Toledo

After Madrid, we caught the train to Toledo. This was an incredibly charming city, as it was formerly the capital of the Spanish crown and was filled with ancient fortifications, churches, and all the usual fun crap you find in medieval Europe. The old city walls and cathedral were a particular joy to check out. At least they were when not getting lost. Because the street plan for Toledo is about 800 years old (not sure about that, but I need to get this blog out and am too lazy to check my facts right now), it’s a confusing warren of streets that are very easy to get lost in. We arrived in the evening, and of course I dragged us out to a particular restaurant I had pre-picked so we could experience the best food Toledo has to offer, and got a little lost on the way back to the hotel. Well, maybe saying ‘a little lost’ would be an egregious understatement, but we ended up getting to experience about half the cities medieval charm at 1:00 AM without another tourist around, so it was a bit of an adventure.

Toledo has some very regional cooking. Partridge and venison are very big there, and I had them a couple time. Although they were all quite good, there was nothing particularly unique about their preparation. I think the dish of the stop ended up being the beef cheeks I had the first night we went out, prior to our 1.5 hour scavenger hunt for our hotel. They appeared to be pretty straight-forward, just a standard braise in beef stock with aromatics and maybe a little wine or vinegar, but were very well executed and incredibly tender. Despite the fact that braising is my cooking forte, I’ve never worked with beef cheeks myself, and definitely need to get around to trying them this winter at home.

Dessert-wise, the big thing there is mazapán, or marzipan as we’d say in English. Tasty, but as far as I could tell no different from the sugary almond-based dessert you get anywhere else. Of course, it didn’t prevent me from devouring half a box.

The last notable thing about the food there wasn’t related to preparation, but instead to nomenclature. In this part of Spain (possibly others, but I’m not sure), beans are referred to as ‘Judias’, or translated literally from Spanish as ‘Jews’. So you will commonly go into a restaurant and order something in Spanish which literally translates to “braised partridge with Jews”. Hhhhhmmmnn.