Productos Regionales

It's quiz time on South of Watford. We did a little bit of shopping on our holiday weekend, and what I want to know is where you think the products on display here came from. Naming the comunidad autonoma doesn't count, I'm not even sure I'll accept the province. Naming either of the villages where these items were purchased will win up to 1 million special South of Watford bonus miles.*

From left to right and starting at the back we have:

Cecina de chivo

Longaniza de chivo

Queso de oveja

Chorizo de potro

Cecina de vaca

Lengua de vaca

* bonus miles usable only in participating establishments

Gijón

A long delayed conclusion to my posts on the trip I did to Asturias earlier this year. The end point of the journey was the city of Gijón, following short stays in Oviedo and Avilés. Like Avilés, Gijon is a real place with an industrial past that has been faced with the job of reinventing itself as the industry has declined. In many ways it reminded me of La Coruña because of the way they have set about recovering land next to the sea that was previously used for industry or reserved for military use.

With two beaches the city doesn't live with its back to the sea and as long is the weather isn't too terrible it's a pleasant place to be. We were luckier in Gijón than I had been in Oviedo, with mild temperatures and just a couple of light showers. On the first day, and without at any time forgetting the real objectives of our mission, we had to go for a good walk along the seafront to work up an appetite for lunch. Not only did we get good views of the coast, but also of the mountains behind the city.

Nice to see a bit of civic education too, I'm thinking of putting one of these signs in the street where I live in Madrid.

For lunch we headed to the area around the Plaza Mayor where there are various sidrerias. At La Galana, in the square itself, we had an excellent lunch combining very well prepared fish and meat. Good enough for me to come back the following day because they do a value for money menu of the day, a bit more expensive than the average but worth it.

In the late afternoon we took a trip to Cabo de Peñas, which is the northernmost point of Asturias. We stayed until the sun went down behind the coastline and the mountains in the distance.

On day two I was left to my own devices with most of the day free before catching an evening train back to Madrid. I'm a creature of the land and I've never taken to the idea of scuba diving, so a visit to the city aquarium seemed like a good enough substitute for me. I prefer to have the sharks on the other side of a screen. In any case I was here on a Monday, "museums are all closed" day in much of Spain.

There was an outdoor option too, the tourist office offers an interesting guide to the old town, known as Cimavilla, which helps to find some of the surviving buildings that would be easy to miss without this information.

This part of town is dominated by the hill of Santa Catalina, which offers views in both directions along the coast as well as over much of the city. The hill is crowned by the Eduardo Chillida sculpture "Elogio del horizonte".

Down at the end of this route you come to the statue of Don Pelayo, the first king of Asturias. This was the end of my trip, I've been in Asturias a few times for walking in the last few years but this was the first time I'd come just to be in the cities. It was well worth it, and I'm not just saying that because of the food. And the cider.

The Octopus Population Is Already Rising

A family entered the Galician bar in Cartagena where I was having dinner on Monday night. They were still dressed in official “we’ve won the World Cup” regalia. The red shirts of the Spanish team, and one of them with a Spanish flag draped around her shoulders. The barman obviously knew them and after the greetings he asked “¿Quereis pulpo?”. “¡Pulpo! El pulpo ya no se come” replied the girl with the flag. So it seems that Paul the Pulpo has managed to convince at least some of the Spanish to stop eating octopus for a while. Didn’t work in my case though, I’d just finished a plate of what was rebadged as “Pulpo a la Roja”, so there is still some hope left for the traditional Galician bar.

I watched Sunday night’s game in a bar here that was naturally full of very vocal and passionate supporters of Spain. A combination of this, the dreadfully partisan nature of Telecinco’s commentary, the negative tactics of the Dutch and a general lack of football meant that much of the game was taken up with shouts for yellow or red cards and hopeful appeals for fouls and penalties. Although I noticed that when the referee decided to card a couple of Spanish players Telecinco then decided, temporarily, that too many were being handed out. The best moment of the commentary came towards the end with the memorable declaration that “los escoceses” had used up all their substitutes. This got an ironic round of applause for helping to break the tedium.

