People around the Empordà differ on the subject of who makes the best recuit––the wheyful cheese of Catalonia that’s so perfect on a little toast with tomato jam. Or drizzled with honey for dessert.

There are those who like the cow’s milk recuit made by Quim, a sweet guy with a roadside stand just outside Fonteta. He makes a good goat’s milk version too, and I prefer its tang. Others swear by the recuit––also goat’s milk––made by the crotchety Nuri in the village of Ullastret. I’m in their camp.

Despite the inviting cursive of the “Nuri d’Ullastret” sign hanging above her door near the road out of that village, you can pretty much count on Nuri to act annoyed to see you coming. There’s something exciting about wresting a little pillow of cheese from her. You tell yourself her attitude is calculated to keep outsiders from scooping up the small batches meant for regulars.

Now there is another recuit in the neighborhood. Made by Manel and Natalia at Formatgeria Mas Marcè, this one is in a class by itself. It is also hard to get because most of the production goes to restaurants. Sometimes they have it at their farm stand in Siurana d’Empordà, near Girona.

I met them at the region’s big cheese show, La Fira de Formatges Artesans del Pirineu in La Seu d’Urgell with some of their prize-winning aged cheeses: El Set is a dense, butter-colored cheese with a natural rind, firm and slightly shardy at two to four months. Llanut is whiter, soft, and melting, eaten just a few weeks old. Manel wraps it in a layer of clean wool––you remove that, of course, before digging in. It makes the cheese just a little sheepish.

But it is their simple recuit de drap that matters in my memory right now.

What makes their little cloth-wrapped fresh cheese so unforgettable is fat. Ewe’s milk fat. And not from just any ewes. Manel and Natalia are raising Ripollesas––a breed of sheep native to Catalonia, but now so rare they’ve been put on the Slow Food Ark of Taste for salvation.

The milk Ripollesas give is much richer than that of other breeds at upwards of 8% milk fat. But hardly anybody raises them because they produce damn little of it: each ewe gives only about 30 liters per year. Meanwhile, Manel tells me, farmers here have gotten used to imported breeds that produce up to 600 liters a year. “You can see why my father, a sixth generation shepherd, who grew up with that level of production, thought ours was a terrible idea.”

A smile takes over Manel’s face as he looks out over the pasture. “That’s him out there with the sheep. He works as our shepherd now.”

The formatgeria is small, but the family’s commitment to it is huge. Besides bringing the Ripollesas back from the edge of extinction, they’ve brought the land into line with standards for certified organic pasture. While they were at it, they decided to revive another lost tradition: they make their cheese with vegetable rennet. The thistly cardoons they use to produce it grow wild on their land.

One more thing Manel’s dad thought was crazy: Manel and Natalia wanted to bypass large cooperatives––a guaranteed outlet for their milk––and keep everything from grazing to cheesemaking right on the farm. Manel set out looking for customers who would care about their project, taking samples of his milk and cheeses directly to chefs. Sure enough, Ferrán Adrià (mastermind at El Bullí) became a customer for the milk, and Jordi Roca got Mas Marcé to start making yogurt for their Michelin three-star Celler de Can Roca.

The difficulty of getting to those places for my everyday cheese has had me thinking about raising a couple of ewes.

Meantime, there’s this: if you can get your hands on good buttermilk and whole milk, turning them into a decent homemade version of recuit is only slightly more taxing than boiling water.

Manel and Natalia would not approve, but even they would have to admit that this stuff, made with organic cow’s milk and no gums or fillers to give it listless water-weight gain, is a hundred times better than store-bought ricotta.

Recuit

Makes about one quart

1/2 gallon (8 cups) whole milk
1 pint (2 cups) buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
cheesecloth and kitchen twine or a rubber band

Warm the milk, buttermilk, and salt in pot––an enameled one, pale and weighty, is perfect: it seems never to scorch. Slowly heat the mixture, stirring now and then to be sure it isn’t sticking on the bottom of the pot.

If you’re a Catalan countrywoman you probably know by looking just when to turn off the fire. It’s not too far south of the boiling point, when the milk is wiggly and threatening to simmer, that you’ll see the milk seem to separate a bit, and a few curds begin to form. I use a candy thermometer and this all happens between 170 and 180 degrees F.

