Padron Peppers
FAMILY, HOME, TRADITION
In Galicia food smells like childhood . If gastronomy is one of the easiest cultural elements to recognize and identify with all over the world, here this is even more noticeable. ** Family meals in which what is going to be eaten is discussed and discussed **, the pleasure of gathering people around the table, the fact that a good part of Galicians still come to eat at home (although many, of course, they have to do it as a tupperware in the always a bit sad canteen of a company), the one that in any humble tavern they serve delicious food and the enormous weight of traditional gastronomy are examples of a very lively culture that is often not even noticed because it is present every day in a natural way. And you only miss it when you live outside and oh, attacks the homesickness.
I KNOW BECAUSE I WILL...
pig is everything , and slaughter, the traditional backbone of a house that in the space of a day will mark the food course of autumn and winter . It is far beyond the poor animal dying on a butcher's bench. It's community work . The blood collected to make pancakes. The bonfire with which it is singed and the basoiras with which the soot is swept away. The pig hanging to air. The raxos served to all who have come to help. The saloon. The zorza waiting for its moment to become sausages. All you have of unconscious anthropological act that still exudes life and is not a simple object of ethnographic analysis.
Some time ago it was mentioned in an article (which I can't find) the possibility of turning the slaughter into a tourist activity for insiders and those interested in gastronomy before they came from a Williamsburg backyard. Second thought, It's almost better that it never happens.
Lareira, or the tradition of eating around the fire
PRODUCT
When there is a product so incredible and of such devastating quality, all over-elaboration is over . Seafood needs nothing more than salt water and at most a bay leaf to be perfect; a walk through the square of a coastal town is to come across infinite varieties of freshly landed fish, which is served with the basic and essential allada; the meat leaves in panties the one that slips and pours water when frying it ; the humble potato causes praise and admiration ( Bonilla a la vista is already in every self-respecting gourmet store ), as well as being the base of the best tortillas in the world; it is even possible to access fresh milk with relative ease. And of course, there is the subject of bread, which belongs to another dimension and which explains why here starting to make bread at home is neither a trend nor a fashion nor is it successful.
Bonilla potatoes: perfect
THE VILLAGE
Woe to those who don't have it . For those cases, despite everything, in Galicia the village is even in the poshest street in Coruña or in the most roguish place in Vigo, and it is wonderful and a source of pride that it is so. Access is still easy even in the cities to products that come directly from the field and that arrive with almost no intermediaries; You can still find eggs from home that are not at a gold price, and potatoes that come with some soil, and vegetables that have not known pesticides.
THE WIZARD
What a bitch has hit everyone with celebrate the Samain , that supposed traditional Celtic holiday that suspiciously resembles Halloween. Enough of remorse of cultural colonized : if we want to trick or treat, let's do it without a bad conscience that forces us to resort to supposed centenary parties that until four years ago nobody knew about. If not, let's celebrate the magician , the usual one, because there is nothing that makes a home and gives more pleasure in this life than roasting some chestnuts in the iron kitchen or on a pan perforated in the lareira. And if there is none of these two things, throw chestnut and newspaper cone. long live autumn.
Piornedo in Lugo. It could be your village.
IF YOU DON'T WANT BROTH, TWO CUPS
The hunger ghost is only a couple of generations away (although under current circumstances it's a sadly lively and lush ghost), so eating encher is tradition and grandmother's mandate . The portions of many restaurants could feed a family for weeks, and the diner enjoys seeing how the entrecote dish is brimming with fries, Padrón peppers, red peppers and salad . Not to mention the stews on Sundays or the laconadas whose leftovers are filled in tupperware that last until the following Sunday. And that brings us directly to the next point.
A little bit of everything and a few cups of wine
GALICIAN WEDDINGS
What's this about a canapés bar? What is it to eat standing up? Where are the scampi? And the fish dish and the meat dish? There are things that should never be missed and others, such as brunch, cupcakes or sushi as a wedding dish, that we never needed to come to Galicia.
Scallops, a classic
THE WRITERS
In these days when more than ever, the kitchen is also read , you have to look back and find that, once again, everything is invented. A century ago we had writers who combined intellectuality and poetry with being pro gastronomes in times when that word was hardly used. Álvaro Cunqueiro was a great observer even in culinary uses , Y Julius Camba is one of those totems of journalism whose articles on the United States in the First World War or on life in interwar Germany continue to be a pleasure for the reader. Their Lucullus's house , total dissection of eating, is inescapable and surprising.
We also want to vindicate the figure of the lesser known Manuel Puga and Parga “Picadillo” , gourmet, politician and fat professional from Coruña, pioneer of those cookbooks that can be read in the living room. In its the practical kitchen included such hilarious recipes as this one: “Eggs with tomato: This is the best thing anyone can think of to order as a starter when having lunch at a restaurant, a la carte, of course. The eggs are fried and bathed in tomato sauce, which if it's from a can, generally tastes like hell, but on the other hand, if it's from the season, it forms a delicious whole with the eggs”. End of the recipe #cocinasinhostias
SPIRITS AND COFFEE LIQUOR
It has always been said that good spirits came out of bad wines. And perhaps therein lies the secret of why regular, when not directly mediocre, home-made wines come out with such good distillates. Mitiquérrimo is coffee with a few drops of brandy , essential companion of all the parishioners of the bars throughout Galicia. Mitiquérrimas are the bottles with homemade labeling (by pen) that magically materialize during the after-dinner conversation. And the absolute stardom of **coffee liqueur (and pomace cream for less hardcore stomachs) **, which can look from you to you to the gin and tonic in terms of the classic drink of-all-the-life-of-God that at some point in the recent past everyone started using again and decided to keep it in their diet for leftovers.
'The coffee liqueur is a Galician invention to exterminate the rest of the peninsula'
THE STEAK
Legacy of the time of the indianos and of emigration (time that the truth, in Galicia has never ended), it is materially impossible for someone not to love the churrasco. pork ribs (much better than veal) grilled in a restaurant or at home , and accompanied by Creole sausages, that creation of those that tell millions of stories only with their name.
QUINCE CHEESE
There is no better dessert. Well, maybe you're in stiff competition with some filloas well done, with carnival ears (with that soft whiff of anise), with the helpful bica that everyone learns to prepare at some point in their adolescence and never forgets, with the apple pie and the Santiago's cake, that hardly anyone likes but when they like it, they love it.
Those of milk, for all; those of blood, for the brave.
FURANCHOS
Magical word. Few things are comparable to going down an unknown road and stopping when you come across a homemade sign (the more rustic the better) announcing the existence of a furancho (for the uninitiated, a furancho It is a home winery -more or less private- where wine from the owner's harvest is sold and home-made food is usually served. The thing got a little out of hand, becoming some in real undercover restaurants in which to eat to esgalla). To go to fixed shot, they can be searched here.
BBQ for everyone!
THE PULPEIRAS
Octopus cooked in a copper pot by a pulpeira from Carballiño in a cotton robe. Served with or without cachelos on a wooden plate and sprinkled with oil and paprika. Fair bustle in the background, probably rain outside the tent, some bagpipers out there in the background, their feet on the soft grass in the clearing of a carballeira. Is this the Proust madeleine of every Galician? I say yes.
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Octopus always, but in summer more