Why can’t we buy fish on Mondays?

And other culinary-related questions I asked after first moving to Madrid

Fish market from a trip to the Algarve a couple of years ago. Guess what day it was taken on—Wednesday!

Hola, amicis!¹ I’ve been fighting a wicked stomach virus for the past few days so I haven’t been in my normal state of food enthusiasm (read: it’s been a potatoes and white rice kind of week). For today’s issue I’ve decided to focus on some of the general culinary questions I had when I first moved to Madrid. Similar to my unspoken rules newsletter, these are things that you probably won’t notice until you’ve actually lived here for a while! Below, the questions (and answers) I’ve had over the years.

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• Why are kitchen disinfectant sprays so hard to find?

  Moving into a new house means buying a lot of supplies from scratch. David and I are list people, so we made an enormous checklist of things we needed to buy before move-in day. Everything was easy to find except one thing: kitchen disinfectant spray. In the US, you can have your pick from a plethora of brands and varieties, but te lo juro² that we couldn’t find a single disinfectant spray despite hitting up every shop in our neighborhood. On the flip side, there was no shortage of kitchen degreasers. Why? David explained that most home cooks in Spain are interested in chemicals that cut through grease on their counters since frying is a common way to prepare food here. While the desengrasantes³ likely disinfected just as much as sanitizers in the US, the degreasing quality is what was highlighted from a marketing standpoint. Interestingly, post-COVID, you can now find a huge variety of kitchen disinfectants on the shelves, including US favorite Lysol.

• Why are kitchens closed off by doors?

  Unlike the US, kitchens in Spain are usually their own room, separated from the rest of the house by a physical door. Similar to the explanation above, this is to contain the grease from frying and general olores de la cocina.⁴ You’ll appreciate the door when you’re baking fish and don’t have to smell it in your living room hours later.⁵

• What is that weird-looking knife?

  Speaking of seafood, the Spanish use a special knife to eat fish.⁶ Maybe I’m just uncouth, but I don’t think I had ever encountered a fish knife before living in Madrid (perhaps I just didn’t eat enough seafood in the US?). Fish knives actually have their own protocol—they’re the only knife that you’re allowed to bring to your mouth. To be honest, I’m still learning how to wield a fish knife, and I usually just fumble around with it until I give up and use my fork instead.

• Wait, fish come with bones? And a head?!

  Okay, obviously I knew that the fillet of fish on my restaurant plate came from an animal, but I had never been so directly confronted with that fact until I moved to Madrid. Luckily I was always spared the fish head (they still kind of gross me out), but each new fish I tried presented a new round in a game I like to call “Fish of Fortune,” or for my friends who prefer the Cube Queen over the true queen Vanna White, “Fishnite.”⁷ Seriously, who knew there were so many places that bones could be hiding, waiting to stab you in your cheek or worse, get caught in your vallecula? The problem with this game is that once you’ve mastered level one, aka fish fillets—BAM!—here comes level two, the rodajas.⁸ Advanced play includes fish stews (which yes, still sometimes have sneaky espinas⁹ lurking about) and the delicious rodaballo¹⁰ at ELKANO.¹¹ To rise up to professional gamer level, you have to not only anticipate where the bones will be but also be able to oh-so-stealthy deflect the ones that make it into your mouth. This usually includes chewing the fish into a pulp in order to find the offending spine and then furtively fishing it from your lips with your index finger and thumb to place it on the side of your plate.

  

  Rodaballo (turbot) on the grill at ELKANO

• Why can’t we buy fish on Mondays?

  Apparently I had a lot of questions about fish. In Spain, a fisherman’s work week ends on Friday, so that means that the last fresh fish of the week lands in stores on Saturday morning. Subsequently, if you buy fish on Monday, you’re buying fish that’s more than two days old. We once asked a fishmonger his thoughts on the first day it was okay to buy fish and he told us it was best to wait until Wednesday. Since I’m a rule-follower and I have the memory of an elephant (but only for silly things like this), fish is always planned for Wednesday at the earliest.

• Why do we have to go to three or more grocery stores?

  I mentioned this in my soliloquy on Spanish food culture at the end of my newsletter last week, but buying groceries is not a one-stop-shop experience here in Madrid. At first I was a bit whiny—are you sure the peaches are better in the fruit shop than in El Cortes Inglés, I would think to myself—but now I have succumbed to the fact that we go to no less than three places to buy food each week. Four if we’re getting a nicer cut of meat, five if it’s a week where we need laundry detergent. Actually, six if we need something like cashews or spices (we go to the bulk store to cut down on waste), and does it count as seven if we buy our bread at a panadería?¹² Perhaps this is getting out of hand…

I’m sure there are many, many more questions that I’ve had over the years. A lot of them have had to do with vocabulary and understanding the differences between types of food, like caldo vs. sopa, pure vs. crema, and guiso vs. estofado. I plan on doing a deep dive into the world of soups and its accompanying vocabulary sometime in the colder months, so be on the lookout for a proper explanation.

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Before you go, remember to vote in the poll on the timing of Sunday Sobremesas if you haven’t already! While you’re there, you can also drop a comment in our current discussion of tradition vs. innovation in the culinary world.

Speaking of comments, you guys know I love to hear from you! Feel free to share any personal experiences with culinary questions you’ve had over the years (from other cultures or your own), or let me know if fish knives are a thing where you live. Tips for using one are also appreciated.

See you Friday!

Ki

1. Hola, amicis: Hello, friends. Amici is actually not Spanish at all (it’s Italian) but one of my friends here used to say it. Amici is already plural (one friend is an amica or an amico), so it’s extra silly to add the “s” at the end, but I kind of love it. My apologies to the Italian language.

2. Te lo juro: I swear to you

3. Desengrasantes: Degreasers

4. Olores de la cocina: Kitchen smells

5. On kitchen doors: You’ll actually see more open-concept kitchens in newer construction, likely due to the improvements in range hoods in recent years rendering doors less necessary.

6. On fish knives: You won’t only find them in Spain. In fact, according to this website, they first appeared in Britain in the late 1800s.

7. Fishnite: Confession that I know nothing about Fortnite and still have no idea who the Cube Queen is even after reading about her on the Fortnite Wiki. Wheel of Fortune for the win.

8. Rodaja: Literally a flat, circular piece. In this case it refers to the steak cut of a fish.

9. Espinas: Literally spines, and the word used here in Spain for fish bones.

10. Rodaballo: Turbot

11. ELKANO: ELKANO is a Michelin star restaurant in the Basque Country that is currently #16 on the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. David and I went there a few years ago and both the food and the service were exquisite.

12. Panadería: Bread shop