Every Wednesday morning at first light, a fleet of vans and cars loaded with fresh fruit and vegetables, cheeses, loaves of bread, cakes, clothes and hardware, converge on the town of Ordicia on the banks of the river Oria. As the sun begins to rise behind the small town, huddled in the mountains, the market swings swiftly into action. The streets of the old quarter running away from the main town square and market place, become suddenly busy and stall holders put up stripy canvas awnings to protect their wares from the rain, which often falls at the most inopportune moment. Some of the country people simply sit down on a stool and arrange their goods around them in three or four baskets on top of a couple of wooden boxes.
In the echoing stone market building itself, foodstuffs, fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers are being unloaded by traders, farmers and householders who have come in to town to sell their produce. They take enormous care displaying their goods, arranging fruit and vegetables, according to variety, in large locally made wicker baskets arranged on folding trestle tables and displaying smaller items like honey, dried fruit, cheese and butter on spotless red-and-white checked tablecloths. Many of the stalls are separated by tall shelf-units, where some of the best goods, like prize cheeses, are on show, and fronted by glass display-counters where cut cheeses are stacked one on top of the other.
As the stalls fill up and conversations are shouted across the aisles, the noise echoes around the high ceiling and columns. This honey coloured stone building, with its vague pretensions to classical grandeur, reflects the historic importance of the market at Ordicia as one of the most traditional in the country; a free market whose prices have for centuries set a guideline and provided a reference throughout the rest of the province. The first charter authorizing the holding of the market was conceded by King Alfonso the Wise on 30 June 1268, but it was Doña Juana la Loca, Joan the Mad, daughter of the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, who re-endorsed the charter in 1512 in order to make restitution to the town for the terrible losses suffered from a fire, and laid down that the market should be held every week on Wednesdays. ‘It is my wish and will’, said Doña Juana ‘that they should be able to sell, change and exchange in the said town and within its walls, from daybreak on the said market-day, until sunset, all and whatsoever chattels and goods of whichever sort.’ Curiously, the market was not held for nearly three centuries – the reason being is not known for certain although there are various theories such as the lack of foodstuffs to sell – but since 1798 it has taken place every week without fail. Inevitably in recent years it has lost much of its original relevance, though its fame and quality still reflect the Basque passion for good food.
Outside the market-hall it is a beautiful morning. As the town begins to wake up, the square and streets around it are filled with possibilities and hope. The spring sunshine intensifies the brightness of the mosaic of objects, foodstuffs and people. On one side of the square the townhall clock, with its original black numerals against a white face and the town’s coat of arms – a castle and a crown – are reminders of a noble past. The other three sides are lined with imposing grey stone buildings with wrought iron balconies topped by gleaming metallic spheres. They recall the nineteenth-century industrial revolution which took place here long before the rest of Spain. Under their arches merchandise is bought and sold as the morning proceeds.
The women, some young and some white-haired, close their doors behind them – housework already done. A couple of middle-aged men wearing the txapela, the traditional black Basque beret, are standing in the middle of the street, smiling broadly and shaking hands on the sale of three of the best animals to be found in the area. There is an almost tangible fiesta mood, alegría de la fiesta, in the air.
As far as most men are concerned, a visit to one or other – or several – of the neighbouring taverns is essential before any buying or selling. In every bar along polished wooden counters are ranged tapas to tempt the appetite of even the least hungry: plates of local black pudding, fried tongue, chunks of salt-cod coated in egg and flour and fried. The two beret-clad farmers move off to Conchita’s cellar-bar, hidden on the corner of the square, to close their bargain over their first glass of wine of the day, a three-year old Rioja tinto. Usually everyday honest plonk or even rougher stuff is drunk in the bars, but market days are special and the extra cost is worth it. They decide to sample the black pudding and the cod as well and the waiter arranges small pieces on a plate, anchoring them with a toothpick to a slice of bread baked at dawn. The conversation begins as usual with the weather and then moves on to the outlook of the day’s market, with complaints about the scandalous prices of zizak (wild mushrooms). Around the bar, the voices rise and fall, inevitably discussing the declining quality of life: the dancing at fiestas has changed; since the men gave up wearing dancing slippers things are not as good as they used to be. Their next stop will be in a couple of hours time when one of the friends insists on doing the honours as he seals yet another deal.