As soon as you get the beginnings of curd formation, turn off the heat and stop stirring. It won’t look like much at first, but if you keep cooking, the cheese loses its delicate flavor and texture. The recuit will continue to develop as it stands. Let it stand for five minutes.

Line a strainer or colander with four layers of cheesecloth. Be sure you use squares of cloth big enough to allow you to wrap around a quart-sized blob of cheese. Using a skimmer or slotted spoon, scoop the curds into the cheesecloth-lined colander. Keep scooping until all that’s left in the pot is the whey and the itty bitty squigles that are hard to catch with your slotted spoon.

(Why not just pour the whole mess through? You can. But then your cheese is wetter and takes longer to drain. Instead, use a separate piece of cheesecloth to strain the last bits of curd out of the whey, chill it, and drink it later on. I sense a healthy bottled whey drink craze coming on.)

Now gather up the corners of your cheesecloth and tie it with a piece of kitchen twine or a rubber band. Tie the bundle to your faucet and let it drip into your sink for 20 minutes. Don’t let it go much longer or it gets too dry.

This is so good just unwrapped and drizzled with honey while it’s still at warm room temperature. But you can leave it wrapped and store it in a shallow bowl for a few days in the fridge, and use it as you would ricotta.

That’s easy for her to say. She lives in l’Empordà––a kitchen-garden-rich corner of Catalonia with a ridiculously long tomato-growing season. No one on my cold New England sandbar would dare to speak so casually of that kind of success with tomatoes, for fear of being struck down by blossom end rot.

But this year we did have tomatoes. And once the thrill of tomato sandwiches (thick slices, white bread, mayo, salt) eased up, the season kept on long enough to allow us to act like Catalans. That is, pa amb tomàquet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Until I remembered the tomato jam with locally made fresh cheese at Georgina’s little confiture workshop in the village of Torrent.

When I called, she didn’t really want to talk about tomatoes. She was gearing up for her autumn classes. “The madrones are so beautiful right now. They say if you eat them in full sunshine, they’ll get you drunk. Plus, they’re loaded with pectin.”

“Wait a minute, is madrone jam traditional in Catalunya?” I’ve seen madrone trees there and in California, but I never knew those little orange fruits were edible.

“Probably not,” she says. “Catalans are not really a serious jam-eating people. But I’m into the recovery of the art of preserving. I’m not interested in limiting myself to traditional Catalan jams.” Georgina started her museum after an English visitor turned her on to lemon marmalade as a way to use the fruit that was littering her dooryard. “This project is more about nature’s treasures than it is about national ones.”

I think maybe Georgina is herself a Catalan national treasure. She is 79 years old and started this project just seven years ago. She does have a business partner, Teresa Millàs. “I had to cut her in,” she says, “Because I’d go to the bank for a loan on kitchen equipment and they would say I needed someone who was going to be around a while to back it up.”

“But really,” she goes on, “the only part of this I’m too old for is Facebook. I’ve lived my whole life without it just fine.” (Nonetheless, you can “like” the museum here.)

Teresa and the rest of the museum’s small staff all share Georgina’s passion for preserving and teaching. And in spite of their prize-winning forays into foreign jams (they won a gold medal for their kumquat marmalade at the Dalemain Marmalade Festival last year, which landed their jars on the shelves of Fortnum & Mason in London), they do teach classics from her region, including tomato jam.

Georgina approves of my totally simple recipe, though she would add an apple to the pot. Its pectin will make the jam set faster, which she says translates into fresher flavor. She also recommends another combination locals are fond of: tomato-watermelon jam. Both are traditionally eaten alongside fresh cheeses for breakfast or for a mid-afternoon snack. A smidge on a cracker loaded with goat cheese makes a nice American style hors d’oeuvre. I predict we’ll soon see see tomato jam as part of a fancypants restaurant dessert in New York or Barcelona. I imagine it alongside, say, basil ice cream, with a drizzle of arrop.

“After the war, when nobody could afford sugar, preserves were made with arrop––grape juice, boiled into a thick, slightly caramelized syrup,” Georgina says. “But yes, I hear arrop is in fashion again.”

