As dawn breaks, Cándida Lasa goes downstairs to prepare breakfast. She makes nettle-tea for Millán, the eldest, white coffee for Pepita and black for José Luis. She and Lucas prefer some nice camomile tea. The men go to feed the livestock in the barn and do the milking, while the women see to the household tasks. The windows are open wide and the bed clothes are all hung out to air; by nightfall everything smells of spring.
A few hours later, the quiet of the house is broken as the brothers gather round the table again for el almuerzo, a light meal between breakfast and the midday meal. ‘You have to feed them up,’ says Cándida; ‘a farmer’s life is very hard.’ Amongst the family she uses Basque language, which on her lips sounds soft and reminiscent of Japanese. Some of the brothers are drinking cider, Millán and the women water; for the first few minutes they eat quietly enjoying the food and the fresh bread but soon they are all talking about the fields and the animals. On other mornings each brother has a plateful of fried eggs with ham which is home-cured when they kill the pig in November.
The farmhouse falls silent once more. From the kitchen window Cándida can see her elder sister, Pepita, who is pulling the weeds which have appeared in the turnip patch after the recent rain. Pepita is a woman of great energy and character; she is small and slim, her dark complexion contrasting with that of the younger sister, who is fair and rosy. The two women have very different outlooks on life. Pepita is a rebel. There were two things which she wanted to be able to do when she was young. The first, to drive a car, she has achieved; the second, to swim, has remained beyond her reach. But she still dreams of diving into the crystalline waters of a river hidden in the mountains or into the Cantabrian sea.
Cándida’s outlook is traditional. She has no desire to leave the farm where she was born and is content within the four walls of her home and the confines of the kitchen garden. The worst years of her life were those spent working in a factory in San Sebastián. In those days, when she was a girl, the farm did not produce enough income to support the whole family and since the province of Guipúzcoa was in the process of industrialization she found work in a factory. Others were not so lucky. Many of the local girls had to take jobs as maids anywhere they could, and the men had to leave the area for other places, even overseas. Cándida would have loved to live in the last century. Her mother only left the farm twice a year, to go to Murgia on San Prudencio’s day and to Alsa on San Miguel’s day. Some years she may have spent a couple of days away visiting her family, but that was all. Then, and for centuries before that, the caserío, or farmhouse, was the entirety of a woman’s life. Even today Cándida goes no further than the village, where she sells milk and bunches of fresh vegetables that she cuts from the kitchen garden to sell to her regular customers. She goes every morning, setting off after the almuerzo. Today the sun is brilliant, its brightness accentuating the colours of the leaves, meadows and flowers. Cándida walks briskly; she is used to the weight of the milkcan and the wicker basket carrying the vegetables. She would not want to make the journey by car, even if she could drive. ‘I wonder why we need all these cars invading the countryside,’ she says, ‘I used to love to see the carts drawn by oxen. I almost wish that there were no tractors, though I can see they have helped the men a lot. But in the olden days we didn’t have them and life went on just the same. When I think that one tractor costs as much as a beautiful yoke of oxen!’ The grey and green hills and mountains spread before her as she walks. If an occasional ray of sunlight escapes from behind the northern clouds, then the beauty of the landscape is beyond words; everything looks fresh and new. One, two, three caseríos, a little church down in the valley. The caseríos are dotted here and there, every few kilometres, like droplets over the hillsides. Some are painted white; the grey stonework of others resists the prevailing harsh climate; the wind, rain and long, hard winters. These farmsteads, isolated, independent economic and social units, remain the heart of rural life, even since industrialization. In Basque symbolism they represent good, protecting all that is inside, whereas outside their walls lie danger and the unknown.