As opening time for the shops approaches, the bars empty and the crowd in the narrow streets which lead into the market square thicken. Soon it is difficult to make one’s way through the town centre. There are foodstuffs, clothes, livestock, every sort of portable good; grocers, confectioners and butchers are all doing a roaring trade, too. In the cake shops, almond and pinenut tartlets and hundreds of glass jars containing multicoloured sweets, draw the children to the windows and they pester their mothers to spend some money. Silenced by the glass of the shop windows, the sales assistants are engaged in dressing them. The butcher, proprietor of a very modern shop, is pointing out his selection of dozens of txistorras, spicy sausages draped from a metal bar, to the crowds outside – their deep orange colour almost surpasses the garments displayed in a neighbouring frock shop window. In the same window there are shiny black local sausages, legs of lamb, tripe, best quality chops, all meat from animals which have grazed on the best pasture and which the butcher has had transported to the local abbatoir for slaughter.
Every so often one comes across a stall selling goods associated with the life of the surrounding valleys and the mountains. There are albarcas, the rubber galoshes used by the country people to protect their feet from the mud and puddles, cow bells, made of shining and sonorous metal, rough bladed knives and even a little stall specializing in military caps. In some of these streets creatures such as hens, sheep and cattle are also for sale, but this is a more specialized trade whose survival is nearing an end.
Here and there are local farmers’ wives with jars of home-produced honey neatly labelled according to the sort of flower the bee has enjoyed, and covered with checked material to match the neatly hemmed tablecloth. Beside the honey there are often flat baskets of biscuits, the delicate tejas, literally, curved tiles, which are a local delicacy of nearby Tolosa. There are two types, plain ones and more expensive ones filled with almond morsels.
Grouped together in one section are the bakers’ stalls with baskets holding different types of bread, some made from wheat flour, others from maize, and easily recognized by their orange tinge and the cabbage leaf underneath them, but both golden, crusty and rounded, with a slit cut in the centre, and lightly dusted with flour. Then there are long loaves weighing half a kilo of the sort which in Castile are known as de pistola. If ever factory-made sliced loaves succeed in replacing the different types of bread of the Basque Country, one of the great pleasures of good, simple fare will be lost for ever.
Nearby is the fresh produce from the farmsteads: flowers and root and green vegetables, which change according to the season. Here, too, the stallholders take great pride in the presentation of their bunches of dwarf spinach, its leaves an intense green on thin purple stems, tied together with green, red and yellow ribbons; two or three different varieties of cabbage, and small and large leeks; carrots and chard; asparagus, tender baby carrots, tiny potatoes, large potatoes, some red, some white; artichokes from Tudela with a label stating their origin, and with traces of reddish earth sticking to them as a result of the last few days’ rain to prove that they have come straight from the rich soils close to the river Ebro. There are also baskets of seedlings ready for planting. The casera, or farmer’s wife, often prefers to buy plants like this, which have made a good start.
Today new waves of cooking and healthy habits are being encouraged and are introducing a much wider range of vegetables to the daily Basque diet. In fact, the use of green vegetables in Basque cooking, at least as it is understood now, is relatively recent. A few decades ago root vegetables were preferred and few people made use, in their daily diet, of most of the varieties which now often form the first course in the housewife’s menu.
Spring is the season of the menestra, a mixture of braised vegetables and originally a traditional Navarrese dish, but now made throughout the rest of the Basque country. The recipe, which comes from the town of Tudela in Navarre, can be considered one of the most authentic versions of the dish which has been adapted recently by la nueva cocina chefs to use baby spring vegetables.
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To make Menestra for two people, prepare 6 trimmed small artichokes, 250g (8 oz) of fresh peas, 2 stems of silver beet or chard (or, if that is not possible, spinach will do), cut small, 150g (5 oz) of green beans, a small tin of asparagus (al natural), 3 thin slices of chorizo sausage (preferably from Pamplona), a rasher of cured ham weighing 100g (3½ oz), 1 tablespoon of flour, some olive oil, white wine, and the water from cooking the artichokes and a pinch of salt. Each vegetable must be boiled separately since they all have different cooking times. Start with the peas. Peel and cut the artichokes into quarters and cook them. Reserve the water from boiling the artichokes. Using another pan, cook the beans and then the silver beet. These are then dipped in egg and flour, as are the artichokes, and fried in olive oil until golden. Next, put a little olive oil in an earthenware dish and, once it is hot, add the ham and the chorizo, both cut into small squares; after a minute or two add a little wine and a glass of the artichoke water. Add the flour and stir well with a wooden spoon until the sauce thickens a little and the flour is cooked. Add a pinch of salt, taste and add the various vegetables, finishing with the asparagus and then bring back to the boil. There should not be much liquid left. Traditionally, in Navarre, menestra is accompanied by rosé or red wine. |
Next to one of the stalls stands a tall, very dark man, bearded and thin faced, with a large basket of wild mushrooms. He leaves them with the stallholder, and a small crowd of buyers immediately gathers round. The Basque Country is, by any standards, a veritable fungus’ paradise, and thanks both to its climate and habitat, mycology is a passion here. All sorts of lectures, cookery demonstrations and competitions, like a famous contest at Tolosa, are held to celebrate the richness of fungi. Every weekend keen amateurs scout the hillsides, woods and meadows, searching among the bracken and fine grasses. The large number of varieties which can make one unpleasantly ill, adds spice to the hunt; the Basque spirit is always drawn by elements of risk and danger. But every year the task of both professionals and amateurs becomes more difficult as the favourite local varieties become more scarce. Gradually the chestnuts and oaks which covered large expanses of terrain have given way to pine trees and with these have appeared new varieties of mushrooms, such as the níscalos, which now grows in abundance to the detriment of more valued varieties. Accordingly, the prices of the many varieties of fungi on sale in specialized shops and markets, bought by housewives, gastronomic society cooks and chefs, rise all the time but the Basque people are prepared to pay the price; elsewhere, it would be considered exorbitant.
