Nibbling at the Death Coast

The northwestern corner of Spain is known as the Costa de Morte, or Death Coast, in the region of Galicia. This rocky shore of the Atlantic has swallowed up many fishing vessels over the centuries. It's appropriate we do some swallowing in return.

Galicia's many treasures include octopus, which is tenderized and cooked, then seasoned with olive oil, salt and paprika. It's called pulpo a fiera, but it really isn't spicy. The other dish here is razor clams, called navajas.

Many eateries offer a course called rationes, which roughly means portions. The conventional tapas constitute smaller portions of these dishes.

We expected that these dishes would simply have been an afternoon snack, but this twilight interlude made it largely possible to circumvent dinner altogether that night.

There are about a dozen dishes that show up on the rationes menus in most places, and our plan is to run out of species of fish before we run out of Death Coast.