eating thinking

reflections after a trip and some cooking (and my music)

I have just spent a week driving across Spain and Portugal with my family and my partner (Luke). I ate a great many delicious things, and a few disappointing things that made me look forward to my next (properly researched) meal. I get so much pleasure out of shortlisting a few restaurants, investigating on Reddit, TikTok, Trip Advisor and Instagram before emailing the selected eateries on to my travel mates.

I also hate making quick decisions and feeling like I missed out on what could have been the meal of a lifetime. Yes, I’m still a bit bitter that at the beginning of the trip we drove from my current home-city of Bilbao – in the Basque region known for its pintxos – to A Coruña in the Galicia region – famous for its seafood – only to wind up in a pintxos restaurant by mistake. We were overtired, we were hungry, but we only had one night in the city, so I felt pretty sad about the whole affair. I just love to eat good.

The next day, I made it my personal plight to ensure we ate seafood while we were still in the Galicia region by finding a restaurant on the road. We decided to stop in a town called A Estrada – a short drive from Santiago de Compostela. There I found an unassuming place with good reviews called Casa Renda. The food was spectacular, made all the more delicious by what a surprise it was to find it. Our waiter, Alexander, proudly explained it was his parents’ place. I know that feeling. I spent time growing up in my dad’s restaurant. We were utterly charmed.

He recommended the perfect amount of food – we ordered longueiron (a weird-looking pod razer fish) with garlic, oil and parsley, volandeiras (scallop found on the coasts of Galicia and Portugal) drenched in lemon, parsley and oil, and a rich, seafood-laden paella, topped with juicy langoustines. Heaven material. And then I felt my job there was done. Alexander’s mum came out and hugged us. I obviously left an effusive, if not slightly tipsy, Google review.

In Portugal it was rich, oily cod dishes and simple yet flavourful meats with rice or potato side dishes. I want to write more about that later, as well as other delicious Spanish meals we ate in Madrid. I tried dishes that set my taste buds alight and made me excited to get back into my kitchen in Bilbao to try things. I love being limited by whatever’s in the fridge or pantry. Luke and I decided to go vegetarian for a week (and also to cut the grog) after nine days of eating various kinds of meat.

Back in our Bilbao apartment today I wanted to use what I had on hand to make a yummy, sugary yet savoury lunch. I craved the chewy, gelatinous sweetness of orange roast veggies but wanted something acidic too. So I came up with carrot fries: carrots cut lengthways and then in half, in thick matchsticks covered in olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme. In the oven they went for about 30 minutes until charred (I broke off some of the more burnt bits before plating) and while they cooked, I ventured into the fridge to find something (anything?) I could use for a flavourful cut-through sauce. And there they were – a 10-day-old can of anchovy-stuffed green olives (they passed the sniff test!) and a freshly opened can of fermented peppers. Bingo! I chopped them up finely and mixed them together with pepper and salt. I added a tiny dash of oil. It was the lunch snack of my dreams.

While I’m here, I guess I better say this: hi! I’m Elsie. I’m a musician and a writer and I love food and reading. Thanks for reading my first newsletter. I also want to use this platform to talk about music stuff. I have an album coming out on May 2 called The Normal Discontents of Living, named after an Elena Ferrante quote because I’m quite tragic (‘the circle of an empty day’ is her’s too). I’ll talk about the significance of the name another time.

For now, you can listen to my single Heatwave, which got a write up from Rolling Stone AU here about a month ago. I was also on ABC Radio Melbourne this week talking about it and the rest of the album, you can listen to a snippet of that here. That was a cute interview. I was looking out over the lawns at the Prado Museum in Madrid while my parents lined up for tickets. Maybe 10 metres away from me a guy strummed a guitar on the daisy dotted grass we shared. Today I found out I am a spotlighted artist on Triple J Unearthed (if this means nothing to you because you aren’t from Australia, it’s just a Cool Thing, basically). All of this to say, I am grateful and happy and want to write about these things but only if I can write about other things too (food).

I’m going to write more about the album and other music happenings in the next few days and weeks. Ok bye bye!