Ordicia is known for its fungi stalls, although nobody ever knows what mushrooms will be on sale until the mushroom hunters arrive at the market. Today there is great excitement because the first spring-time zizak mushrooms, the most highly prized of all are available. The price label reads 12.000 pesetas a kilo, for the same price you could buy two pairs of excellent shoes, yet there are plenty of people ready to pay this sum of money.
These zizaks, belonging to the Tricholoma group which comprises three species, the Tricholoma georgii, Tricholoma gambosum and Tricholoma albellum are yellowish-white in colour with the cup rather deeper than the stem; they are small and have a delicious aroma. The people of Alava province consider them the best variety of all, they come into their own during the celebrations for the patron saint of the province, San Prudencio de Armentia, on 27 April, when they are eaten in huge quantities.
The zizak at the market when I went there were collected by Francisco Gainza, a professional mushroom hunter, native of Ordicia, where he lives with his wife and family. A serious man, he rarely smiles, but when he does his face is cut open by a broad grin; he laughs infectiously. He has been gathering mushrooms since he was a boy and although this only provides him with a modest income, it allows him to do what he most enjoys in life, which is to walk and to be in contact with the natural world. Only between mid-winter until early spring, when mushrooms are scarce all over the country, does he sometimes take on some sort of temporary job in Ordicia.
Francisco divides his time between the mountains of Urbasa, La Sierra del Aralar and the area surrounding the town, according to the seasons and the varieties of fungi which appear in them. He knows exactly where to look and his years of experience tell him which sites to visit in search of signs. Sometimes it may be a particular species of tree, at others how the grass grows in a specific site or the weather conditions in a particular area during the last few days. He drives as close as he can to the site, then unloads his equipment: a pair of stout boots, thick woollen socks of the type used by the shepherds, a waterproof, a small wicker basket and a walking stick. From this point on, he walks, visiting the most likely sites. All the time he scans the undergrowth with his hawk-eyes, moving his head slowly from side to side. On some days he senses that his hunt will be successful because he can almost scent the mushrooms in the air. When he spots the black or grey species he has been searching for, he crouches down to examine them; then he pulls them up carefully, wipes them a little and puts them into his basket. After three hours he may only have found a few mushrooms, but they will be enough to make his trip worthwhile.
Francisco’s skill is based on experience, distilled into instinct, and knowledge. He can identify the hundreds of varieties of mushroom and knows exactly which ones will appear first around Ordicia, then on the Aralar range and later in the Orduña area. He will never confirm or deny what he may have found or how many and he may even double back on his tracks if he thinks that a rival is following his trail. Anyone who goes with him is sworn to secrecy. He will tell his customers only that the zizaks have come from the hillside slopes and meadows around Ordicia.
Francisco searches out the different varieties with the changing seasons. He thinks one of the tastiest spring fungi is the karraspina (Morchela esculenta) which is usually served stuffed with small pieces of cured ham cooked on a griddle with a little oil and garlic sauce. This is a good method to prepare mushrooms lacking flavour. Delicious, too, is the Coprinus comatus, which is picked in the pastures and gardens during April. In summer there are at least half a dozen varieties: the various species of Russulas, best of all the Guibelurdiñas or Russula cynaxanta. This is enormously popular and cooked at its best by the nueva cocina, the new style of cookery, and the Russula cirescens, or Idi min in Basque, which is marinaded for salads with a little oil and cider vinegar; the adaptable Ziza-ori or Saltxaperretxiku in Basque (Cantharellus cibarius), is sometimes cut into slices and eaten raw in salads or simply used as a garnish for meat dishes or dried for enjoyment during the winter. In August the Kuletos (Amanita caesarea), a beautiful orange colour with a most delicate flavour, appears among the chestnut trees. Sadly it is now threatened by the disappearance of the chestnuts. It is best cooked in scrambled eggs, fried, barbecued or dressed with a little garlic, parsley and olive oil. Finally, there is the field mushroom, which has two different names in Basque. When it is still very young and its gills are reddish, it is known as the Berrengorri, but when mature it is called Azpibeltz, which describes its darker colour. It is delicious cut very finely and cooked in a moderate oven for twenty minutes with a little garlic, olive oil and parsley. On the whole it tends to be undervalued in Euskadi, the Basque name for their Country, where it grows of its own accord.
