Last month to celebrate my birthday, and that of a friend, we
went to a modest Galician restaurant in our central-eastern
neighborhood of Madrid which is locally popular for its low
prices and great food. Their cider is brought directly from
Galicia in barrels, and the tapas in this basement restaurant
are generous, and delicious. However, this was not a day for
only tapas, we were going to have a feast. Among plates of
octopus with potatoes, patatas bravas, morcilla with pimientos
de padrón, we treated ourselves to what is considered a delicacy
in Spain, Percebes or “Gooseneck Barnacles” An interesting and
strange food, its said that before the 18th C its unlikely
people actually ate these crustaceans, considering them as
appetizing as rocks, or even imagining them to be small monsters
with many, very ugly, feet. Some accounts state that they were
thought to be the early form of Barnacle Geese, birds which to
the medieval eye seemed to appear out of nowhere. The geese
don’t of course, but in an age before ma