Throughout Euskadi, or the Basque Country, the roof tiles reflect the ownership of the property. Each caserío has a name. Sometimes it is called after the family who live or lived there, while with others the name has no apparent meaning, having developed over the centuries. Candida’s and her brothers’ and sister’s caserío, for example, used to be known as Pagaduzuarza, then as Pagadizu, and eventually, by its present name, Pasus. Apparently the meaning is unknown. Pasus is situated in the mountain just a few kilometres from the village of Villabona in the province of Guipúzcoa. This caserío sits in a gentle hollow where several slopes meet and protect it from the winter winds. Nearby, there are always two or three small stacks of hay drying around poles to feed the animals during the winter. When the light falls, they look like large protective soldiers or characters from Don Quixote. Walnut trees, bearing green fruit in spring, line the road leading to the classical, somewhat austere house built some four hundred years ago; it is probably one of the oldest caseríos in the area. The pitched roof is of irregular hand made tiles and its two sides are slightly different in size. Part of the mortar is missing from the façade of the building and the stone shows through its worn, grey sides. Yet, it is very much a working farmhouse. To the left of the main doorway stands the cowshed. The front façade is unadorned with no painted brown, green, or red shutters, varnished beams or noble escutcheons and shields as reminders of past adventures or seas sailed. Instead there are six plain windows and the front door, shaded in summer by a beautiful mature vine. But the Basque farmhouse is not merely a building, it consists of the people and animals who live there, the fields which belong to it, the kitchen garden which feeds it. Furthermore, it represents a desire to achieve an almost impenetrable and self-sufficient unit.
Strictly speaking, Pasus might be considered an atypical farm. The parents of the Lasa brothers and sisters died many years ago and apart from one who married, the rest live together in the caserío. They are all unmarried and share their lives and inheritance. In this case there was no mayorazgo, the system whereby a chosen son inherits everything in exchange for staying to work the family farm. In no circumstances can it be divided up. There are also a nephew and niece who spend more time in Pasus than in their own houses. At Pasus it is the eldest sister and brother, Pepita and Millán, who make the decisions and Millán, the man who has the final word, except in purely domestic matters. It is the man who deals with the stock and machinery, sowing the crops and cutting the hay, caring for the cows and pigs. They also make the cider. The woman takes care of the kitchen and the house, the kitchen garden and the hens and hundreds of other household tasks.
All the land surrounding the house and much that is out of sight, belongs to Pasus; to the right is a large field planted with mangels and bordered by a row of apple trees. Some are the varieties thought best for cidermaking, others provide cooking apples. Next to the mangels is a field of turnips, with a patch of spare ground lying fallow, and another of potatoes. Opposite the house just beyond the road, is the kitchen garden, the women’s domain. They plant and tend it, then prepare its fresh greens and root vegetables in the kitchen. However the farm’s main income derives from meat and milk, most of which is sold to the dairy in the valley for a low but secure price. In addition, Cándida sells her few litres of milk every morning in the village.
There is a great difference between life in winter and in summer. In summer it is still light until half-past ten at night, whereas in winter they are ready to sit down to dinner at seven o’clock in the evening. ‘We simply work until the light has gone’, explains Millán. The brothers share out all the tasks. The cows are milked twice a day, morning and night. In the morning, after milking, they are driven out to graze. In summer the grass must be mowed nearly every day to provide fodder for the animals during the winter. In spring potatoes, maize and beans are planted, the latter amongst the maize plants so that they can climb up them.