There was a lack of spectacle on the pitch and I was dreading the prospect of penalties deciding the game. Iniesta to the rescue. I didn’t stay for the ceremony after the game, instead I went to take a look at the Plaza de España in Cartagena, which soon filled with jubilant supporters getting wet in the fountain, letting off fireworks and generally making as much noise as possible. By the time I went back to the hotel a traffic jam had developed just down from the square. I’m sure it wasn’t on the scale of Madrid’s celebration, but a significant percentage of Cartagena’s population was out on the street to mark the event.

Having Christ For Dinner

Way back in 1978, the Spanish singer-songwriter (and I suppose for the purposes of this post, occasional film director) Javier Krahe made a short film for the amusement of himself and his friends. The film was a parody of cooking programmes and contained instructions on the best way to cook Christ. Just harmless atheist fun. Those interested in the recipe may want to check out this translation of an article on the issue from Público. There is also a piece in English on the New Humanist.

Nothing happened over the film, most people were certainly unaware of its existence. Then, in 2005, Krahe was interviewed on a programme on Canal + and reference was made to the film during the interview against a backdrop of some stills from it. The film itself wasn't shown. As a result of this interview an organisation calling itself the Centro de Estudios Jurídicos Tomás Moro brought a court case against Krahe and the director of the Canal + programme. They are claiming €192,000 damages from Krahe and a mere 144,000 from Montserrat Fernández Villa, the director. The case is likely to be heard in the next few months. The courts, you see, have so little to do.

This Cheese Is A Bit Rich For My Taste

As I'm still slowly making my way home from a very successful calçotada weekend in Girona, it's a short post this morning. As part of my very occasional series on weird Spanish menu translations, I offer you this from the place where we had lunch in Tossa de Mar yesterday. Obviously the economic crisis has affected cheeses as it has the rest of us, but it's nice to know that some have weathered the storm. Although there is no need to flaunt it.

You Want Chorizo, We've Got Chorizo

South of Watford coming live and direct from Oviedo, at the start of what promises to be a weekend of gastronomic excess. We'll be meeting the same friends who participated in the last assault on the legendary chuleton of Potes. Last night I broke all Spanish digestion rules by mixing Pote Asturiano, a chunk of beef, and tarta de queso. But it's ok, because I had a digestivo. I have spent this morning splashing through the rain examining pre-Romanic churches. The price you have to pay, tonight the roadshow moves to Aviles and tomorrow to Gijon.

Little did I know that I was in the city at the same time as the moustachioed crusader! Aznar has provided further proof of the benefits of a strict religious education by outdoing Esperanza Aguirre when it comes to insulting people. I imagine Espe is already planning how to raise the bar just a bit higher.

A Gourmet Masterclass

The mystery of the missing Swiss gourmet, Pascal Henry, has finally been solved. Henry was said to have disappeared in June after eating at Ferran Adriá’s El Bulli restaurant in Roses. He left without paying the bill and leaving some of his possessions behind in the restaurant. His departure sparked a manhunt in the area around the restaurant, but then last week it emerged that he was alive and well and back in Switzerland.

The Swiss police confirmed that he was in the country via security images taken at cash machines where Henry’s card had been used. What happened next has caused a little bit of embarrassment for the Catalan police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra. Interpol informed the Spanish police almost a week ago that Henry had been located. However, the contact for the Mossos was not at his desk and so the news was not passed on to Cataluña. So two days later, the Mossos organised an expensive search of the area around the restaurant which apparently even included the deployment of a helicopter.

Henry left behind a bill for €250, and I can understand him leaving given that he was probably presented with a tiny portion of some unrecognisable substance aerosolled onto an enormous plate. For that sort of money you can still eat well for a whole week in Spain.

Sign Of The Times

Once upon a time all you needed to do in a Spanish style tapas bar in the UK was serve up a few peeled prawns in oil, open a bottle of Rioja and put on a Gipsy Kings cd. Before anyone could say "Olé" you had that "true" Spanish atmosphere. Not any more, customers are more demanding these days and won't settle for any old tapas, as demonstrated by this photo I took in the UK last week.

