The life of Carmen Belandia, mother and housewife, seems to have little in common with those of her mother and grandmother. While their lives revolved around their families and homes, Carmen’s is that of a modern, city woman; while they knew their place and rarely had a chance to express their views, she well knows her role in life and is determined to be heard and make a contribution to her country and its people. She has the strength and energy of Basque women in general. Sometimes rather brusque, at other times she is very tender. Above all, she is koskera. This is the name given to those born in the calle 31 de Agosto, the oldest street in San Sebastián, which runs between the churches of Santa María and San Vicente, la parte vieja, the old quarter. Carmen’s family have lived in this street for more than a hundred years, and she, as well as most of her brothers and sisters, were born there. It was the only street which survived the great fire which broke out in 1813, when the French and English troops were fighting each other over the territory, and is too narrow to be used by cars or even bicycles. Houses and blocks of flats three or four stories high with balconies and shutters and steep staircases fashioned from well-polished wood, line both sides. Many date from the nineteenth century, with peeling ochre paint and stone facades. Practically all of them are occupied at ground level by bars, restaurants and gastronomic societies which keep it lively and noisy, especially at weekends, for twenty-four hours of the day.
But to be koskera, means much more than simply having been born in this street. It is a way of life, even a philosophy, shared not only by those who live there, but also by all who inhabit the tightly packed rectangle of streets looking on to the castle, the quay, and beyond it, the promenade with its bandstand made of wrought iron and multicoloured glass, where the town band plays on Saturdays. To be koskera means also to have grown up with the street’s endless childrens’ games – hopping, cops and robbers, and dreading the terrible moment when your mother shouted from the balcony for you to come up for supper. It also means loving the port, which in the olden days was a funfair of lovable characters, shopping in the La Brecha market, and knowing all the shopkeepers and regulars in the local cake shop and bar.
Carmen, known to her friends as Kika, her husband, José Ramon and their three sons, live on the sixth floor of an elegant block of flats dating from the thirties with impressive views of the sea and the city, which lies beyond the bridges separating the old town from the later suburbs. José Ramon who was born a doctor’s son in the inland village of Legázpia, is a chemist who works in a paper factory on the outskirts of Pamplona. He is a calm, good natured man who loves music and the silence of the countryside. He is away during the week, leaving Kika with the children. Ivan the eldest, is studying chemistry at the Basque University, Igor is doing a technical engineering course at the College of Tolosa and little Aritz, who is seven, attends the local Ikastola, or Basque school.
Saturdays and Sundays are the only days when the family is complete and can meet around the kitchen table. Until six or seven years ago they had their meals in a little sitting-room which they had made in what was really the third bedroom, but the boys watched television all the time and things got out of hand so now they always eat in the kitchen, which is more homely and means less work for Kika. Breakfast is a leisurely affair, with large cups of milky hot chocolate, toast with butter and homemade jam from Kika’s mother. Igor and Ivan often appear late in their pyjamas, sleepy-eyed after being out into the early hours with their friends. Afterwards, providing the weather is not too bad, José Ramon goes out for a long walk round the outskirts of San Sebastián. For him life would be unbearable without a few hours a week in contact with nature. It is the only way for him to relax after many long hard days, which, moreover, he spends away from his family. Often he takes Aritz with him and they catch up on the week that has gone by.
Kika goes out too, sometimes for a walk with friends, or perhaps to the opening of a new exhibition or a political demonstration. Usually she has lunch, the main meal of the day, well in hand before leaving, so that she will not have to worry about the time. Still wearing her dressing-gown, she quickly makes her preparations while breakfast is being cleared away. Although she prefers traditional Basque cooking, many of her dishes are influenced by her mother, a native of Castile, so she has always included in her menus some hybrid recipes which really cannot be considered typical of the region, but which she has modified in some way in order to find what pleases the rest of her family most and what also has a Cantabrian flavour. ‘For example,’ she explains, ‘my rice dishes unlike those from other parts of the Peninsula, don’t contain any sort of spices, not even saffron, which is becoming fashionable once again, and I wouldn’t dream of using paprika or pimentón.’
By half-past two they are all gathered around the table. The rice is cooked perfectly and Kika has put the cazuela in the middle of the table on a circular wooden mat, which protects the cloth. As always there is a bottle of wine, a jug of water and a basket of bread, which José Ramon has brought back from his walk, as well as several plates for them to put the shells on. Everyone is hungry and although they are talking as well, it is only a matter of minutes before they are ready for the next course. Kika loads the plates into the dish-washer at the same time as she brings steak and roasted peppers.