Cándida and Pepita have divided up the traditional tasks of the etxekoandre or lady of the house, and organize their lives efficiently. Both sisters share the work in the vegetable and flower garden, Pepita organizes the house and Cándida, the younger, is official cook to the household and sees to everything that takes place in the kitchen, the most important part of the house, a simple and informal meeting place. A few years ago the brothers modernized it completely, putting in functional grey formica units and covering the walls with white tiles so that they are easy to keep clean without needing to be painted all the time. The canopy over the great fireplace has also been modernized, although today the fire is not lit and two reddish-coloured clay pots used for cooking chestnuts are the sole reminders of its warmth on winter evenings. However, all that is traditional has not yet disappeared. The floor is made of well polished terracotta tiles. The modern stove, with bottled gas, which was bought when the inside of the house was refurbished, is used for small speedy jobs, like cooking breakfast and the afternoon snack, but it does not yet compete with the cast-iron range. It is ancient in appearance, but was only acquired recently. The best part of the Pasus kitchen is the pantry. Almost as large as the kitchen itself, it is an orderly store-room. There are baskets of maize, sacks of reddish-black dried beans weighing more than twenty kilos, some small ones with lentils and chickpeas and another big one full of potatoes. Beneath the glass of the cheese dish, sit two fine sheep’s milk cheeses. They used to make their own cheeses on the farm, but now they buy it from the shepherds who have huts nearby. Hanging from the ceiling are two hams and strings of a dozen cooking chorizo sausages and txistorras, traditionally made with pork, fat, garlic and salt, all marinated with paprika. Nearby are strings of garlic and dried choricero peppers, of two different sizes; choricero peppers are sweet. In a cupboard are a multitude of glass jars of different shapes and sizes, containing the preserves which are made every year at the farmhouse, some fruit and some vegetable, and a similar mixture of bags of flour and sugar and pots of spices and dried herbs such as oregano and bay leaf. High up on a shelf is a collection of locally made cider vinegar and wine vinegar which she uses for preserving and to make the salad dressing. There are also half a dozen bottles of cider, red wine and white txakolí, the dry and slightly pétillant wine of the Basque Country, just enough for the week. The rest is stored in Millán’s cellar, where it keeps better. The only new addition to the kitchen is a large fridge-freezer that they bought a couple of years ago which has turned out to be one of their most useful new possessions. Inside are several chickens, a couple of ducks, a bit of bacon and some fish. Since there is a splendid fishmongers at Villabona Cándida has been able to get all kinds of fish instead of the bacalao, dried salt-cod, of the old days, although she still uses this every day. The freezer really comes into its own in winter, when the farm provides less variety, and shopping in the village means a cold, wet walk for Cándida.
By midday Cándida is in front of the range; this time cooking lunch, the main meal of the day. If it was up to her they would eat fish and vegetables day in day out; she is practically vegetarian and prefers simple dishes. ‘How can anyone improve on some good fish cooked in a few drops of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice, or a salad of tomatoes and onions picked minutes before from the garden?’ Pepita plants the tomatoes every April, under Cándida’s kitchen window, a sheltered spot which gets plenty of sun. She plants two varieties, one early and one late, which keep the kitchen supplied well into the autumn. ‘One year we still had tomatoes at Christmas’, commented Pepita. She used to sow the seeds herself, but that is no longer necessary; nowadays she can buy the young plants at one of the local markets.
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One of Cándida’s recipes which makes good use of Pepita’s tomatoes are huevos al plato, ham, tomato sauce, peas, chorizo and eggs cooked in a small cazuela, or earthenware dish. To prepare the eggs grease the dish with a little olive oil, add 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce and break open the eggs on top. Arrange in colour-order the rest of the ingredients and cook on top of the stove at a moderate temperature; this will allow the egg yolks to retain moisture while the whites are cooked. |
The rest of the family do not agree with Cándida; their favourite dishes are different specialities of hers belonging to the Basque peasant-cooking of the interior, traditionally based on dishes made from meat and poultry, dry salt-cod and, sometimes, freshwater fish, and vegetables from the farm like leeks or cabbage. With these, she makes pasta, garlic or vegetable soups, cooks chicken and meat casseroles and excellent fish stews. Their taste is very traditional and new trends in cooking are of no interest to the family.
Lucas, one of the brothers, told me that their worst meals at home are on Sundays because his sister Cándida insists on making dishes which are foreign to the usual repertoire, such as a cold salad of potatoes, tinned tuna and peas in mayonnaise or rice cooked in a paella pan. ‘Rice is for the Valencians and the Chinese’, he says. For Cándida, their conservatism is a problem. ‘My brothers always demand beans as their first course and that gets tiresome’, explains Cándida. ‘We eat beans every blessed day of the year.’ The beans are traditionally planted amongst the maize so that it provides a support for the climbing plants. In this way, the brothers kill two birds with one stone and do not need to erect bean poles for them. Every day, Cándida cooks the beans with a little carrot and onion. The dish of chillies is empty and so Cándida tips in a few more from a jar. The family could not imagine eating red beans without some chillies to go with them. To prepare these she buys several kilos of the very small variety, then washes them and puts them in large glass jars with a chickpea and a clove of garlic. She fills each jar with half water and half wine vinegar; after a year in the larder, they will be delicious. The chillies at Pasus are yellow and very hot.