Melmelada de Tomàquet — Tomato Jam
makes about 4 half pints

3 1/2 lbs perfectly ripe plum tomatoes
1 1/2 lbs sugar
1 oz (two tablespoons) freshly squeezed lemon juice
a big pinch of salt
a sprig of fresh thyme

Blanch the tomatoes for half a minute in boiling water. Then peel and core them and drop them into a large, heavy jam-making pot. Add the sugar, lemon juice, salt, and branch of thyme. Bring to a simmer, then a steady boil, stirring every few minutes. Watch the jam closely as the water cooks off and the juices become syrupy: you’ll need to stir it steadily to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Squash any big chunks of tomato while you’re at it. Skim off any sticky foam that forms on the surface, too, since those dense little bubbles will cloud the jam’s sparkle later. The jam will begin to set up in about 25 to 35 minutes. When it’s softly set, remove the thyme and ladle the jam into clean hot jars and seal.

If you need instructions on testing jam for doneness or on preparing, sealing, and processing your jars properly, the people at Ball jars are more than happy to tell you what to do.

El Museu de la Confitura is on the Plaça Major in the village of Torrent, Tel: +34-972-30-47-44. Summer classes are for kids, but during the rest of the year, the museum offers classes for adults, about once a month. A typical Saturday class covers techniques, hands-on preserving, and a light tasting menu that can stand in for lunch. Don’t be afraid to join a class just because your Catalan is rusty: Georgina speaks Spanish, French, and English and, besides, when people are cooking, they nearly always understand one another. Coming up, Saturday, October 4: madrone jam and picapoll grape jelly. Winter classes move on to preserved pumpkin, and for the holidays, there’s Cava jelly, and citrus marmalades.

What does it matter when the fact is, the kind of tuna salad I grew up on now tastes distinctly like a bowlful of fish oil soaked spit wads?

Now it’s Ortiz or bust. The ventresca is ultra-luxurious, even though it comes in a can. One that looks just like the same ring-topped oval that my dad would pop open for his Saturday post-golf ration of cottonseed oil-laced sardines. This is so much better. Scroll back the lid and you’re face to face with a few perfectly delicate long strips of tuna belly.

The larger, firmer, but still luscious slabs of loin that come in a jar are great in a puttanesca or a salad.

Whether ventresca or not, it’s bonito del norte you want: Thunnus alalunga, which is known as “albacore” in the American market. (For the species conscious, albacore is not to be confused with thunnus albacares, which we Americans call yellowfin tuna but the French, naturally, call albacore.)

Maybe the best use of a stash of this stuff: Toast a diagonal slice of baguette; drape on a forkload of tuna; give it a pinch of crunchy sea salt (because this tuna is not overly salted, the way the American tunas are) and a twist of black pepper, and away you go.

Maybe too, just a few slices of tart pickle or sweet onion on top. Definitely a piece of pimiento de piquillo, if there’s an open jar in the fridge.

And for a summer lunch, here’s a whole ‘nother tuna salad. I won’t give it a Spanish name, but it does have a Spanish accent.

Summer Rice Salad with Spanish Tuna

Serves 2

3 ounces Ortiz bonito del norte (part of a jar, or for the profligate, one tin of ventresca)
2 cups leftover white rice, cold
2 heaping tablespoons pesto (preferably a supply that hasn’t had any cheese added yet)
about a dozen cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1/4 small sweet or red onion, sliced thin
one small unwaxed garden cuke, diced small
sea salt and fresh black pepper

Put the rice and vegetables in a bowl and stir in the pesto to dress it all. Taste and season with salt and pepper if need be. Gently toss in the tuna, so it doesn’t get too busted up.

Cows are important on Minorca and have been going way back. Archaeologists have found evidence of cheesemaking on this tiny island dating from 2000BC, and historians say Minorcan cheese crisscrossed the Mediterranean with Moorish and Pisan traders in the Middle Ages. Eaters may be interested to know that you can now buy the good stuff — that is, artisanally-made raw milk Maó de Minorca D.O.P. (complete with the Spanish denominación de origen protegida “Mahón de Menorca”) — in the U.S.

This is one of the many cheeses of Spain whose quality is being recovered and rediscovered as it returns from one of those long strange trips down the industrialized path to ordinariness. As one of the country’s few cow’s milk cheeses, young Maó is mild and milky and melts easily, qualities a cheese industrialist would say make it “versatile.” The Mahón I met in Barcelona in the 1980s was made from pasteurized milk and sold young and pale. A rubbery slice yielded an almost-like-home grilled cheese sandwich good enough to get an expat through certain difficult junctures.