La Nueva Cocina Española

As seen by Forges in El País:

On The Trail Of The Last Tuna

The release of a Basque fishing boat captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia has attracted a lot of attention here for the drama surrounding the events and over whether a ransom has been paid to the pirates or not. Few people seem to ask the question of what the hell a Basque fishing boat is doing in the Indian Ocean in the first place. The roots of what has happened lie in overfishing, and in the reluctance of governments and the fishing industry to deal with that issue whilst there is still a single fish left in the sea.

An ever smaller part of the (wild) fish that is consumed in Europe actually comes from European waters. As fish stocks have declined sharply in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the fishing fleets (of which the Spanish is one of the biggest) have to go ever further a field in order to maintain themselves. The European Union has paid “aid” to a succession of African governments in return for these surrendering the fishing rights in their territorial waters. The unemployed local fishermen are left to their own devices, and in some cases they turn to using their boats as people carriers; the African immigrants arriving on the shores of the Canary Islands are in part a consequence of this.

In the case of tuna the situation is serious enough to drive fishing boats as far as the dangerous Somali coast. There seems to be an absolute unwillingness on the part of those involved to come to terms with the reality that they are dealing in a finite resource. That they should be in these waters fishing is bad enough, the suggestion that they should now do so with military protection is simply crazy. It says a lot about the way these things work that the best protection for the remaining tuna stocks may turn out to be the Somali pirates.

Death By Unnatural Causes

Two people from the province of León have died recently of BSE (mad cow disease) within the space of a few weeks. The announcement of the cause of death has provoked a flurry of official announcements intended to convince the public that there is no risk, and the emphasis of almost all of these announcements has been on defending the meat industry rather than putting public health concerns first. We are told that the two latest victims of the disease were infected before more stringent controls were introduced in the year 2000. The director general of health services for Castilla León even unilaterally adapted the incubation period of the disease to 8-10 years to try and establish as fact that these people must have been infected before the new controls were introduced. He achieved his aim as sections of the press duly reported this as if it was fact. In reality many sources put the incubation period at 5-10 years, and one page I have seen with information on the disease puts it at 2-8 years; a period which would not reassure anyone about the effectiveness of controls in slaughterhouses.

It’s a familiar pattern to those of us who lived through the original BSE crisis in Britain. I can still vividly remember the Tory minister John Gummer force feeding hamburgers to his children in a bid to convince the public that there was no problem with eating beef. I wonder how they are doing? The almost criminal way in which the government of the time treated the issue in their attempts to defend above all the interests of the food industry is enough reason to treat official announcements with distrust. However, another reason why I suspect the information we are given is that I have a bit of inside knowledge about how things worked in the UK in the aftermath of the initial BSE crisis.

Not a lot of people outside of the industry know this, but much of the meat hygiene inspection in British abattoirs in the 1990’s was being done by Spanish vets. This was a result of the privatisation of the inspection service, in order to make things much more “efficient” it was deemed necessary to give huge sums of money to private companies who then employed the cheapest vets they could find to do the work. These vets were then sent in to try and implement the regulations in rural abattoirs where people who came from the next village were often viewed with suspicion, never mind foreigners coming in and telling them how to kill their animals! The vets weren’t even there for most of the time so anything could happen; regardless of the best efforts of the vets concerned. Yet another triumph for free enterprise, it may still be Spanish vets doing the job although I suspect that they have probably found cheaper Eastern Europeans to do it now.

I’m not suggesting that inspection in the Spanish abattoirs works in the same way, for all I know it may work fantastically well. However, with Spain we are talking about a country where there is always a significant distinction between a law existing on something, and it actually being applied. None of this is intended to suggest that there is a serious problem now, even with the latest deaths the total number of fatalities attributed to the disease in Spain is still only three (although you have to qualify this with the likelihood that others may well have died from the disease without it being diagnosed as BSE). I generally still have more confidence in the food industry in Spain, because not so many products disguise what they are containing as in the UK. Despite this, I would have thought that two deaths occurring so close together and in the same province would at least provoke some concern about whether the control system is actually working or not.

So that will be two steak fillets and a kilo of reassuring lies please. Buen provecho.

They Fried With Their Boots On

It's a tough world out there, and only the most courageous potatoes make the grade, hardly surprising when they have to share the menu with tigers. As a homage to those who have fallen in the line of duty I include an image of the eternal flame that burns above the Tomb of the Unknown Potato.


