The most interesting food I discovered in Barcelona is called: Percebe vivo cantabrico. “Percebe” is the name of the seafood; In English they are called gooseneck barnacles. “vivo cantabrico” means it is alive and was caught in the sea cantabrico area.
“The resemblance of this barnacle's fleshy stalk to a goose's neck gave rise in ancient times to the notion that geese, or at least certain seagoing species of wild goose, literally grew from the barnacle. Most notably, the wild Barnacle Goose (Branta leucopsis), whose eggs and young were rarely seen by humans because it breeds in the remote Arctic , got its popular name because it was imagined to grow from gooseneck barnacles.”
My friend called it “elephant feet”. One friend asked me if I ever tried that. The next day I run to the market and found them with other clams in the fish market. They do look like elephant feet, but a mini version.
With gesture communication, the merchant told me to put them in boiling water for few minutes then open and eat the middle tender part. Since they are almost 30 euro a kg, I only bought a few for a taste. When you buy them they are alive, like the clams, so the dark long part feels tough but squishy. After they are cooked, there is little delicate meat when you open it from the red top. I tried it with nothing added; just want to know what is their natural flavor. The meat is tender like clam meat, but have a very strong interesting flora fragrance. If I had more time, I would discover other methods to cook them, oh well, leave it for the next time.
There is a very interesting article about Canada exporting percebe to Spain:
http://www.billcasselman.com/words_of_the_world/percebe.htm
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