A couple of years ago, my friend Viçens, a chef in the Empordà who is probably fonder of butterfat than any Catalan outside the Pyrenees, told me that Maó was making a comeback. He pulled out a firm, orange-gold, aged piece, and dug a knife into it to show me how it crumbled into shards the way Parmigiano does. It tasted milky, lightly salty and earthy, and a little acidic or maybe lemony, but not anywhere near as piquant as Parmigiano. Viçens uses it to add a creamy finish to his elegant vegetable arrosos (rice grows along the Catalan coast and cooks here don’t limit themselves to paellas).

For the cheese to act this way, it’s got to be one of the ones classified as artesano. That means made with raw milk that has not been refrigerated or pasteurized; the cheese must be made immediately after milking, while the milk is still warm. These are the ones worth aging. They are rubbed with olive oil and pimentón as they cure, and by the time a cheese reaches the truly “curado” stage (more than five months), the rind is almost brown. I haven’t found one that mature in the U.S. Both of the cheeses I bought here were labeled “aged,” because they’re past the 60-day mark required in both countries for the aging of raw milk cheeses. But in Spain, they would have to be labeled “semi-curado,” aged for two to five months. And the two were pretty different from one another: the one on the left was supple in a younger, milder way while the one on the right was very firm, with a deep orange rind, tangy, and really beginning to take on the complexity of its age.

A fluffy pile of Vicens’s aged Maó, finely grated, went into this rich little crisp he taught a bunch of us visitors to make. Viçens serves it as a crust for his gussied up version of escalivada (a simply dressed warm salad of roasted red peppers, eggplant, and onions; darn, it’s covering the crisp in this picture). Cut the dough into smaller squares and you have a great homemade cracker on your hands. Either way, go for the old stuff for this recipe.

Maó Cheese Crisps

Viçens shapes this dough in a straight-sided loaf pan, then when it’s firm he slices neat squares that become his savory crusts. If you’re planning to serve these as crackers, cut each square into thirds or just roll the dough into logs and you’ll end up with rounds. This is a large recipe and since it freezes well, you can slice and bake as needed.

Makes about 40 individual crusts or 120 crackers.

1 lb. finely grated well-aged Maó*

1 lb. all purpose flour

1 lb. butter

1 large egg, lightly beaten

Combine flour with grated cheese. Cut butter into the mixture, then add beaten egg. Knead gently and briefly just to shape into rectangular or log shape (if you have a straight sided loaf pan, that makes the shaping easy: line the pan with plastic wrap and gently press in the dough… if you don’t have the perfect pan, don’t fret, just don’t overhandle the dough as you shape it).  Wrap and refrigerate or freeze.  These crusts or crisps are really best baked on the day you’re planning to eat them. Thaw the dough in the fridge overnight or at least a few hours so it won’t be too hard to slice. You want your slices to be a little slimmer than a quarter inch. Heat the oven to 350 F, slice ‘n’ bake about 10 minutes until they’re just turning golden.

* I bought both of the cheeses in this photo at Whole Foods in Providence, Rhode Island, and Artisanal (online) and Murray’s (in New York City) stock it, too.

Let the txotx season begin!  Today is the day they tap the ’08 harvest kupelas in the Basque Country.  Astigarraga, just outside Donostia, is, of course, the place to be.

More specifically, the place to be is probably Sidrería Petritegi.  That’s where, this year, after the Mayoral speechifying whereupon the virtues of the most prodigious (10 Million kilo) and most aromatic apple harvest in 30 years will be extolled, and after the apple tree planting (if you want the bounty, give back to the land) is done, at 1:45pm, the txotx season officially opens with a shout of “Gure Sagardo Berria .” That’s so many daunting Basque words for:  we’re talkin’ cider here, folks, the hard stuff, come and get it — fresh and fruity and flowing from kegs all over town.

The shouter this year is a local pelota hero, Aimar Olaizola.  Over the 16 year history of this cider fest, the job has been pretty much equally shared among men performing the most honorable Basque Country deeds:  pelota champions, footballers, cyclists, and chefs (there’s been one woman, the soprano Ainoa Arteta).