Pepita is laying clean plates and Cándida has put an enormous earthenware pot on the table. Today she has cooked Lengua a la tolosana, tongue in the style of Tolosa, a recipe highly thought of in the area around Pasus. Its only disadvantage is that the initial preparation is rather tedious; this involves cooking the calf’s tongue in plenty of salted boiling water for about fifteen minutes, after which it is drained and skinned.
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To prepare Lengua a la tolosana for six people you need 1 good-sized calf’s tongue, 1 glass of white wine, 1 glass of stock, 1 leek, 1 carrot, 1 large onion, 2 tomatoes, olive oil and salt. Put a little oil in a baking dish then add the tongue and the carrot, onion and leek all peeled and finely chopped, on top. Cook for about forty minutes at 200°C (400°F, Gas mark 6). Take it out of the oven and transfer to a deep earthenware dish, add the tomatoes, peeled and chopped, the wine and the tongue and pour over the stock and add a little water to cover. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer gently until tender for about one and a half hours. Remove from the dish, slice and serve with the strained sauce poured over it. |
Lucas likes all the food roasted and José Luis prefers all his in a sauce. ‘How can I go along with that?’ asks Cándida. But she does make an excellent callos, a tripe dish which will convert even the most sceptical.
But the family’s traditionalism does not reflect a lack of interest in cooking; they truly enjoy the majority of the dishes and in particular Cándida’s lunchtime puddings. The brothers are particularly fond of fruit compotes, whether summer or winter ones. The Pasus apples, particularly the Reineta variety, give them a very special flavour, slightly acidic but full of fruit. The secret of these compotes which consist of fruit stewed in a sugar syrup, with wine, and some sort of spice, lies in adding the fruit in the right order according to its cooking time.
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For a Compota de invierno you need Reineta or cooking apples, pears, dried peaches or apricots, prunes, raisins, red wine and cinnamon. Put 1 litre (1¾ pints) of red wine in a stainless steel saucepan with 3 heaped tablespoons of sugar and the cinnamon. Begin by cooking the dried peaches and prunes, all of which have been soaked beforehand. These take longer to cook. Add the raisins next. When the dried fruit is almost tender add the pears and after five minutes the apples, all peeled, cored and sliced, and cook together for another ten minutes. It is important to keep the pan covered during cooking to avoid evaporation of the liquid. |
All the brothers except Millán have a drink, sometimes cider, sometimes wine, with their meals. Millán gave up drinking six years ago after a strange illness which forced him to go to Pamplona to consult a medicine man. In the Basque Country tradition dies hard; the figure and the word of the medicine man still carry weight among a peasant community which may well attend the local doctor’s surgery, but who, if the latter does not do what they want, or prescribe what they think suitable, opt for another solution. The medicine man in Pamplona gave him some herbs and apparently these, taken with two or three glasses of wine, made him lose his reason and health. Now, the only time he drinks is when he tastes the cider as it ferments, week by week, in the cellar during the winter months. In April, when it is almost ready, he allows his family and friends from roundabout to go down to the cellar under the house and taste the newly born cider straight from the vat. The following month he bottles it, using a small hand-operated machine to insert the corks under pressure. For the last year or so he has used plastic corks because the real ones have escalated in price. The whole production of some six hundred litres a year is drunk at Pasus, though some bottles are given away to friends and relatives.