But autumn is the mushroom season par excellence. It is then that one can find the first examples of the fleshy Clitocybe group, which lend themselves to grilling and stewing. The black mushrooms (Boletus Aereus), found in resinous woodland and lightly forested beechwoods, are at their best sautéed with fresh herbs and a touch of garlic. New style Basque cookery makes a terrine with them. October is the month of the Esnegorri (Lactarious delicious), Níscalo in Castilian is probably amongst the best-known fungi in Spain, which has an orange tinged cap with spots underneath; it is found in pinegroves and is shipped in large quantities to Catalonia, where it is called Rovellón. Amongst the grass and the impressive yellows and ochres of the landscape, one finds the slender Galanperna; its cap resembling a Philippino sunshade. Sometimes it is cooked in batter, other times simply grilled. Galanperna is the Basque name of Lepiota Procera, or the ‘Parasol’ in Castilian. The zizak reappear now, as do dishes made with the simple, popular fungus, Pholiota Aegerita, or the thistle fungus, Pheorotus aringii.
The essential point to remember when cooking these mushrooms, as good Basque cooks will tell you, is to give each variety the appropriate cooking time and to choose a method according to their size, flesh, and if they are a very aromatic variety or need extra ingredients to improve their natural qualities and flavour.
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This is Francisco’s recipe for cooking all sorts of Mushrooms, except zizak. You need about 500g (1 lb) of mushrooms, 2 chopped cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley, 1 tablespoon of fine breadcrumbs, a little butter, olive oil and 50g (1¾ oz) of fatty bacon cut up small. In an earthenware dish Francisco browns 1 clove of garlic in the olive oil. He removes the dish from the heat and adds the whole mushrooms, the rest of the finely chopped garlic, the parsley and breadcrumbs. On top he puts the butter, a pinch of salt and the bacon. Then he puts this in the oven for about fifteen minutes, at 225°C (435°F, Gas mark 7). If the mushrooms are not so flavoursome like the famous Guibelurdiñas of the Russulas family, he adds a little wine and omits the bacon and breadcrumbs. |
Francisco’s best customers are the proprietors of restaurants in San Sebastián and Bilbao and even Madrid, but he also sells to one or two market stalls since they will buy the humbler varieties too and remain loyal customers.
Near the stall selling Francisco’s mushrooms stands a sturdy woman with suntanned hands surrounded by two sacks of dried beans, one variety almost black in colour, the other of broad beans, and an interesting selection of smoked cheeses. She speaks with that suggestion of terseness and suspicion which characterizes the women of the north. ‘Men are nothing but trouble’, she remarks, ‘specially mine’. Her name is Miren. She has been coming to the market since she was a child, when she kept her mother company on a stall in almost the same place as she now has her own. Once she was the cook of the famous Nicolasa restaurant in San Sebastián, but she had to leave her job when she got married. She is happy living in her caserío, or farmhouse, and would not change her life for anything, but coming to the market means a change, a rest, and she always goes home with good takings.
The beans that she brings down from the caserío, weighed out into kilos, are the staple diet of the Basque winter kitchen and grown throughout the Basque Country. They figure daily on the farmhouse table for the midday meal and often, too, in city homes and in all the restaurants, including the leading lights of the new Basque cuisine in San Sebastián, Madrid or Bilbao.
