 'The New Spanish Table'). These just-cooked, juicy waxy potato slices are slopped in this delicious garlicky salad cream. Not exactly diet food. I like how the Spanish consume like a litre of olive oil per day, with meat, potatoes, tomatoes, paprika, seafood and bread. It doesn't get much more Columbus' new world than that. I am slightly nervous about spending a couple of months there later in the year though. Maybe I can start to get in training for it by drinking a glass of olive oil each morning while standing on my head.

The little sausages that look like chorizos, I have the name written down at home, will amend this post later. They were damn good.

The spinach and orange salad had black truffle stuff around the outside and a shot glass of some type of yoghurt curd with pine nuts in the middle of the plate.