For Kika these family moments are all too short, the very essence of life. ‘One of the most enjoyable things in my life were the family get-togethers at my mother’s house after lunch and supper, when we would discuss our problems, share them, and try to solve them, or just talk about the day’s happenings, or the lady who lived on the floor below. Unfortunately, this custom has now been lost in her house in Aldamar. Here I have tried putting course after course on the table to see if I could hold on to the boys longer to get into the habit of these conversations, but it never works. There are always other things – a football match, a friend to see, a meeting – pulling everyone off in other directions’.
All too soon, the weekend is over, having spent Sunday in the same relaxed and familiar mood as Saturday. During the weekend, if she has a little free time, Kika cooks a selection of small cakes from a recipe given to her by her friend Milagros from Tolosa, which is very popular with the boys. The cakes can be made with either flaky pastry, or else pâte sucrée, which, if this is possible, makes them even more delicious. Kika makes a sweet, enriched pastry which does not require the use of a rolling pin, though it must be rested in the refrigerator for twenty-four hours before use.
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To make Pastelitos de fruta you need for six to eight people 400 g (14 oz) of pastry, 1 kiwi fruit, 16 strawberries (small and whole if possible), 100 g (3½ oz) of raspberries, 1 banana, 3 apricots, a little fruit jam for the glaze and confectioner’s custard. Make the pastry cases and cook them for about ten minutes in a relatively hot oven. Once they are cooked, fill them with a little confectioner’s custard which has been flavoured with lemon and orange zest and a cinnamon stick. Peel the chosen fruit, cut it into small slices and brush them with a little jam which has been slightly heated. |
On Monday, life returns to normal. José Ramon leaves home just before seven and, one by one, the boys set off to their schools. Until a few months ago Kika would take Aritz to catch the school bus.
It is nine o’clock and Kika has begun to clear the breakfast table. Half an hour later Mari, the daily help who comes every weekday, arrives and the work really begins. The two women take up carpets, make beds, air the rooms and change the bath-towels. For Kika, as for most Spanish women, the cleanliness of her home is very important, in spite of all the other important things in Kika’s life which make it different from her mother’s, loving and caring for her family is top of her list of priorities as a woman and mother.
Soon it is time to go to the market, La Brecha, only two streets away from the door. Without this daily visit to the market Kika could not conceive of cooking. No frozen food enters her house and it almost goes without saying that she has neither a freezer nor a microwave. She buys meat, chicken and fruit every two or three days, and gets anything else on a daily basis as she needs it from La Brecha. She has been shopping here since she was a child, as did her mother before her. Her father’s mother, a sturdy woman with a large bun, used to have a fish stall here. She would leave home every day with two aprons and two sets of white cuffs so that she could change before returning home with an enormous basket, in which she would take back fish for the family. Every day, except Sunday, she would rise at five in the morning to go to the port of Pasajes, where the daily fish auction was held; and then be back in the city by seven o’clock to get her stall ready.
Two of Kika’s sisters are still stallholders. They sell fresh and dried flowers from two adjacent stalls in the main market-hall. Flowers also constitute an important part of the day’s shopping and not only are the stalls always decorated with them, but most women buy a small bunch or two, a couple of times a week. Kika always buys from the same stalls. She never asks the price since she is more concerned about the quality, and the person serving her knows this. All the customers and stallholders are on christian-name terms. She stops first at the stalls of the country people who have come down from the mountains or made their way in from the valley, with their great baskets of vegetables, fresh greens, flowers, cheeses, honey and beans. They occupy a special area built for them many years ago next to the market-hall proper. A pitched roof protects them from the rain, but not from the cold or the wind. From some counters, adorned with large checked cloths, home made produce are sold – rings of white bread, large chocolate or jam-filled buns, honey and cheese. Others simply sell greens and root vegetables. Some farmers’ wives arrange their wares on a kind of long bench where, at the appropriate time, they can also sit down. Kika always buys from Ursula, whose chicory, silver beet, borage, artichokes and spinach – all grown in her own kitchen-garden – are the best to be found in the market. Each of them was still rooted in the ground only a few hours ago.
Then Kika makes her way towards one of the numbered stalls in the main building which specializes in golden maize-fed chickens but which also sells ham, smoked salmon fillets, quail’s eggs and even daisies. Next, she stops at Carlo’s butcher stall, which specializes in beef and veal and sells excellent calf’s liver, the only kind that Ivan will eat. Here too, there are flowers, this time they are red roses but just for decoration. The cleanliness of the stalls throughout the market is impeccable.