In the olden days his grandfather and father made cider; now the apples are taken to the nearby cider-mill or sidrería for crushing and only the fermentation takes place in the caserío’s cellar. ‘My grandfather used to say that Pasus cider was much better than the stuff they made at the sidrería and I think that he was right’, comments Millán. Pasus cider is very good: dry, transparent and of great character and body. It is made with the apples that one can see from Cándida’s kitchen window. It is impossible to say when the varieties found today were first grown in the Basque Country, but we do know that the trees have been a common sight in the landscape since time immemorial. Indeed Herman La Chapelle, the French historian, believed that it was Basque sailors and fishermen who introduced the apple tree to Normandy, where it was unknown before the fourteenth century. We also know that the Romans wrote contemptuously about the savage people of the mountains, who had only apple juice to drink, and that by the eleventh century cider had become common currency for payment of farm rents and church tithes. Two types of sagardoa, naturally fermented farmhouse cider, were made at that time. One called pitarra was watery, made by simply crushing and macerating the apples and then adding water. The second type, true cider, was made by pressing the apple pulp, then breaking that up with a wooden mallet before pressing it again to give a cheese of dry pulp; the liquid was then poured into huge oak vats, of some five thousand litres, called kupelas or kupelak, and the must left uncovered for fifteen to twenty days for the initial tumultuous fermentation, which purified the juice. Finally, the vats were sealed for the second, gentler fermentation. This cider-making process was considered mysterious, even magical, and the moon was said to play a large part in the success or failure of the finished clear, bubbling drink. Only the second type, the true cider now called sagardoa, is made today. Connoisseurs say that the best is made in the lower regions of Guipúzcoa; the ciders there are pale in colour, dry and, according to them, do not lie heavily on the stomach. They should be dry, with a little acidity, though not too much, and soft on the palate. In the glass they should be almost transparent with pétillance or sparkle, a smell of apples, plenty of body and greenish-straw colour. The sweeter ciders made in higher regions are less sought after.
It is five o’clock, time for the afternoon snack; this time the omelettes which contain onion and parsley as well as cod, wait on the table with a generous dish of freshly sliced cold meats. To make the omelettes Cándida puts the broken-up dried cod to soak for a few hours. She uses a heavy iron frying-pan and adds a few drops of olive oil. In a bowl she breaks the eggs, two per brother, and flakes in the fish and the onion and finely chopped parsley. When the oil is hot she pours in the egg mixture which quickly sets. Cándida has the knack of making them slightly moist. Her nephew, who likes to go to the farm for the merienda, or teatime, always jokes that the cod must be of fresh waters because it lacks salt. Millán is cutting slices off a round one kilo loaf. On the plate there is cured ham and a rather spicy chorizo sausage; someone’s hand must have slipped when adding the paprika powder, or pimentón, the day they killed the pig!
The annual matanza, or killing of the pig, on a Basque caserío takes place in November. A few days before the word goes out to the neighbours to come and help. The women arrive first thing in the morning and immediately set about chopping kilo upon kilo of onions which will be used to make the first black puddings. The house pig, unlike those which are raised to be sold, is fed on fresh vegetables and maize. ‘It is most important that the animals we are going to live off should be well fed’, explains Cándida.
For anyone witnessing pig-killing for the first time the event is undeniably horrific. Two men seize the animal by the legs and cut its throat. As the blood pours out one of the local women shakes it in a bucket kept for this purpose, to prevent it from coagulating. Next the animal is put to hang for several hours. At this stage the woman of the house fries the liver, which traditionally only men eat. Then the women get to work. First they make the black puddings, which in this area of Villabona also contain oregano. The onion which was finely chopped and boiled until tender first thing in the morning is now mixed together with small pieces of fat, pounded garlic, sweet and hot pimentón, oregano and the blood of the pig. All the women are sitting next to each other making the morcillas, or black puddings, pressing the mixture into the fine tripes; after this they will be boiled and hung from the ceiling. Next they prepare the chorizo mixture of meat, fat, pimentón, garlic and salt which has to macerate for twenty-four to forty-eight hours before it is ready to go into the tripes. The men are in charge of the butchering of the animal which is conducted following the rituals established since time immemorial; the hams are taken away for curing, some parts of the fats for salting and the meat which is going to be eaten fresh is cut into pieces, while the rest will go directly into the freezer. At the end of the day, presents, known as txerrimonis, are given to the neighbours who helped with the pig killing. They would usually consist of some black pudding, a lump of bacon and some spare ribs, all wrapped in a cabbage-leaf.