Yes, they’re manly men up there in the Basque Country.  And they’ve come up with yet another ritual after my own heart.  After today’s festivities, the Sagardoetxea — cider museum — is launching a season of “Kirikoketa” workshops, so that you too can learn to make the onomatopoeic  sound of the mashers hitting the fruit (Jan-March, free to all who visit the museum).  And of course there will also be, “Probaketas” — that’s tastings to those of you who still haven’t picked up Euskara (Jan-March, local ciderhouse tour and new cider tasting, 10E).

They have lulled you into believing, perhaps, that jamón Ibérico de bellota is the only smuggle-worthy delicacy produced in Spain.  Well, I’ve got news for you:  the farmers of this peninsula’s northern provinces are over there in their little mountain villages quietly making more and more fabulous cheeses.   A few can be found at serious cheese counters in the U.S. (Artisanal, for instance in New York City offers great Idiazabal, a lightly smoky raw sheeps’ milk cheese from the Basque country).  More can be tasted in top Catalan restaurants, where the cheese course is undergoing a revival and chefs and sommeliers are taking up affinage (don’t let the cheese cart roll past you at Les Cols in Olot; the one at Mas Pau in Avinyonet de Puigventós is prize-winning).  But if you’re at all serious about getting a nose-full of the good stuff, the Fira de Formatges Artesans del Pirineu is the place to be.

The festival brings some 40 producers who present over 100 cheeses from across the Pyrenees — Catalonia, the Basque Country, Navarra, Aragon, France — to the mountain town of La Seu d’Urgell during its Sant Ermengol celebration (always the next-to-last weekend in October, this year October 18-19th, next year October 17-18th, 2009).

One of Catalonia’s most accomplished advocates of real food, Pep Palau, and his “Oenogastronomic Productions” outfit has turned the festival into a class act that excites ambitious cheese producers and eaters, with prizes in various categories, workshops, and a grand guided tasting.  (Here is their report on this year’s goings on and winners.)

When I met with him before this year’s fest, Pep said that one cheese to watch would be Serrat Gros, an extraordinary aged raw goats’ milk cheese produced in the Alt Urgell.  He was right:  this one took a first prize.  The cheesemaker in this case is Eulàlia Torras, an adventuresome, well, goatherd who has just written a book about recovering this traditional product of the Pyrennees (Serrat Gros: Ed. Garsineu, Tremp).  She uses only milk from her own herd, which she carefully pastures in the style of Euell Gibbons, and she produces from spring through December or so.  One of Ms. Torras’s aims is to educate consumers about the seasonality of cheese — herds can’t give milk all year, they need time off for reproducing and feeding their young.

Another amazing traditional mountain cheese more people ought to know about, says Palau, is Tupí.  This is a creamy, tangy, soft cheese, named for the earthenware dish in which it is fermented and presented.  It is the invention of frugal shepherds who grated up finished cheeses that had cracks or other superficial imperfections, added more milk, a shot of aguardiente (either eau de vie or anís), and thistle bloom as a coagulant, then let the stuff ferment for a few months. Tupí is a testiment to the fortitude of mountain shepherds, it being one of those leap-of-faith foods that goes through an unbearably stinky phase before it mellows into deliciousness. Serious cheese seekers might want to note that Eulalia Torras’s Tupí took second prize in that category; Baztarrika, a Basque version won first.

Those who can’t wait until next year’s Fira de Formatge in La Seu to try these wonderful mountain cheeses can wander any time into the town’s best cheese shop Formatgeria Casa Eugene, C/Major 58, La Seu d’Urgell, Tel: 973-350-401.  Also, come May 1 & 2, Pep Palau’s team is putting on another cheese event, “Lactium,” in the wonderful market town of Vic.  And in September, little Lladó has its own cheese fair.

To stay tuned about next year’s fest and other important food and wine events in Catalonia and beyond, get yourself on Pep Palau’s list by e-mailing newsletter@forumgastronomic.com.

Pictured are an array of cow and sheeps’ milk cheeses presented at the fair by Mas d’Eroles, with thanks to photographer Xavier Subias.