Other stalls are relatively recent. There have always been herbalists, but wholefood stalls as we know them are still finding their feet. There has been one here for barely two months selling soya beans and wholemeal biscuits, but still relying on the old-fashioned goods, like manzanilla, camomile, mint tea, lime, flowers, oregano and thyme in glass jars, breads sold from round hemp baskets and molasses yeast for the bulk of its trade. Above, where the number of the stall is written, there is a large hand-written notice, ‘Butter from El Roncal in Stock’.
In recent years the market, like many in Spain, has begun to feel the effects of the change of attitude and life-style of women. Kika says that only a few years ago she would never have believed that such problems could affect the markets of Euskadi. But increasingly as women go out to work it is becoming impossible for them to go to the market each day. Moreover, the prices in the supermarkets where they go once or twice a week for convenience, are competitive and even here, where people often ask for a certain quantity without having worked the price out in advance, this is beginning to be important. At the same time the council has raised the rents of the market stalls several times, leaving the stallholders with ever narrowing profits.
Once Kika has finished her shopping, she goes to have coffee with her sisters at a little café opposite the market. They catch up on the news, talk about the children, and the aitas, parents. The five Belandia siblings, four sisters and one brother Patxi, are very close. All the sisters, except for one who married and now lives in Scandinavia, live in and around the old quarter and hardly a week goes by without them going out together, sometimes two of them, sometimes three. Although each has a life of her own they still need each other, just as years ago when they shared their lives and their room. All are active members of the same nationalist party and all are good cooks who think it essential to feed their families well. They claim though, that none of them has inherited the magic touch of their amachu, mother, who taught them to cook.
The highlights of Kika’s culinary repertoire are dishes which belong to traditional cookery. These are the ones which José Ramon likes best. One is a cocido, a ubiquitous dish in which meat, sausages, vegetables and chickpeas simmer together to make a soup for a first course, followed by the chickpeas which are usually served with the other vegetables, and then meat and sausages, usually accompanied by a tomato, or tomato and pimiento sauce. In Kika’s family they always called it the miracle of the loaves and fishes because, although there were so many of them, there was always enough and some left over. There was never much meat though, since times were hard.
In Kika’s recipe, unlike those of many villages in Castile or Andalucía, the chickpeas do not play the main part. She only includes them because it is the done thing. Nor does she add fatty ingredients such as bacon, or even black pudding, or spicy chorizo sausage. The cocido can be made in a pressure-cooker to save time, but Kika does not like doing this since the flavour is not the same.
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To make the Tomato sauce she puts into a frying-pan 2 tablespoons of olive oil and with the oil still cold, she adds ½ a chopped onion and 2 chopped cloves of garlic and when they begin to brown she adds 3 large peeled and chopped tomatoes; if she has no fresh tomatoes she uses a ½ kg (1 lb) tin. She leaves the sauce to cook slowly until the oil separates from the tomato and settles on the surface which normally takes about half an hour. At this point she transfers it to an earthenware dish with the meat, from which she has already removed any small pieces of fat and which she has cut up using an electric carving knife, to prevent it from breaking up. Sometimes, if she has had time to roast them, she adds some red peppers. She peels them and cuts them into strips. She sets aside the chickpeas, having dressed them with garlic and the oil in which it was fried. |
Kika’s favourite chickpea recipe is a rice one. I should point out that this is not really a typically Basque dish, but her father used to make it very well and she has inherited the recipe from him. She puts the chickpeas in quite a large cooking pot of boiling, salted water and adds a little garlic, leek and carrot. When the chickpeas are tender she adds the rice. Separately in a frying-pan, she makes a fried mixture of onion, tomato and garlic, which she then adds to the chickpeas and rice, which by then have absorbed any remaining water. Traditionally this should be eaten with a spoon in one’s right hand and a piece of raw onion in the other.
‘My mother cooks meat dishes perfectly,’ claims Kika, ‘but when it comes to fish it is el aita, our father, who wins the prize. He inherited from his mother her love of sea food and when we were children he used to make us marvellous dishes, particularly from fish such as John Dory and monkfish, which in those days were looked down upon.’