In Cándida’s mother’s day, once the pig had been butchered large joints of meat were stored in salt in kutxas, beautiful wooden chests, which nowadays fetch high prices in antique shops. Stones were placed on the top of the meat to press it as it cured. Now the days of salting pork belong to a remote past and the meat is simply frozen. Similarly, the chorizo sausages were stored in lard, in large earthenware jars. ‘The two preserved hams last us a whole year in spite of the fact that my brothers love it and are always cutting themselves generous slices’, comments Pepita.
If she is running late, sometimes Cándida prepares a recipe which was one of her mother’s specialities, originally from Navarre, but now cooked all over Euskadi, particularly in the caseríos where food is served. All you need is a few slices of cured ham, which tends to be less salted than the Andalucian versions, and a thick tomato sauce. Cándida fries the ham slightly first and then adds the tomato sauce to the frying-pan, but in Navarre the ham is added to the tomato sauce uncooked.
In spare moments Cándida also does all sorts of bottling and preserving, particularly of tomatoes and red peppers. In winter she will use the tomatoes to prepare the sauces she uses in many of her dishes.
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To make Salsa de tomate, tomato sauce, she adds ½ chopped onion, ½ a clove of garlic and ½ kg (1 lb) of tinned tomatoes to cold olive oil in a frying-pan and cooks for about thirty minutes or until the olive oil appears on the surface of the sauce. |
Another speciality is fruit preserves, particularly those made from Reineta apples. She just peels, cores and chops the fruit and simmers it with a little water and its own weight in sugar. Once soft, she sieves the mixture and puts it into the same jars which her mother used to use. Fig preserve is also popular with her brothers.
At the end of the day, when night has fallen, the family comes back indoors once more for their few hours of relaxation. Invariably they are tired, but nonetheless it is the best part of the day. Supper is both simpler and lighter than lunch. In winter Cándida usually makes a warming soup like porrusalda, a truly popular Basque Country dish. It is basically a leek and potato soup to which dried salt-cod is often added, although following her traditional approach, Cándida prefers it without the fish.
Their relaxation after supper is simple: good conversation around the kitchen table, perhaps some television. Lucas and José Luis often go to bed early, but Pepita and Millán always have something to consult each other about while Cándida finishes clearing away the meal. They are not in the habit of going out drinking, except for Santiago, Saint James’ day, when they go down to the village in the evening. In the past, they used to go to the cinema in Villa-bona every Thursday, but there is no longer one there and they do not like the films that they show in Tolosa, so it is not worth the journey. In any case, they feel so much more at ease at home. One thing the brothers do miss, however, are the old stone hauling contests in which oxen pulling great stones race each other over short distances. Over the years their draft oxen won a clutch of silver cups which are now lined up in the glass case in the hall. ‘We had a pair of champions who took first prize every year in the provincial stone hauling championship,’ explains Millán proudly, ‘but we had to sell them a few years ago, since then we have missed out on one of the high pleasures of life. Times change.’ The only thing that they do occasionally, on a Sunday, is to go to the local frontón to see the pelotaris. Pelota is a great game and one of the national past times of the Basques. There are different types, but the Cesta punta, played with an elongated basket which is tied to the player’s hand, is an exciting and fast game in which gambling adds to the interest. In every Basque village the frontón and the church go hand in hand. When the game is over, they collect the women and go out to lunch at a caserío that serves meals, as they do if there is something to celebrate, such as a first communion, or the annual reunion with the rest of the family. The last time they did this they had a dish of French origin, a leg of lamb with white beans, which was so delicious, that Cándida took the trouble to ask for the recipe. This dish can be made with dried or fresh beans, but if you use the latter, double the quantity.