If you thought the pimientos you ordered in New York or Madrid this winter were good, belly up for another round pronto. What you get, especially if you happen to be in Galicia, in the northwest corner of Spain, will put those wimpy winter peppers to shame. Midsummer is the season for the intensely flavorful, rarely spicy Pimiento de Padrón.

The Galicians are busily pampering and hoarding their best produce right about now for the annual Festa do Pemento de Herbón, held the first Saturday in August in the town of Padrón (where these peppers have denominación de origen status).

Blistered in a hot pan of olive oil and sprinkled with crunchy sea salt, these peppers can inspire serious longing among those of us living at a ridiculous distance from Galicia. Romantics may turn to Calvin Trillin for comfort. His account of the quest for padrones, originally published in Gourmet, November, 1999, can be found in Feeding a Yen. But after one of these peppers left Maricel Presilla “seduced for life,” (Miami Herald, August 10, 2006), she got down to business and found a U.S. source: Happy Quail Farms in East Palo Alto, California.

June through October, Happy Quail Farms will ship retail: a minimum order of two pounds, enough for a party of 10 people, costs about $50 (including shipping to the East Coast). Grower David Winsberg, says, “that’s about the same as you would pay without hesitation for a good bottle of wine. Not bad for the truffle of the pepper world.”

(Thanks to Happy Quail Farms for their photo of peppers in a hot skillet. Their website has instructions on preparing the peppers, too.)

Getting to the Penedés wine country from Barcelona is as easy as last week’s New York Times travel section article (“Catalonia’s ‘Champagne’ Country“) makes it sound. About an hour’s drive gets you to the big-volume producers travel writer Sarah Wildman mentions. What she doesn’t offer a clue about is that another half hour and a good map will take you away from the “Disneyesque” Cava touring she describes.

I’ll admit, Codorniu does have beautiful architecture going for it in the form of the 1915 bodega designed by Puig i Cadafalch, a contemporary of Gaudí, and, if you go, they’ll tell you that their family has been making wine here since the 15th century and that in the 1870s they invented this region’s sparkling wine and its traditional production method.

But since the Times focuses on these two massively marketed brands, Codorniu and Freixenet — whose black bottle inspires here-comes-the-cheap-wine dread at parties, and says nothing at all about the tasting itself, one might be dubious about bothering with this whole “cava” thing. Skeptics should know that there are a number of producers who are more focused on quality and artisanship than on reaching the mass market: Llopart, Gramona, Carmenet, Pere Ventura, and Recaredo are among many making lovely bubblies. I also really love Albet i Noya, whose d.o. Penedés still wines are excellent too; they’re an old time winemaking family but the younger generation has steered toward organic and biodynamic practices.

The Times’s headline, mentioning “Catalonia’s ‘Champagne,’” is pretty near criminal: Spain’s Cava makers have to avoid references to champagne, even in describing their methods — Cava was coined in the 1980s to give an identity to these wines and deal with a longstanding conflict with France on that score. Curious drinkers might discover more pleasure in cava by getting to know it on its own terms.

While the traditional sparkling wine methods used to make Cava are quite similar to those used in Champagne, the wine involved here is pretty different. The traditional Cava grapes are macabeo, xarel-lo, and parellada, though a few other varieties, including chardonnay are allowed. These are all white grapes whereas Champagne’s trio is pinot noir, pinot meunier, both reds, and chardonnay, so cava is, in effect, a blanc de blancs. Other differences: Cava makers are working with warmer weather crops with plenty of natural sugars and so the method prohibits chaptalization (the addition of sugars to the wine at first fermentation, done in France). In spite of Spain’s drier climate, irrigation is also prohibited here (not in France). Old-time Cava-makers add barrel-aged wines at the dosage stage (after the yeast has been disgorged and the bottle gets topped up), whereas more modern producers aim for Champagne’s flavor by adding younger wines.

A strange thing about this d.o. is that it’s not strictly geographical — the Cava-making capital is Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, but some Cavas are produced up in the Empordà, and a few are made outside Catalonia altogether. Sant Sadurni, is, in fact, smack in the middle of another d.o., the Penedés, but the sparkling wines made by the traditional method are considered part of the d.o. Cava, not the Penedés.

