Cooking with Robert St. John: Oh, Jesse, where art thou?

Let me back up a bit. I am in the middle of hosting 25 Americans through Spain. We started in Madrid over a week ago, and since we touched ground, we have spent time in Toledo, Cordoba, Seville, Gibraltar, Malaga, Valencia and are about to head to Barcelona. We’ve been hitting it hard because — as I strive to do on all the trips I host — I want to cover all the bases and check all the boxes. To do that, we need to cover not only the country’s food, but the art, architecture, culture, history, personalities, terrain, transportation and traditions.

We have taken a sunset cruise on the Mediterranean, attended Flamenco dancing lessons before a professional Flamenco performance, had a paella-making workshop and then ate the results, marveled at world-class art at the Prado Museum, zip-lined across the river in Toledo, dined in caves, explored other caves, mingled with the monkeys of Gibraltar, tried our hand at virtual bullfighting, ate in the homes of Spanish housewives in the Spanish countryside, walked under cork trees with the Iberico Pigs of Jabugo that feed on their acorns, visited royal palaces and magnificent cathedrals and have eaten world-class, local cuisine in the style of each region we have visited.

Scroll down for a stewed squid recipe

We have traveled by fast train, bus, boat, jet, the aforementioned zip line, small two-person city cars that talk and by foot. It’s during one of the by-foot treks that we ended up in the tightest of all tight spots.

For years, the Fallas of Valencia had been on my bucket list of things to do before I die. And since it is always in the middle of March, I always hoped that we could be there on my wife’s birthday, which is the 16th. This was our third year to attend, but our first on her birthday. None of my guests had ever been to the Fallas, and I think most didn’t know what it was.

The Fallas is in Valencia and is a celebration of St. Joseph that includes several days of daytime fireworks at City Hall (I know what you’re thinking … trust me, it’s incredible), nighttime fireworks displays that put Disney to shame, many side celebrations and the constructing of over 800 falla (paper maché statues of varying sizes created by each neighborhood). The statues are intricate, colorful and fun. Some are several stories tall. Think of the elaborate floats by the Mardi Gras float master Blane Kern of Mardi Gras World and then multiply them in size, scale and quantity. As a matter of fact, Kern came to Valencia to study how the falla are made. One night a year, all 800-plus of the falla are burned across the city to signal the coming of spring. They start getting ready for next year’s Fallas immediately.

The crowds at the Fallas are a cross between the shoulder-to-shoulder tightness of Times Square at New Year’s Eve and the frivolity of Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras in New Orleans. But the energy and attitude are much friendlier, less intoxicated, and the events are more family-oriented. More than 80,000 people pack into the town square for an amazing display of daytime fireworks. I always host my groups in a 10th-floor penthouse with several outdoor balconies high above the madding crowd. I have it stocked with a full bar and a catered lunch staffed with bartenders and servers so my guests can watch the festivities without the discomfort of the shoulder-to-shoulder, jam-packed crowd. When we are high above the celebration, it’s exhilarating, though one must get to the location of the penthouse before one can be high above the crowd. On this day we were following our local guide who took a wrong turn and that’s when the trouble began.

The past two years, we have had no trouble weaving through the crowd to get to the entrance of our building. This year, our city guide — who had done a good job up to that point — chose the wrong street. It was the street that leads directly up to the prime spot of the fireworks setup, where the ground shakes and the explosions can be felt to one’s core. We weaved through the crowd that began to get tighter and tighter. People had claimed their spot hours earlier and weren’t going to move. We were halfway to the door when I realized that route wasn’t going to work.

We were surrounded by thousands of Spaniards and the guide, who was 10 feet ahead of me, kept trying to push through. We reached a bottleneck to where no one could move to make way for us even if they had wanted to (and they didn’t want to). I understood their stance, but we weren’t trying to get in front of them, we just wanted to get by them and get out of everyone’s way. The crowd was so tight, I couldn’t lift my arms or move forward or backward. It was so tight and so face-to-face packed, it was scary. “We have to turn around,” I yelled to the guide.

If it was just me bound by the throng of people, everything might have been OK, but I had 25 guests and my claustrophobically-inclined wife directly behind me in the same bind … and, yes, it was a bind of the problematical sort AND a bind in the restrained-type variety. As a travel host, you are as happy as your least-happy guest. At this point, I had 25 unhappy guests who must have been wondering why we were even going through this much trouble for daytime fireworks. I had almost resigned myself that the rented penthouse, food and bar were going to remain empty and we were going to be standing, packed cheek-to-cheek, for the next two hours.

My guests were stranded at different points in the packed crowd. We couldn’t communicate. We couldn’t move forward — not even a step — and we couldn’t go back the way we came, as the crowd had moved in on us. It was frustrating, but it was also a little scary.

Just about the time a livid and screaming man and I were about to come to blows over the pushing and shoving around us, our full-time tour guide and my trusted boots-on-the-ground man Jesse jumped the barricades, sweet-talked a couple of policemen, convinced them to temporarily take down one of the barricades, which allowed our group of Americans to inch sideways and out of the crowd. I’m not sure what white lie he told them, but it worked. We finally got out into an open space and, with a police escort, were led to the entrance door by way of another street.

Jesse Marinus saved the day!

Once on the 10th floor, my guests learned exactly why we went to all the trouble. A unique and memorable time was had by all while witnessing a one-of-a-kind event.

One of the best laugh lines in the Coen Brothers classic “Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?” (filmed in Mississippi, by the way) was George Clooney’s “We’re in a tight spot.” In that movie, he played a Mississippi boy leading a couple of escaped convicts to a pile of stashed cash. I was leading a group of mostly Mississippians to a one-of-a-kind, bucket-list event. In the end, Clooney never got the cash, but my group and I reached our destination and had a blast.

Onward.

Stewed squid

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

1 ¼ tsp crushed red pepper

1 tbsp garlic, minced

2 tbsp Italian flat leaf parsley, chopped

1 tbsp + ½ tsp Kosher salt

2 ½ pounds squid, tentacles and sliced tubes

1 each 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes

2 cups shrimp stock

2 bunches Swiss chard, stems removed and rough chopped

5 ounces fresh spinach, stems removed and rough chopped

• In a two-quart sauce pan, heat the oil over medium heat and sweat the garlic and the crushed red pepper for 2 minutes. Add the squid, salt and parsley and continue cooking over medium heat until any excess liquid from the squid has evaporated, about 6-8 minutes.

• Reduce the heat to low. Add the canned tomatoes, including the juice, and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

• Increase the heat to medium-high. Add the shrimp stock and bring to a simmer. Add the Swiss chard and the spinach, reduce the heat to low. Cover and continue cooking for 30-45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Do not let all the stock evaporate. There should be about ½ cup of liquid left.