Something to think about the next time you are tucking into a nutritious plate of Calluses Madrilenian!

Operación Chuleton

Another weekend in the Picos de Europa, but this time there was not much walking being done; the objective was very different. We went to the village of Potes, which lies just inside Cantabria on the border with Asturias, and which is reached from the coast by one of the most claustrophobic narrow roads you can imagine, surrounded on both sides by walls of rock. The village lies in the fertile region known as La Liébana, and despite being at the foot of the eastern Picos it has a microclimate that makes for a respectable grape harvest. Apart from that, it’s also become a popular destination for the Brits who drive their cars off the Santander ferry every summer.


The grapes they cultivate in this area were at the heart of this weekend's visit. The last time I was there, a few years ago, the visit coincided with the Fiesta del Orujo, the spirit that results from distilling the grapes. It all seemed very civilized, you passed at leisure from one stall to another and they gave you a little shot of different orujos, sometimes straight from the still. Things change, the Fiesta del Orujo has got considerably bigger but unfortunately not better. The sponsorship of the regional government means that now they have a huge stage set up with folk dancing and even a "celebrity", Carmen Sevilla, to open the whole event. The village, whose population probably doesn't exceed 1500 people, was jammed with traffic and the enormous tent in front of the stage was equally full. The evening turned into a sort of glorified botellon as everyone went for the free drink. At least I have found a good use for an egg box, the shots of orujo fit very neatly inside; the eggs can just be thrown away. Meanwhile, the members of the jury looked very serious as they swilled glass after glass to try and pick this year’s gold medal winner.


Anyway, even this event was not my main reason for being in Potes, I was a man with a mission. The last time we were there, we ate in a restaurant not far from Potes where I can say without any doubt that they served me the biggest chuleton (T-bone steak) I have been presented with anywhere in Spain, and I've been around. I didn't manage to finish it last time, despite giving it my best attempt following the orujo aperitifs; and so a return visit was always going to be on the cards. I was a bit apprehensive, what would happen if the restaurant had changed and they presented me with a tiny piece of meat on a huge plate decorated with a brightly coloured sauce? I needn't have worried.


I have to admit that I failed again, although as always I did what I could under difficult circumstances. Failure does not always have to be unpleasant, in fact it provides the perfect excuse to try again - although maybe next time I need to do a couple of days walking first to build up my appetite.

San Vicente de la Barquera the following day

The First Fruits Of Autumn

“Mummy, where does the jamón come from?”

“Well darling, it all starts with a little seed, a bit like this one:”


“Somewhere in Extremadura the seed falls from the tree into the mouth of the little piggy. The seed grows and grows inside the little piggy’s stomach until it can’t take it any more – then it pops into the piggy’s leg, the leg falls off and becomes a lovely jamón! Then the jamón goes all the way to Madrid to be eaten by a greedy guiri."




This picture was taken a few days ago, and I could almost do a before and after shot given the big hole I’ve managed to make in it since then.

Pulp Friction

With politics in Spain finally taking what will probably be a very short summer break, let’s turn our attention to consumer affairs. A couple of weeks ago I noticed a very aggressive example of attack advertising in the press. The company behind it was Don Simón, justly famous as sellers of cheap wine that is so bad it doesn’t even justify the price of a bottle; so it gets sold in cartons. That, however, is not their only business; Don Simón are heavily involved in one of the fastest growing markets in Spain, the sale of “fresh” orange juice. As sales of other longer life juices have declined, the market for the more genuine article has boomed in recent years and competition is becoming fierce. I have to say that the quality of the juice sold by Don Simón is significantly higher than that of their wine, and I do buy it occasionally although it is not my preferred brand.