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Las Alubias de Tolosa are cooked in the following way. You need 1 kg (2 lbs) of black beans, 1 onion, 8 tablespoons of olive oil, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 small green chilli peppers (not hot), 250g (9 oz) of pork ribs and salt. Put the beans in a large pot and cover with water. Add the chopped onion, green peppers and four dessertspoons of olive oil. Cook for about four hours at a low heat. One and a half hours before the cooking time is over, add the pork ribs, and fifteen minutes before, a refrito of garlic and olive oil prepared in a frying-pan. Season with salt. Often the alubias are served accompanied by cabbage, black pudding and chorizo previously cooked. |
Before the fifteenth century and the arrival of different members of the bean family, only broad beans were known. They were dried to become baba-txikik and formed one of the most important parts of the diet of the Basques who worked every day in the fields. But after the discovery of the New World they were largely ousted by different varieties of the haricot bean, which soon became a popular part of the daily diet, unlike potatoes, which, curiously were considered fit only for animal fodder. From the sixteenth century the ubiquitous potaje or soup, which traditionally was made from chickpeas in Andalucía, Castile and Extremadura, became Olla de Alubias, literally pot of beans, to be eaten and enjoyed over the centuries. In Navarre some of the first of the crop are usually used to make various dishes using fresh haricot beans known as pochas. These are the fully grown mature beans, before they have dried out. Eaten fresh, the beans have a crunchy texture and consistency which gives a unique character to the dishes prepared with them. Abu Zacaria, a twelfth-century inhabitant of Seville, commented, referring to the culinary value of all legumes – ‘they should be harvested early, before they are completely dried, not only are they easier to cook, but are much more enjoyable, with a more delicate flavour’. One dish above all, Pochas con codornices (Quail with pochas), is considered to be a Basque triumph.
José Castillo, the famous chef, includes a different recipe for beans with quail in one of his best-known publications, Recetas de Cocina de Abuelas Vascas (Recipes from the Kitchens of Basque Grandmothers). In this case the beans, which he says should be from the town of Puente La Reina in Navarre, are boiled with a little water, ham, chopped onion, raw tomato, red pepper and virgin olive oil. The quails are cooked separately again, but after having been dredged with flour. The dish is finished by mixing together the contents of the two casseroles.
The dried broad beans are cooked in the same way as haricot beans, but they always have to be soaked overnight. Before cooking the water must be poured off and fresh water added, then a little bit of bacon and a good few drops of olive oil are added. When my mother served these beans, or lentils, she would fry a little garlic and paprika in oil and put this on top of the stew before serving. Nowadays they are much less widely grown and really only broadly used in the Alava and Navarre areas.
Some of the goods on sale at the market are from specialized shops in San Sebastián, Tolosa and Guernica, who sell their merchandise here and at the same time buy hand-made products which are difficult to find elsewhere. Around the trade of the market small specialist shops have grown up too, like La Casa del Bacalao, the house of cod, hidden away down a side street. Here in an enormous, well-lit glass refrigerator, you can find two dozen different cuts of salt-cod; necks, snouts, flanks, cheeks, gill-pieces, jaws, medallions or heads, flakes for making omelettes, crumbs for fishballs. Some cuts of the fish – those with most gelatine and least bones, such as the snout – almost always are used for Bacalao a la vizcaina, one of the supreme Basque salt-cod dishes and the penca, part of the fish’s main body, used for bacalao al pil-pil are very expensive. So also are the kokotxas or cheeks, a delicacy which is prepared in parsley, olive oil and garlic sauce. Near the counter stands a guillotine consisting of a blade whose tip is attached to a block of wood of the same length, which makes it very easy to cut the cod, and on a nearby counter a range of dishes are on show, demonstrating the correct cut of cod for a particular recipe, together with all the other necessary ingredients.
At first it may seem curious that salt-cod is still an important ingredient in Basque cookery since it is not an indigenous product of either the wild Cantabrian seas or the Mediterranean. Nor by any means, is it unique to the Basque Country: salt-cod has been eaten everywhere from Catalonia to Valencia, and Castile to Andalucía and is always easy to find in grocery shops and market stalls. In the Mercado de la Cebada or Barley Market, in Madrid, it is quite common to see customers leaning on the counter in the little cafés dotted around the area of the market hall, early in the morning, enjoying some fried bacalao, dried salt-cod, with a bottle of beer.
But there is a good historical reason for salt-cod remaining a popular food in the Iberian Peninsula and specially the Basque Country long after it had become an unusual ingredient elsewhere in Europe. One, of course, is the Roman Catholic religion with its long Lents and fast days. While, in the rest of Europe, the tradition of going without meat on Fridays and during Lent, had almost disappeared by the seventeenth century, in Spain it persisted. When I was a child my mother would religiously buy the obligatory parochial dispensation or bula – a Papal document granting concessions, immunities and indulgences, without which we could not eat meat on Friday every week of the year. Alongside this, other fish, such as hake also owe their popularity to the distinction of recipes for using it. Cooked with honey, spinach and pine kernels, used in salads or stews, combined with tomato or dried red peppers, cod is no longer regarded as a food of the poor, but a gastronomic delicacy, increasingly a treat for the minority who can afford it.
