My parents visited us recently, and as it was their first time in Madrid, I took it upon myself to take them on a culinary journey from the most traditional to the vanguard of Spanish cuisine. As it seemed to be a roaring success (apart from the fact that they gained several pounds and suffered from indigestion for a week following their visit) a relation of our dining experiences might be a good introduction to the food and drink of the Spanish capital.
The first restaurant stop took us to the Latina, the oldest part of Madrid, to Malacatín, a traditional bar/restaurant known for the quality of its cocido. Cocido madrileño is the most traditional dish of the area which is thought to have its origins in a stew that Spanish Jews would leave cooking overnight to eat on the Sabbath. Now, with the addition of several types of pork meat, it refers to a hearty dish in which chickpeas (garbanzos) are the central ingredient, cooked in a broth enriched with meats and vegetables. There are many similar dishes across Spain; each using the local beans or pulses, such as Fabada Asturiana. The difference between most of these dishes and the cocido is that rather than all the ingredients being served together, in a cocido, the chickpeas and vegetables are contained in muslin bags to be served separately from the stock and meats. This leads to some quite epic meals, of which Malacatín´s version is no exception.
The tiled bar itself is festooned with bull fighting pictures and military shields, which coupled with the silence that hit us as our multiracial group entered the bar, made us rightly worried that we walked into some sort of latter day nationalist stronghold. A retrospective Google search reveals that in fact, this bar was a favourite of dictator Franco´s henchmen. Note to self, check political leanings of bar before booking.
After we´d resolutely put on our paper bibs (yes, really), a bottle of local wine was served and the first vat was placed on the table. We didn´t recall being asked whether we´d wanted the cocido or not, but no matter, there didn´t seem much point ordering anything else. The soup which is basically the stock in which the rest of the meal is cooked with the addition of short noodles or fideos was one of the most delicious liquids I´ve ever tasted, a perfect suspension of globules of fat in a savoury caldo. It would have been easy to eat the whole pot ourselves but knowing there was a lot more to come we decided to stop at two bowls each. Next came the garbanzos, chick peas from Castile which are so far removed from the tinned version that they may as well be an entirely different pulse. Nutty, with the perfect yield on biting without being mushy, they were served with the moderately spicy pickled light green chillis called guindillas, a tray of lumps of gelatinous pork fat which tasted far better than it looked, a rich tomato sauce and an entire cabbage. The rest of the meal was punctuated by the delivery of yet another tray of boiled meats: chorizo, black pudding (morcilla), a whole leg of ham, a tray of boiled beef, a whole chicken… all were delicious – particularly the chicken which had the unmistakeable flavour and density of flesh of a life running round pecking in the dirt, that I hadn´t tasted since I was last in Africa. However, the portions were ridiculous. We ended up with more meat on the table that the we´d usually eat in a month.
According to the waiter no one ever finishes the cocido, which seems extravagantly wasteful to me. I guess they serve some of the leftovers to the next tables but at 20 euros a head they could have given us half the amount we had and we´d still have left satisfied.
Would we go back? Undecided. The food was delicious and to the staff´s credit they were friendly with me as the hispanohablante, but perhaps one to leave to the born-and-bred Spaniards.
Spain is delicious 