Which brings us back to the advertisement placed by Don Simón. Basically, it was an attack on their rivals Pascual, alleging that they were selling an orange juice as if it was fresh when in reality it is not. The basis of the complaint by Don Simón is that the product sold by their rivals is always stored in the cold cabinets in supermarkets even though there is actually no need for this, as it is a product that does not require constant refrigeration. Now this is not a new trick. Anyone who is familiar with a product called Sunny Delight will have come across the pioneers of the idea that getting your product into chiller cabinets convinces consumers that what they are buying is somehow “natural”. Sunny Delight was a particularly artificial, high sugar and almost orange juice free, product that had the sort of bright orange colour that you never get from the fruit itself. The scam got uncovered in the UK, as it became clear that Sunny Delight had such a low content of natural ingredients that placing it in cold cabinets was just pure marketing. It was even alleged that high consumption of the product could turn the skin of the person consuming it a colour not too different from that of the drink itself; because it was full of artificial colouring. As if that wasn't enough, its effect on fish was frankly frightening.

In Spain, Sunny Delight became bizarrely popular – when you consider the quantity of the natural fruit that the country produces – and is still to be found on sale here. The absence of the kind of consumer awareness about products that you get so much of in the UK now, makes it easier for this kind of marketing to succeed. This lack of awareness is something I put down to the fact that the Spanish have not had such a long period of highly processed industrialisation of their food. They are used to products where the origin and content of what you are consuming seems to be clearer. That is now changing as the big supermarkets and food processing companies become more powerful, although the country has still not reached the point where “dinner” is bought in a supermarket box whose contents can be placed directly in the microwave. The growth in the market for fresh orange juice that you buy off the shelf is in itself a reflection of this change in shopping and eating customs. Because the brand of orange juice that I prefer to Don Simón or any of their rivals is this one, and it’s widely available.

A Homage To Catal..onions

Taking advantage of the high speed train line that will (eventually) link Madrid and Barcelona, I spent an excellent weekend near to the coastal city of Tarragona. On Saturday we did some fine walking in the hills of Montsant near to the village of Ulldemolins. From the top of Pico Pins Carrasers there are some spectacular, and vertigo inducing, views of the surrounding countryside. In addition we had time yesterday to visit the walled village of Montblanc and see something of the city of Tarragona itself.

However, all this walking and sightseeing was just a facade. The real objective of the visit was to try another seasonal gastronomic experience, the calçotada. The centre of this tradition is the area around Valls, not far from Tarragona. The calçots (shallots) are barbecued, with the outer shell becoming almost completely black, although the inside remains soft and edible. The normal way to eat them is with your hands, removing the completely burnt outer layer, and dipping the rest in a special sauce based on almonds and tomatoes called salvitxada. This can be a bit of a messy process, and we were all issued with paper bibs in the restaurant where we ate, although I thought the provision of disposable plastic gloves was a step too far. Having disposed of dozens of calçots the next course was a platter of buitifarra, chorizo and lamb, when you go for a calçotada it’s best to go hungry. All accompanied by cava and local wine; the surrounding areas produce some of the best wines of Cataluña. As with the cider houses of the Basque Country, now is the season, go after March and it’s all over until the following year. I think I’ll find time to do it again next year.

Cider In San Sebastián

If you mention the word cider to most people in Spain it's likely that the conversation will soon turn to Asturias, the region of the country that seems to be most associated with this drink. However, this weekend I have been enjoying the cider season in a different area, the Basque Country. It was a few years ago that I first became aware of the existence of cider houses in this region. The majority are only open for a short season that tends to run between January and April, for consumption of cider and, usually, a fixed menu consisting of cod tortilla, followed by cod fillets prepared in different styles, chuleton (t-bone steak), cheese and walnuts. The centre of this tradition is the province of Guipuzcoa, and specifically the area around Astigarraga, not too far inland from San Sebastián.


The first time I went it was to a cider house in the countryside that was the nearest thing I have seen in Spain to a German beerhall; long trestle tables where everyone sat to eat their menu, while the cider was poured straight from the barrel. The atmosphere was great, when people were not eating they were congregating around the cider barrels. This time around the place was nearer to San Sebastián and possibly because of this it was a bit more sophisticated but lacking a bit the atmosphere of the first time. The compensation is that San Sebastián is a great city to spend time in.

Outside of the city in the villages are some of the best casas rurales you can find, run by very hospitable owners; and much more reasonably priced than the expensive hotels of San Sebastián. Forget the negative image of the region that you can get from reading about politics and terrorism, the people are welcoming, the countryside is beautiful, the cider is really good, the weather can be a bit English and the Basques know how to do a good chuleton better than anyone else in the country! Find out more here.