September 18, 2024 Lunch - Restaurant Tintanegra, Combarro. Dinner - Salad, Steamed Mussels and clams at the house

 September 18, 2024 Lunch - Restaurant Tintanegra, Combarro. Dinner - Salad, Steamed Mussels and clams at the house

I woke up at 8:00 and showered and dressed and finished the blog.  We ate some toast with cheese and orange marmalade for breakfast and discussed dinner and lunch. We made a reservation at Tintanegra for lunch and decided to eat clams and mussels for dinner,

At 11:00 Mickey drove Elaine, Billy, Rebecca, and me to the public market in Raxo where we bought three kilo of mussels,1 kilo of clams, a zucchini, tomatoes, two heads of lettuce, plums, a lemon, and an avocado.

We then walked across the street to the Carneceria and bought sausages, eggs, and meatballs.

Then I sat and talked to Mickey while Billy, Elaine, and Rebecca went to the supermarket to buy Sofrito and tomato sauce for Friday night’s pasta meal.

We returned to the house stored our groceries and at 1:00 drove to Combarro and found two good parking places including the Handicapped one in front of our favorite bakery.

Willy and Billy drank a coffee con Leche at the small restaurant next to the bakery and then we walked to Tintanegra. Suzette and I were not hungry but everyone else was. Mickey and Rebecca shared a Calmari in su Tintanegra with langustinos for two served in a large round baking pan, black with tomatoes and squid baked to almost firm.  Billy and Elaine ordered an Arroz dish with mariscos that was baked in an even bigger copper pan with a mix of seafood submerged in a thick soupy rice stew. Willy ordered a bowl of the largest beans I have seen on this trip with bacalao, which is rehydrated salt cod. I ordered a seafood and fish soup that was the best I have ever eaten, a moderately thick tomato and broth based soup with lots of clams and chunks of shrimp, squid, and fish. I shared the soup with Suzette who ordered a scallop and Langustino salad with lovely raw scallops and large cooked langustino.  This was the best food we ate in Combarro and I would readily return to Tintanegra. And, the prices were not outrageous.  We ordered a bottle of Granbazan amber and then a bottle of Pazo de Senorans, two excellent albarinos plus waters and bread.  It was a great meal. The wines were 57 Euros and the food for seven was 153 Euros. Everyone contributed to share the cost and we took home some uneaten rice from both rice dishes for dinner.

We got home around 3:45 from lunch and left for Martin Codax at 4:15 for a 5:30 tasting and tour. The tour included visiting the room where 26,000 liters of wine is aged in 300 liter French oak barrels of the single plot and premium wines where we were told the story of how Martin Codax was founded. It is actually a cooperative that selected the name of a 13th century Galician balladeer and poet for its name. We then went to a tasting room where a lady walked us through the steps of tasting two Martin Codax Albariño wines, the joven or young wine, which is pale yellow in color and fresh(acidic) even after Malalactic fermentation and their lies wine that is a deep yellow. To summarize the two characteristics that took an hour lecture, the young wine is made with specific grapes in an area with less sun and harvested early and fermented and then malalactically fermented  while the lies grapes are grown in a sunnier area and allowed to mature and then then are fermented that then spend six to nine months on the lies, which is the dead yeast that was used to ferment the grapes with agitation to mix the lies. This produces a mellow more complex wine without the buttery malalactic flavor.  I prefer the lies wine. Rebecca prefers the young fresher tasting wine. 

After the long lecture it was 7:00 or 7:30 and I went to buy four bottles of my favorite Martin Codax wine, Cuatro Osos, that is a dry rose made with 

Mencia grapes grown in a different part of Spain.

Next time I will try to avoid the lecture and sit in the lounge area and buy wine by the glass and try more of their ten Albariño wines.

We returned to the house and rested and at 8:00 I started a pot of water boiling. Around 8:45 Elaine made a salad with the lettuce, two kinds of tomatoes, cucumber, and avocado and I made a simple lemon juice and olive oil and salt dressing.  Mickey melted butter in the microwave and I cut slices of bread we had bought this morning in Raxo. Rebecca rinsed and cleaned the mussels and then we steamed them open and everyone sat at the table and we passed the cooked mussels around the table. Billy then finished steaming the mussels and steamed the clams and we passed those around the table with the re-heated black rice and rice from the rice stew with the mussels and clams to recreate the seafood rice dish like at the restaurant. We opened the chilled bottle of 2023 young Albariño Rebecca bought at Adega dos Eidos yesterday when we visited the Winery in Padrinan near Sanxenxo.

We ate slices of the Santiago torte we bought at the bakery in Combarro today for dessert with cups of tea and at 10:30 everyone was ready to go to bed.

Bon Appetit