The Basques’ particular fame for salt-cod dishes can also be ascribed to their long history as adventurous fishermen through vocation and necessity. They have always gone much further afield than other fleets (originally in pursuit of the prized whale), crossing the oceans as far back as the eleventh century and then by the sixteenth century fishing for cod in the cold waters of northern Europe and Canada, following the route of the Portuguese navigator Gaspar de Conte Real, who had discovered Newfoundland’s shoals of cod, around 1560. For the next four centuries, the Basque fleet was catching enough fish to supply the country. It is only in the last few years that the fleet has almost entirely disappeared and practically all the cod is now imported from such places as Scandinavia and the Faeroe Isles.
When you discover the imagination and dedication that the Basques, and especially the vizcainos, the people of Vizcaya, have devoted to the culinary use of this disarmingly plain looking fish, you understand that the two are synonymous. There are, perhaps, a dozen classic dishes such as Bacalao a la marinera with potatoes and parsley, Bacalao frito, fried cod coated with egg, Bacalao a la vizcaina, with a. rich sauce of choricero peppers and ham; but among these, one in particular, Bacalao al pil-pil, cod in a perfect emulsion of garlic, olive oil and the gelatine from the skin of the fish, stands out. According to the Spanish writer, José Carlos Capel, there is an amusing story attached to the way it was invented. He explains how shortly before the Second Carlist War, in the 1860s, a shopkeeper in Bilbao who specialized in salted goods ordered thirty or forty packs of dried cod from Norway but when the cargo was unloaded, discovered to his horror that his assistant had mistakenly copied out the order for 3,040 packs. Convinced that he was a ruined man, he had no choice but to take delivery of the mountain of cod. Shortly afterwards, the Carlist siege began and the shortage of foodstuffs of all kinds made our friend a rich man almost overnight. In culinary terms, the significant fact was that a chef had to hand only olive oil, some garlic and a few slices of dried salt-cod, and thrown back on his ingenuity, created the recipe and the technique of ‘pilpileo’, a wonderful onomatopoeic name for the noise made by the bubbling oil in the cooking process. Later on, another chef, by gently moving the cazuela, or earthenware pot, obtained the emulsified Bacalao ligado.
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To prepare Bacalao ligado for four people, we need 4 thin cod slices, 6 cloves of garlic, olive oil, 1 small chopped dried chilli pepper. Soak the fish for twenty-four hours. Change the water every eight hours and dry the fish. Lightly crush the garlic in a pestle-and-mortar, but do not make a paste. Cover the base of a medium-sized earthenware dish with olive oil, adding the garlic and placing the fish on top, the skin underneath. Pour over a little more olive oil until the fish is almost covered, add the chilli pepper, which is optional. From that moment until the end of the cooking move the dish gently back and forth over a moderate heat. Some small white bubbles will start appearing on top which eventually will help to thicken and bleach the sauce. Carry on cooking and tilting the dish until the oil has become a thick sauce with a lovely white colour. |
The secret of all salt-cod dishes lies in the precise art of removing the salt from the fish. There are two possible methods used, depending on the recipe. The first is for the most elaborate Basque cod dishes and requires time and an expert eye, without which the result will be disappointing. The cod must be soaked in cold water for between twenty-four and thirty-six hours. The water must be changed two or three times. If the cod is slightly flaked before soaking then it will need less time. Too short a soaking time and the cod will be salty; too long, and it will lose all its magic taste and texture. The art of extracting the salt cannot be learnt in a mere day or two. I have to confess to more than one cod disaster, but one day you get it right, the recipe turns out perfectly and there is no looking back. The second, or rapid method, is mainly used for dishes such as Ajoarriero (potato, bacalao, garlic and red pepper dish) or Zurrukutuna (a substantial cod soup) in which the cooked cod is flaked and its finished texture not so important. First, the pieces of fish are grilled over hot coals or a hotplate for about three minutes to soften them and so making it easy to remove the skin and bones. Next, the cod is soaked in water for two or three hours. This method is a useful standby and means Ajoarriero can be prepared within a morning. It is a delicious dish to which other ingredients such as tomatoes, chilli pepper or even lobster can be added. In Navarre, where it originated, nearly everybody has their own version.
