Spain

Fricandó, Made to Remember Barcelona

Written by Alejandro, wine writer and travel advisor.

This fricandó recipe took us almost a year to actually cook. Some dishes sit in your head for months before you make them. We first tried fricandó and a glass of Priorat at Cuines de Santa Caterina, inside the Mercat de Santa Caterina in Barcelona, last November. Jose and his staff were the ones who introduced us to both, patient with two people who clearly did not grow up eating this way. Somewhere between that table and the market noise around us, we decided we would eventually cook our way back there. This weekend, we finally did.

The dish was fricandó, a Catalan veal stew, slow and rich, the kind of thing that makes a kitchen smell like a memory. We used the recipe from Jose Andrés’s Spain My Way, page 264, and it took most of an afternoon, the good kind of slow.

This fricandó recipe, paired with a wine app

Normally I already know what I want to open. This time I didn’t, so I actually used Wandervine, the wine app I built, the way anyone else would. I described the dish, and it pointed me toward a La Conreria Priorat. Structured enough to stand up to the veal, but not so heavy that it fought the sauce. It also happened to be close to what Jose had poured for us in Barcelona, which felt like the app closing a loop I didn’t tell it about.

It was right. Genuinely right, not just app-right. The kind of pairing where the second sip makes you go back and taste the food again just to notice how the two are talking to each other.

And then the music

This is the part people are usually surprised the app even does. I asked it for a soundtrack to go with the Priorat, and what came back matched the whole afternoon better than anything I would have picked myself, unhurried, a little bit Spanish in spirit without being literal about it.

Wine, food, and music, all pointing at the same place. That’s the whole idea, and this was the first time I sat back and just let it work on me instead of building it.

A Basque ending, poured with a Jerez

Carolina made the dessert, a torta vasca de queso, also from Jose Andrés’s book, and it might have been the best part of the whole night. Burnt on top the way it’s supposed to be, soft and almost collapsing in the middle. It had nothing to do with Barcelona specifically, the Basque Country is a different corner of Spain entirely, but that’s how a real Spanish table usually works. Nobody is checking a map before they decide what goes with what.

We poured an oloroso from Jerez alongside it, not because anyone told us it was the correct pairing, honestly it probably isn’t. We just love this sherry too much to leave it in the cabinet, and some nights call for opening what you love rather than what matches. It worked anyway, nutty and dark against the burnt sugar on top of the cake, close enough to feel intentional even if it started as an excuse. If Jerez is new to you, I wrote a whole post about falling for it after one day in the city itself.

Why this dish, why now

Barcelona has a way of staying with you after you leave it. This fricandó recipe isn’t a fancy dish, it’s a Tuesday dish for most Catalan households, but that’s exactly why it felt right. We didn’t want to recreate a special night out. We wanted to recreate what it might feel like to actually live there for an evening, the same evening Jose gave us at his table in the market, at Cuines de Santa Caterina.

A bottle of Priorat, a slow stew, a torta vasca still warm from the oven, a glass of Jerez we couldn’t resist, and a playlist that got it right. That’s really all it takes to go back somewhere, even from a kitchen in Fort Mill.