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To prepare Leg of lamb with white beans for four people you need a leg of lamb weighing about 1 kg (2 lbs), boned and tied up, 250g (9 oz) of white beans, 1 green pepper, ¾ of a medium-sized onion, chopped, 2 large carrots, olive oil, garlic and salt. Put the dried beans to soak the night before, when you want to cook them put them in a saucepan with fresh water, ½ the onion, the carrots, the pepper, a good few drops of virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt. The water should cover the ingredients completely. Simmer for about two hours, adding a little cold water from time to time. Then sauté the rest of the onion until golden brown and add to the beans, which by now are without liquid. Next, put the lamb to roast in a moderate oven, 200°C (400°F, Gas mark 6), first having made some incisions in the skin and inserted the garlic cloves, peeled and cut into two. When the meat is done – do not allow it to dry out – remove from the oven, carve and place on a serving dish, pouring some of the juices from the roasting pan over it. Arrange the beans around it and serve immediately. |
In the past celebrations were more animated. Pepita remembers how, in her mother’s day, a birth was an occasion for real celebration, a fiesta known as the Atzolorras. Once the first three or four weeks had passed and the mother recovered her strength, she would invite her female neighbours to celebrate the new arrival. They, in their turn, would each bring a fowl as a present. There was no place here for men, except for the sole accordionist who was also the driver of the ox-cart which called to collect them, one by one, to take them to the party. They would dance and drink plenty of cider and sweet wine made from Muscatel grapes and quinine, known as Quina San Clemente, until they were more than merry. The celebration meal, too, was a grand affair; there were all sorts of salads, roast chicken with potatoes, and milk and apple puddings. The evening would fly with more dancing and laughter until the time came for them to return home. The accordionist drove them back in his cart on what was rather a noisy journey.
If the mother fell ill, then the milk-drawer would be called. He was a remarkable character who made a profession of attending mothers whose breasts were infected, but who needed to be able to feed their little ones, by sucking all the infection from the unfortunate woman’s breast. I wonder how many candidates there must have been for the task in the locality.
Today, many of the celebrations have died out, but a pastel vasco or gâteau basque remains an essential part of any celebration. This is another recipe which is made on both sides of the Pyrenees. Wonderful large size examples are often for sale in the local markets and they are always available in the excellent cake shops, pastelerias, of the country.
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For a Pastel vasco cake you need 300 g (11 oz) of flour, 200 g (7 oz) of sugar, 2 egg yolks and 1 egg white, 200 g (7 oz) of butter, grated lemon rind, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of yeast. For the confectioner’s custard you need 250 ml (9 fl oz) of milk, 2 egg yolks, 250 g (9 oz) of flour, 50 g (2 oz) of sugar, a drop of rum and a few raisins or sultanas. First melt the butter in a pan. Put in a bowl the flour, sugar and when the sugar has dissolved remove from the heat. Beat the egg yolks with the flour and gradually add the milk, which by now should be just tepid. Return the mixture to the heat and cook carefully until it no longer tastes of flour. Allow to cool and then add the rum and raisins. Divide the dough into two and roll out each piece until it is 4mm thick. Prepare a loose-bottomed tin by brushing with a little butter to prevent sticking. Line it with the dough and fill with the custard. Cover with the other piece of pastry and brush with beaten egg. Traditionally lines are drawn across the top with a knife. Cook at 160°C (300°F, Gas mark 2), for about forty-five minutes. |
The caserío life described in this chapter continues, though families who want to live their lives as they have until now are becoming fewer and fewer (apart from anything else women refuse to marry men destined to survive the life of a farmer). Nowadays, for a farm to be financially viable it needs to lease more land and invest in new machinery. Many of the isolated and deserted caseríos are now taking on a new lease of life in the hands of young families tired with city life and who seek a weekend refuge. The men will usually cultivate a small kitchen garden so that they can take fresh vegetables back to the city, while their wives grow flowers or feed the free-range chickens.