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This particular recipe for Ajoarriero comes from my mother. For two people she uses 250 g (8 oz) of dried salt-cod, 3 cloves of garlic, ⅓ dried chilli peppers, 4 dried red peppers, 200g (7 oz) of bread broken into small pieces, a little tomato sauce and a 250 ml (9 fl oz) of water, half of which is the soaking water from desalting the fish. Soak the bacalao for about twenty-four hours, or less if it is very thin, or use the rapid method, described above, if you are short of time. Change the water twice. Soak the dried red peppers for a few hours. When soft, remove the seeds and scrape the pulp from the skin with a teaspoon. Brown the garlic in an earthenware dish, add the pieces of bread, brown slightly, add the water and cook for a while. Add 2 generous tablespoons of tomato sauce, the pulp of a red, dried pepper, or choricero, and the chilli. Finally, add the dried cod, flaked. Cook very slowly for about one hour. It should have the consistency of a thick soup. |
In spring and autumn, the arcades of the market place are crowded with small stalls selling fine, farmhouse sheep’s milk cheeses. These are hand-made on the caseríos, or farmsteads, and in the shepherds’ huts in the mountains of southern Guipúzcoa, Alava and Navarra, and are usually brought down to the market by the farmers’ or shepherds’ wives and daughters. These days, as the pastoral way of life begins to disappear, so too do the hand-made Basque cheeses; Roncal cheese, from the valley of the same name in the Pyrenees, is slightly pungent, with a distinct smokey flavour and a noticeable piquance which makes it popular as an end to a meal. The well-known cheeses of Idiazabal from the macizo de Aitzgorri in Guipúzcoa and the ones from the Aralar mountain range, which are similar, are yellow in colour, some lighter, some darker. The shepherds often smoke them using freshly felled wood, which gives them an orange-tinged rind and a characteristic flavour. They are cylindrical in shape, weighing between a kilo and a kilo and a half and when they are at their best, the cheese is easy to cut and has a few holes in it. If it is kept too long, it loses its pleasant fresh flavour and becomes rather salty and too brittle. Also famous are the Baztan cheeses, used as an apéritif or added to soups and talos, a maize cake, and the ones produced from Gorbea or Orduña. These days, each shepherd has his own enthusiastic customers who regularly place orders in the hope that there will be enough cheese to go round.
José Martín, a shepherd on the Sierra del Aralar, sells most of his cheeses at Ordicia through his daughter, María José, who drives over to the market every week. His father, who was also a shepherd, took him up to the mountains when he was eight. Those were hard times when everyone had to work to earn a meagre living. The first night that he spent alone in the txabola, a small hut built by his father of rubble, lime, moss and clay, he was so cold and frightened that he could not sleep a minute all night. The facilities of the hut consisted of a camp bed, an open hearth and a small space for making and storing the cheeses. Now, fifty years later, José Martín has just moved into a little cottage in the place of the original hut where he spent half of his life. Like the sheepfold which is just behind it, it is in a sheltered position, on a slight slope and protected by rocks. Nearby stand other huts, grouped together to form a settlement, or saroiak, which share small sheds or extensions. They also share sheepfolds of stone or woven hurdles linked by crosspieces; gaztategui, or dairy, where the cheese is made; txerriteguo or pigsty and baratza or kitchen garden, where they grow lettuce, potatoes, leeks, garlic, onions and fresh herbs such as parsley. The hens scratch about peacefully within the settlement. In the egurtoki, or woodstore, the logs wait ready to provide warmth or contribute towards cooking a good stew. Small herds of Pyrenean cattle and horses often live wild around the shepherds’ settlements.
With the arrival of spring the shepherd leaves the valley and the plain and leads his flocks up to the cool, green summer pastures, which are generally common ground and subject to various regulations governing their use and tenure. They may belong to a single village, or several, or a whole valley. The shepherd will stay up there until, once more, the cold snow forces him to take refuge in the land below.
In summertime the life of the shepherds is simple and often lonely. Nowadays most of them are bachelors; in earlier times they used to get married, but now women are not willing to share their lives with a man who they see so rarely. Nonetheless, they reply unanimously that they prefer the life of a shepherd in the mountains. José Martín could never give up the months that he spent in the mountains with his sheep and his dogs. When he got married, he sold his sheep and, for a while, spent his time tending cattle to spend the summers with his wife, but it was not the life for him and gradually he got his flock together again and went back up to his beloved mountains. The love which this man feels for the shepherd’s way of life and the mountains where he grew up is deep and intense. He derives his main satisfaction in life from walking with the dogs. Since he prefers to be alone with his thoughts, he has never owned a radio.
José Martín knows each of his sheep by name and, incredible as it may seem, they recognize him. They are Latxas, with long coats which look as though they have been parted along the sheep’s back and combed, a breed which has evolved here since sheep were first domesticated in Neolithic times. Hardy animals, who prefer cold mountain pastures and sleeping out in the open air in summertime, they can be sold as lambs for meat and their fleece used for carpet making. The ewes give about a litre and a half of milk a day and are usually milked twice daily over 120 days.
Between the months of May and November, José Martín is alone with his sheep, he rises at six or seven o’clock each morning and, after a light breakfast of goat’s milk and a little bread, goes out to milk his flock. Sometimes they have slept in the fold, at other times he has to go and find them and pen them in before milking. The warm milk squirts loudly into the plastic bucket as the shepherd squeezes the ewes’ teats.
