Mercedes

An unassuming lift in a 1970s apartment block opened on to a kaleidoscopic pattern-on-pattern-on-pattern apartment, where a petite woman of great character was poised to make ajo blanco soup with us. White garlic, white bread and white almonds against a house of red, pink, green and purple. A dainty, creamy, chilled soup produced by a grandmother who danced about her kitchen with extreme agility, spilling things and laughing endlessly. It was a splendid sensory onslaught from the moment we arrived.