Brandon Eats

Every Day is a Fiesta (UPDATED with a recipe)

Five courses and four hours later, we staggered out of my husband’s cousin’s Aquilleno’s house, and I drove us carefully up the mountain home. It was after 6:00 pm and we’d just finished our first family lunch in Spain.

An ordinary, weekday lunch will usually last for an hour or so, from around 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm, with time for a nap before returning to work, but when  a Spanish family decides to pull out all of the stops, the only way to survive is to pace yourself and plan on staying for a while.  I’ll begin by listing, more or less, what exactly we had to eat:

We began with chorizo, jamon, and lomo (the classic Spanish pork trifecta) with sliced cheese and anchovy-stuffed olives. Next came the salad (two kinds actually: a big green salad zinging with sherry vinegar and a tuna/mayonnaise/potato/pea concoction called ensalada rusa), then the fish course followed by  a pork course, and finally, the lamb course.  Each was heavy with garlic and redolent of smoked paprika and olive oil, yet the different meats remained distinct and each was served in portions as big as a main dish (it was futile to refuse or attempt to ask for less) on an ordinary day. Dessert and coffee came last.

Cake and pastries and a layered ice cream torte were offered but just as I thought we were done, out came the fruit. Although I could tell the conversation was much the same as here (children, work, neighbors) and it doesn’t really matter what language is spoken to understand compliments about your children, for a non-Spanish speaker, this became a very long meal.  I hadn’t even factored in the chupitos that took lunch on into the evening.

A chupito is a little (or big, depending) glass of liquor—a shot in a nicer glass, sometimes with ice, sometimes without--and generally not just one, but several chupitos are drunk after coffee.  Two or three kinds of whisky were offered (did you know they made bourbon in Mexico?), as well as Cuarenta y Tres, and bottles of home-infused aguardiente (see my post about the fiesta in Crecente) called orujo that had been steeped with things like anise, cinnamon, or coffee beans for over a year.  Now the gossip began to flow about the night before and the older men began to nod off at the table.

A recipe and more after the jump . . .

Jumpin J's Java

Follow the link for my thoughts on Jumpin J's Java in Church Hill.

Other Things to Read Besides This Blog

Just an update on some of the things I've been writing that have wound up in print instead of online (even the laziest person blogging in Richmond gets busy occasionally):

If you'd like to read about my experiences canning, follow this link.

For summertime snack suggestions from healthy lady extraordinaire, Jennifer Thakkar, click here.

Where's the best fish in town?  Read the new magazine Belle or just follow this link to the online version.

And guess what?  Enough of you voted me Richmond Magazine's best blog to tie with River City Rapids for second place--I continue to be shocked and amazed anyone even reads me, let alone fills out ballots with my name on them!  Thank you everyone!

Video Extras and More!

To see the accordion player in Luanco, follow this link.

To check out the Bar el Muelle, click here.

To watch someone do something that ought to set them on fire, click on this link.

To see just how narrow the lane is in Vega de Zarza, follow this link.

To watch sidra bottled, click here.

Plus assorted new photos, format adjustments, and much needed spelling corrections!

The Scent of Spanish Apples

On some days, all of Taramundi is deeply, pervasively scented with apples.  Although there are apple orchards everywhere, all of the apples growing on trees or even the few that have fallen off and started to rot can’t account for the pungency that seems to blow across the countryside. 

I discovered that at the end of town, at the bottom of the hill, beside a small, picturesque restaurant made of stone and covered in vines with fat, blue hydrangeas crowding the edges, is a full-scale sidra-bottling factory.   I wrote earlier that Spanish sidra is an acquired taste, but now that I’ve tried it directly from a giant vat and patted the ponies that graze under the bending, fruit-laden trees that produce the apples for the sidra, I have a brand-new appreciation for its subtle sparkle and mutely tart finish.

José Lombardero (whose brother was the former owner of our house) is a tall, bald man with penetrating brown eyes. His other brother owns the restaurant next door to the Solleiro factory, José’s orchards are directly behind it, and he and his family live close by.  About 20% of the apples come from his own trees, and his neighbors from all over Taramundi pick the rest during October and November.  After sorting (by hand) and washing (by machine), the apples are immediately flattened in two enormous steel presses (the largest one holds 15,000 kilos of apples), while the juice runs to the lower level through a series of hoses in the floor. The apples are pressed over and over until every last bit of juice has been extracted, in a process that takes more than two days per batch.  The hoses are connected to a series of eleven or twelve enormous green tanks with black steel catwalks above them, and after about a month, the juice loses its sweetness and begins to bubble with fermentation.  After another month, it becomes proper sidra, and then the mixing begins.

Each tank has different levels of sweetness and strength and so they’re combined carefully to create a consistent flavor.  A lot of tasting goes on to achieve this, and since bottling is slow in the winter, after the frantic pace of the fall, I imagine this is one of the loveliest times to be a sidra-maker.  Bottling will pick up in the spring, and right now, in July and August (high season in the area), the factory runs at full throttle, with four extra employees and little time for leisure.

And so when the wind is right, the whole mountainside is perfumed with apples, the apples that are everywhere, and the apples that provide yet another small industry to keep the town humming.  Instead of looking beyond home and toward larger, urban areas for inspiration, the people of Taramundi have instead found what they need to survive and thrive in the traditional occupations--updated and modernized--that enabled their grandparents to scrape a living from the almost vertical landscape.

Taramundi

The problem with fairy tales is that dark and light are so inextricably intertwined.  When we describe something as like a “fairy tale,” we usually mean just the happy ending, with Cinderella safely ensconced in her castle, an adoring prince at her feet, forever.  Taramundi makes you think about the all of the other parts of fairy tales that come before the happily ever after.

The weather is insanely unpredictable.  One day the sun shines beatifically, illuminating the purple Spanish lavender and tiny daisy-like chamomile flowers growing along the edges of the road, lighting up the whole countryside in such a way that you’re forced to stop repeatedly and just gape at the beauty.  Other days, it’s dark in the morning, cold, shrouded in fog, and raining.  Raining and raining with freezing cold gusts of wind that make you slam the door shut and wonder how you’re going to entertain your children all day in a little stone cottage. And then the next day, of course, the sun comes out and the blue butterflies flit through the apple trees and it’s difficult to remember exactly what you were complaining about the day before.

Our little cottage really does seem like it’s right out of a fairy tale, with thick stone walls and timbered ceilings and shuttered, casement windows with white curtains trimmed in handmade lace that swing out to let in the air.  Quilts cover the beds and all of the furniture is solid and dark.  It’s sincerely charming, and although the road that leads through what once was a tiny hamlet named Vega de Zarza (and is now a converted row of guest houses), is so narrow your mouth goes dry every time you have to drive your car in and out, when dusk settles in at night, you can easily imagine a witch closing her door for the last time across the way before she mounts her broom and takes to the skies.