Frequently during my peregrinations in Málaga’s Old Quarter, I saw signs pointing to the Picasso Museum and to his natal home, announcements with photographs of Picasso on them, drawings and photographs in restaurants (like the ones at Casa de Guardia and El Chinitas), Picasso reproductions in souvenir shops and even refrigerator magnets of Picasso as a mature artist. There is also a bronze statue in the Plaza de la Merced of Picasso seated on a bench with a pencil and a drawing pad. 

    But, though Pablo Ruíz Picasso was born in Málaga in 1881, he lived there for just the first ten years of his life.  Because of his father’s fragile economic circumstances, the Picasso family moved to A Coruna in Galicia for a few years, then to Barcelona. Picasso returned to Málaga for the last time after Christmas in 1900, moving permanently to France in 1905. After the war, Picasso kept the vow he made to never return as long as the Fascist dictator Francisco Franco was alive.  

    So, while the city has every right to promote itself as Picasso’s birthplace and to promote the excellent Picasso Museum, there is very little substance to Picasso’s early life there, and the statue in the Plaza de la Merced of a middle-aged Picasso on a bench in Málaga poised to make a drawing could never have occurred as depicted. 

    During our stay, we spent one day outside of Málaga, visiting the good La Torre olive oil producing facility and orchards, then to Cortijo de la Fuente, a Sierras de Málaga winery making unremarkable wines, and on to the Stone Age dolmens in Antequera, one of Málaga province’s oldest and most interesting towns.  The high point of the excursion was a marvelous restaurant in Antequera, Arte de Cozina, ensconced in the charming patio of a 17th century building. Here chef-owner Charo Carmona and her son, Francisco (left), are cooking exceptional modernized versions of area classics, some with recipes dating from the 16th century, though it’s highly doubtful that they ever tasted as good then as they do now from Charo’s kitchen.

    Her food exemplifies the best of this style of retro-Spanish cooking.   She gives out cards with descriptions from the old cookbooks that inspired various dishes.  Carmona offers classic porra antequerana (similar to the thick gazpacho-like Cordoban salmorejo), served in three different versions (right)  accompanied by thin strips of toasted bread:   porra de tomate, a thick gazpacho-esque locally sourced ecological tomato-based soup-sauce-dip; porra blanca, a white garlicky version; and local orange-based porra de naranja.

    She offers five kinds of gazpacho, including the traditional tomato-based classic, one made with organic green asparagus, ajo blanco (white garlic gazpacho), one with almonds, and a Sephardic-inspired one with yogurt, cucumber, parsley, walnut and onion. 
     Carmona’s croquetas, the indispensable croquettes of Spain, come filled with stew meat, salt cod, shrimp, spinach and pine nuts or goat cheese.  Perdíz en caldo gazpacho is a traditional Antequerana dish of partridge in a gazpacho sauce. There are three different cuts of Ibérico pork, local suckling goat's sweetbreads with garlic, and caviar from nearby Río Frío.

    That evening, dinner was in stark contrast to the lunch we had at Arte de Cozina.  We were bussed to Benalmadena (16 miles west of Málaga) to the Michelin one-star cocina de vanguardia restaurant, Sollo, in, of all places, the DoubleTree by Hilton Resort & Spa, the domain of budding rock-star Brazilian chef Diego Gallegos (left). Gallegos learned a lot about river fish, particularly trout and sturgeon, when he worked in Río Frío, a mountain river fish farming town where he sources his trout, sturgeon and sturgeon caviar.   

    Gallegos also raises many of the fish he uses in his dishes.  His restaurant overlooks the Mediterranean, and we visited his pisi-factoria, where fish were being raised in large tanks to become part of  the 18-course menu, with dishes like “Yogurt Protein with Piranha Slice Sumac and Black Olive Powder” and grilled fish mixed with “Sturgeon Blood Sauce and Ramen Soup of Catfish Whiskers and Skin.”  If these dishes don’t sound particularly appetizing, perhaps a snack served on a dried, chopped off sturgeon head won’t either.  

Fortunately, for the traditional Spanish cuisine lover in me, most of my experiences were centered on the traditional aspects of Málagan cuisine.     On a prowl around the Old Quarter, we stopped for breakfast at La Málagueña, where we were served piles of crisp churros (right), a fried-dough pastry called tejeringos in Málaga (the name has its base in a double entendre having to do with an “injector,” a syringe or jeringo in Spanish; you can fill in the rest).  Loops of hot tejeringos, stacked several inches high on a plate, come with cups of thick, rich Spanish-style hot chocolate or coffee.

    We moved on for what would be a peripatetic, unique multi-course desayuno-tapas-almuerzo meandering across the Old Quarter. 
    The next stop—for our merienda, or meal between breakfast and lunch—was in a funky antique-curio-gift shop-restaurant (open for breakfast and lunch only) called La Recova (left), with a few tables and a small kitchen surrounded by furniture, ceramics, baskets, bric a brac, etc.   We sat at a table in the center of the room and ate rebanadas, thin slices of toasted bread served with little dishes filled with jam; sobresada (Mallorcan pâté-like soft chorizo) and zurrapa
(the Spanish equivalent of French rillettes) and sides of sliced tomatoes, cured sausages and olives.  The drink at La Recova was the lightly sweet house vermut rojo (a red-brown vermouth) on the rocks with slices of lemon and orange.