As soon as he gets back from milking José Martín sets about making the cheese. The first part of the process is to filter the still tepid milk. If the milk has cooled down too much he warms it gently to about 25°C. In the mountains the shepherds still use natural rennet, which they thin with a little warm water and add to the milk as it is filtered. The mixture is left to stand for three-quarters of an hour and then stirred with the hand or a spoon until the whey begins to separate from the curds. The liquid is drained off little by little and the curds pushed down to the bottom of a plastic bowl. At this point the curds are cut into the number of cheeses which he wishes to make. Each piece is placed in a plastic mould, left for a while and then turned over. Until a few years ago José Martín did everything by hand because he had no cheese press; now he has a small one where the cheese remains for about twelve hours, after which it is passed through a salmuera or brine solution, and then left for another twelve hours. Some shepherds simply cover the surface of the cheese with salt. Once they have been salted the cheeses are placed on some boards of wood where they are left for about two months, before being sold.
During the winter, in the caserío in the lowlands where José Martín lives with his family, they only make cheese once a day. ‘After doing the evening milking we put the milk in the fridge. The following day we add the new milk to that of the previous night and heat it to 30°C’. Nevertheless José Martín says that the cheese made in the mountains is the best because the grazing is superior there, and, as a result, the milk is of a higher quality.
José has never found it hard to stand loneliness, but he could not tolerate being ill-fed. He learnt how to cook when he was doing his military service and always cooks carefully for himself in the mountains. Lunch is invariably a hot-pot known in Basque as Eltzea, a word also used to describe the slow-witted. Sometimes it is made from lentils, at others haricot beans or potatoes, but it always contains whatever green vegetables are available to the shepherd. The cooking pot is made of metal and lined in ceramic, not earthenware, and he puts it on one side of the hearth away from the direct heat so that his lunch cooks slowly while he takes the first rest of the day.
In the winter his wife Carmen does the cooking in the farmhouse. Two of her specialities are Ollo salda, or chicken broth and a walnut dessert, called Intzaursalsa.
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To prepare Ollo Salda you need 1 boiling-fowl, 2 average-sized leeks, 100g (3½ oz) of chick peas, 2 large carrots, a little parsley, cold water and several tablespoons of home-made tomato sauce. Put the boiling-fowl and the other ingredients in a large saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil. As it boils scoop off the scum which forms on the surface and add several ladlefuls of fresh water, continuing this process until the broth is quite clear, and then leave it to simmer until the bird is tender. Remove the fowl from the pan, cut off the breast part and cut into small pieces; add these to the broth. Put the remaining pieces of the fowl, also jointed, into another saucepan, with the leeks and carrots on top, and a little of the tomato sauce which has been made previously. A few mushrooms can be sautéed in olive oil and also added. Serve the consommé as the first course, followed by the chicken pieces. |
José Martín says that in his house, just as in his parents’, there is no doubt that the woman wears the trousers, though he admits that both his mother, who was one of thirteen brothers and sisters, and his wife Carmen, have always recognized that there must be a spirit of equality. He also admits that Carmen is a very good cook and that is one of the reasons he married her. They met at the Fiesta de San Martín at the beginning of November, where traditional jotas were danced to accordion music every morning for several days. They danced in couples, but without touching and unusually, it was the woman who decided if she wished to change partners or not. The man had to go up to her and if she found him more attractive than the man she was dancing with, she would change partner. Apparently, the priest was always criticizing the women and girls, calling them to order when they seemed to be enjoying themselves more than was seemly, but after the dancing was over, everyone would go off to the tavern for a drink and sometimes the girls would go too, so that the men had the opportunity of seeing them home afterwards, which at that time was considered very forward. Soon after, on San Martin’s day itself, José Martín decided that his bachelor days were over.
José Martín looks back to the old days with regret, life is so much easier today. The advent of the car has brought a great change to the life of the transhumant shepherd, making it very much easier to travel up and down the mountains. When he was young, José Martín would go down to the valley once a week to buy meat and fresh vegetables and to fetch water; nowadays his sons take all sorts of provisions up to him by car. Also, now that he has so much more space with the new house, his daughter, María José, and her family spend the weekends in the mountains with him. Yet at the same time he is still thinking about the past with great enjoyment. José Martín remembers the amazing spectacle of flocks of some hundred-thousand sheep in continual movement to and from the mountains and the lowlands. He knows that he will never see it again, he knows, too, that none of his children will become shepherds and that within fifty years his small cottage in the Aralar may become a weekend refuge for the family or worse still, may be a ruin. He also knows that the shepherds’ cheese production will become a romantic idea for the people who knew about the unique taste of mountain culture.