April 27, 2026
We fell in love with Cadiz. It’s a mixture of a very old town and a modern city. We did a brief walking tour of the old town and then went to a cooking academy where we watched the chef prepare a meal that we then scarfed down sampled carefully.
One building on the square is the Catedral de Santa Cruz, or Cathedral of the Holy Cross.
The square was surrounded with narrow streets that contained historic buildings and modern stores. One of those buildings is the Casa del Almirante or Admiral’s House
It was a pleasure simply to walk down the streets. Only one problem arose – the dresses in at least one store were too long to fit Dottie.
As we walked, our guide told us that the US dollar sign ($)originated in Spain. Spanish coinage contained the letter S for Spain, overlain by two vertical bars, which represent the Pillars of Hercules. These days the dollar sign is more often written with one vertical bar to make it simpler, but that’s where it started. As always with these things, you can find more than one origin story, so don’t make too many bar bets.
The cooking academy is called the Gastrologico Laboratorio de Sabores, or Gastrologico Flavor Laboratory. There were only twelve us on the visit, so we got a good look at what the chef did and didn’t have to share as much.
The chef began by serving cheese and crackers, using a very good cheese that he blended with olive oil, peppers, and other spices.
We next had gazpacho and potatoes. Both were delicious.
The gazpacho was, of course cold but unlike what we are used to was totally smooth. He used a blender and emulsified day-old bread till it was a cream. This gave the body to the soup. The “salad” portion of the meal was just potatoes, served warm with oil and vinegar and parsley, like hot German potato salad but without the bacon. You could really appreciate the taste of the potato.
While we ate, the chef prepared pork shoulder and rice. He used a special part of the shoulder that is unusually soft and flavorful. He used pork from Iberian pigs, which he said was the pork equivalent of Wagyu beef.
He next made rice which he served with the pork. The rice was well done but very chewy giving us various textures to the meal. As you can see it the photo it is cooked in broth.
While this was going on, his assistant was making something between a cookie and a cracker. Before they went into the oven, she sprinkled on coarse grained sugar. She patted each individual dough ball over and over till she was happy with the thickness.
These crackers went into a desert pudding. The pudding itself was made from a delicious combination of fruits that tasted familiar, but we couldn’t place them. Very eggy and very frothy.
Perhaps the best news of the day was that the chef will email us the recipes.
Next stop, Southampton,
Dottie and Mal