    We toured the Ataranzas market, then stopped at nearby Antigua Casa de Guardia, where we sampled copitas of Málaga wine with clams on the half shell, steamed langostinos, mejillones (mussels) and skewers with anchovies, pearl onions, pickles and olives.  Many of the group went on another museum tour, but I opted for meeting up later at Uve Doble, the eponymous “W” for chef-owner Willie Orellana (right), whose very good food features tasteful modern twists on classics such as a Spanish tortilla de patatas trufada al momento (left), the classic potato omelette with truffles, and fideos negros tostados (left) with calamarcitos de Málaga, a smallish macaroni-like pasta, toasted, “blackened” with squid ink and cooked with baby Bay of Málaga squid (below). 

    Orellana also intersperses his menu with internationally inspired dishes, such as swordfish ceviche with avocado grown in the nearby Axarquia region and deboned suckling pig with cous cous.  Wine offerings on the blackboard at Uve Doble are some of the most inspired in the city.

               

      Following an hour sampling food at the Málaga Gastronomy Festival, which was held down by the port, I organized an excursion with four other journalists by taxi to Pedregalejo, where I returned to those fabled chiringuitos beachfront restaurants specializing in sardinas al espeto, sardines impaled on a cane spit and grilled over wood coals.  There were a dozen chiringuitos on the beach, all with sand-filled fisherman’s dinghies permanently beached in front and all glowing with hot coals cooking sardines and fish on spits.

    We settled on the outdoor terrace of Las Acacias and ordered two dozen sardines, communal plates of salad and bottles of cold Spanish Rosado, and we ate and drank just a few feet from the Mediterranean with the smell of the sardines and the sea, the embers of the cooking coals glowing in the night, and beyond, the lights of Málaga, just three miles down the coast to the west. 

    On Pedregalejo beach, I had gained a new appreciation of Málaga, one that I regret not taking more advantage of in my youth.  But better late than never, or as Spaniards say, “Mejor tarde que nunca,”   As late as my re-discovery of Málaga may have been, I plan to make up for lost time and put this magical city high on my agenda for future travels.

Photographs by Gerry Dawes©2017

    I once knew a wine writer—always with a buzz on—who exulted that he’d tasted his way through 120 wines at an international exposition.  Now, my job as a wine writer has its joys, but tasting my way through 120 wines, or 50 wines—which is about par for a judge at a wine competition—is not one of them. 

    Such a slog is not only hard work but palate fatigue sets in early, so that the 46th wine you taste is never going to have quite the luster of the third, and by number 75 you are in agony and in need of a shower.

    Still, holding your own wine tasting at home, or in a restaurant, can be one of the most convivial of pleasures, as long as you go about it the right way, starting with whom you invite.

    Basically, there are three kinds of people who drink wine: those who kind of like it, those who truly love it, and those who regard it as a study in one-upmanship.  Only the second type is any fun at a wine tasting, especially if you’re going to be serving some expensive wines, which the first group will shrug at and the third will sniff and go into a discourse about a wine’s Ph level or a vineyard’s trellising techniques.

    Once you’ve chosen your jolly group (please skip the black tie request!), there are certain guidelines that make such tastings a great deal of fun.

    • I recommend serving six wines. Fewer is hardly worth the effort, and more becomes a bore. If this will only be a tasting, the amount sampled in each glass should be no more than a couple of ounces, so one bottle will serve for about eight people; if you plan to consume all the wines afterwards, you'll have more than enough for that number of people. 

    • Will it be a blind tasting?  If so, cover each bottle with a paper bag to hide the labels, making sure the shape of the bottle is not evident. (Pinot noirs and rieslings always come in distinctively shaped bottles.) Number them and keep the list of names and numbers out of sight.

    • If it’s not a blind tasting, rather than have a random selection of wines, choose one region, say Tuscany, or a single estate, say, Jordan cabernet. If the former, a horizontal tasting of a single vintage will give interesting insight into the differences of wines from the same region; if the latter, have a vertical tasting, that is, from different vintages of the same wine.

    • Use standard wineglasses for all the wines and pour only about an ounce or so to begin with. Later your guests can enjoy whatever they like.

    • Have plain water available to help clear the palate between wines.

    • Crackers or bread is traditionally made available, also to clear the palate, chosen because they are bland and do not interfere with the wine flavors. But I believe it is much better to serve crackers like Saltines or bread like focaccia whose salt works as salt always does—to perk up flavors. I’ve also found that a little fat, along with the salt, brings out much more depth in wines you taste, so put a sheer amount of salted butter, or olive oil, on the bread. It works wonders.

    • If you are serving the wines with dinner—and I heartily recommend you do so—keep the food very, very simple, like mild cheese, chicken broth, a steak, or, if you’re tasting white wines, fillet of fish. 

    • You might have guests taste all the wines prior to dinner—remember, you’re only sampling six—then match them with dinner. For the real point of tasting wines is that they go best with food, and with few exceptions, aren’t worth much without food, not even a glass of Champagne without at least a canape.

    • During the discussion, try to keep the conversation lively (remember, you didn't invite the wine snobs to lecture anyone), and it’s a capital idea to have a few choice observations from great writers handy for toasts like these:

—“No nation is drunken where wine is cheap.”—Thomas Jefferson.

—“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,/ Sermons and soda-water the day after.”—Lord Byron.

—“Wine, madam, is God’s next best gift to man.”—Ambrose Bierce.

—“It’s a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.”—James Thurber.

—“It was a very Corsican wine and you could dilute it by half with water and still receive its message.”—Ernest Hemingway (right).

----"To alcohol, the cause of and solution to all life's problems."-Homer Simpson.

   •Print out the names of all the wines for guests to take home.

   • Finish every drop of every wine you open.