The countryside is arid and hilly, with lovely stretches of vineyard interrupted by industy here and there — the business of winemaking is not hidden in a Disney kingdom here. The town of Sant Sadurni itself is, as Wildman describes it, a dusty place. It’s downright ugly, in fact, not a whiff of Sonoma romance. But that’s why touring the Penedés, if you get to know the carefully-tended vineyards and the thoughtfully-made wines, and delve into the cool, peaceful underground caves, can leave you all the more wonderstruck.

In this lead-up to Easter Sunday, pastry chefs in Catalonia and Valencia are tempering chocolate like mad and sculpting it into eggs and other shapes to adorn the traditional Easter sweet, the mona de pascua. A classic gift from godparents to godchildren, monas are meant to be enjoyed at family gatherings on the Monday after Easter, though with hardly anyone fasting through lent anymore, they are given and gobbled throughout this holiday week. The confections can be beautiful: a cake, coated in a ganache and topped with chocolate figurines evocative of spring — flowers, eggs, and feathery chicks is the classic form. If you’re in Barcelona this week, be sure to check out the windows in fancy pastry shops like Escribà on the Ramblas for the best versions (the one in the picture above is by Oriol Balaguer who has his own elite pastry studio). Garish models abound and yesterday El Pais reported that the Barcelona Confectioners’ Guild estimates that of the 660,000 monas sold in Catalonia this week the favorites will include the now “traditional” Smurfs, the vacant Hello Kitty, and chocolates crafted into likenesses of Barça soccer stars.

The Guild organizes Barcelona’s annual mona competition and great chocolatiers join in. So although the permanent exhibition at the Guild’s Museu de la Xocolata is lackluster, now is a good time to visit. The monas will range from weird to spectacular, but the hot chocolate at the museum’s bar is reliably good. Also, maybe fun for kids: painting with chocolate and other activities are planned for their annual spring celebration, Saturday, March 15 starting at 6pm (call or e-mail to reserve tickets).

Museu de la Xocolata, C/ Comerç 36, Tel: 93-268-78-78.

Barcelona’s Boquería market is spectacular, but if the Boquería is the only market you see in this town, you’re missing out.

Every neighborhood in the city has its market. Some are beautiful (like the Mercat de Santa Caterina, above, with its fab new roof), most are amazingly well-stocked, and they are much friendlier to roam than the increasingly tourist-crowded stalls of the Boquería. Information on all the city’s markets can be found here.

Smaller shops, they tell a story, too, about what ingredients are most prized locally. There, you’re more likely to get the chance to chat with shopkeepers about their wares. Catalans can be a little taciturn, but ask for a culinary advice and you’ll likely find yourself snagging a recipe.

Here are some of my favorite food-oriented shops beyond the Boquería:

• Mercat de la Concepció (C/Aragó 313-317) down the street from Gaudí’s Casa Batlló. It’s a wrought-iron classic built in 1888 and beautifully integrated with a modern-day supermarket below.

• Mantequeria Can Ravell (C/Aragó 313) the Eixample neighborhood’s top cheese, cured meats, and luxury specialties purveyor. Taste at the marble table or feast in the restaurant upstairs.

• Cacao Sampaka (C/Consell de Cent 292). Albert Adrià, chef Ferran’s brother, offers wild flavors, but the chocolate here is Barcelona’s best. Research it yourself: at this Eixample location you can order a bonbon tasting.

• Formatgeria de la Seu (C/La Daguería 16), in the Barri Gotic, a tiny, artisanal-Spanish-only cheese shop run by Katherine McLaughlin a Scots ex-pat. Don’t miss her cheese ice creams.

• Herboristeria del Rei (C/Vidre 1, off Plaça Reial), has been a fine source for herbs, honeys, and saffron since 1860. Check out the marble fountain where they used to stock leeches.

• Casa del Bacalao (C/Comtal 8), sells top-quality house-salted cod including thick, white loin pieces, unlike any you’ll find in the U.S

• Vila Viniteca (C/Agullers 7, in the Ribera). Young owners have turned their family corner store into a trove of fabulously curated cheese, cured meat, and wine. There are regularly scheduled tastings.

• Targa Ferretería (Pla de Palau 5-6, in the Ribera), sells restaurant and retail cooking equipment including clay casseroles, oil pitchers, and paellas (translation: skillet, but also the pans used for paella) of every size.