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For Sopa de pescado you need 1 French stick loaf, 1 monkfish weighing ½ kg (1 lb), 200g (7 oz) of prawns, 200g (7 oz) of clams, 3 medium-sized onions, 2 cloves of garlic, ½ kg (1 lb) of tomatoes, 2 leeks, 1 glass of brandy and 2 litres (3½ pints) of water. In a stew-pot make a stock by simmering a leek and an onion, peeled and cut into chunks, with the well-cleaned fish. Strain the fish and vegetables and reserve the stock. Put a little olive oil in a casserole with a peeled and finely chopped onion, which should be fried until well browned, then add the glass of brandy. Next cut the bread into pieces and sauté this using a wooden spoon to turn it in the oil. Pour in the fish stock, making sure that the bread is covered, reduce to a low heat and leave to cook for an hour, adding more stock if the bread mixture looks too thick. Meanwhile, boil and peal the prawns and soak the clams in salted water to purge impurities. Put a little oil in a frying-pan with 2 cloves of garlic, 1 chopped leek and the vegetables from the stock. Sauté until lightly browned and then add the tomato, peeled and chopped, and cook until soft. Then purée and add gradually to the bread mixture, mixing well and simmering for five minutes. At this stage add the fish which has been cut into pieces and the bones and skin removed, the clams, already purged and the prawns. Leave it all to cook until the clams open, then remove from the heat. The dish is much better when made the day before it is needed. |
While the men in Kika’s family have always loved cooking and talking about food, it only has a relative importance for José Ramon, her husband, who is not in the habit of cooking. This is something rather unusual in the Basque Country and Kika often complains that while his parents took great care bringing up their children, they dedicated little time to eating well and to conversation around the table. The only thing that he excels in are the river crayfish that he often buys on a Friday in a little market on the outskirts of Pamplona. The whole family love this dish and, since there never seems to be enough for everybody, they all dip into the pot, trying to peel the crayfish as quickly as possible so that they will be in time for another one. ‘Whenever José Ramon cooks this dish I have to change the tablecloth twice’, remarks Kika.
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To prepare Cangrejos en salsa you need for four people 1 kg (2 lbs) of crayfish, 1 large onion, about 6 ml (1 pint) of tomato sauce, a bay leaf, 1 glass of white wine, 1 glass of brandy, a little tabasco sauce, olive oil and salt. José Ramon prepares the crayfish in a large casserole, where he sautés the chopped onion until golden brown and then adds the crayfish; these are still alive and he washes them before adding to the dish. He sautés them with the onion and then adds the rest of the ingredients. He simply leaves the dish to cook for about fifteen minutes and then serves it accompanied by a hearty red Rioja wine. |
In the fifties Kika caught tuberculosis and had to spend four months in bed and almost a year confined to the house. If there is anything that sticks in her mind about that year, it was that she really learned to like green vegetables, which were then practically never eaten in the Basque Country. In those days, the only vegetables people would eat were stewed butter beans, chickpeas and lentils. When the doctor prescribed greens for health reasons, patients would protest vociferously, saying that such things were only suited to animals. The pattern changed only fifteen years ago and Kika protests that today Basques still do not cook vegetables properly, boiling them far too long. She usually serves them al dente with one or two potatoes.
Kika is also very concerned to hand down to her children her family’s love of good food and cooking. Some nights, when she goes out, or if she is busy, the two eldest brothers take charge of getting the supper, which is usually something easy to prepare such as a soup to be warmed through, steak with fried potatoes and a little onion and tomato salad. Igor is not really interested in cooking, although he likes quantities of food, especially chips–but Ivor already knows how to make several good meals and often observes attentively while his amachu uses this or that ingredient to improve the flavour. He is fairly choosy about what he likes to eat and comes home for lunch because he claims that the meals at the university are a disaster. On the other hand he has no intention of becoming a member of a gastronomic society as his grandfather and uncle Patxi would wish. He likes to make dishes which are quick and require no fuss. One of his favourites is calf’s liver with onion, a recipe that he learnt from Kika.
Kika is also a member of one of the committees which deal with much of the day-to-day running of Aritz’s school. Meals occupy an important place amongst the committee’s concerns as it controls the contract for school lunches, which are made by an outside catering company and brought ready to serve in little trays. The menus offer a wide variety of recipes and ingredients in the traditional style, and at the same time are balanced from the nutritional point of view. One day they may have macaroni with meat sauce and chicken breast, followed by fruit; while on another it could be steak with chips and a chocolate dessert. Nonetheless, Kika and the other parents worry about the level of additives in readymade products and would like to see more old-fashioned first courses of pulses, pasta and fresh vegetables, as well as more fruit to replace the packaged desserts.
Nevertheless, for all her emphasis on the importance of tradition, Kika is only too aware that her children are growing up in a very different world to that of their parents and must be left to find their own path. Likewise, the parallels between her life and that of the women of earlier generations are few and far between. Perhaps in some ways, her busy days are closer to those of her grandmother, who had the pride and independence of her fish stall in the market, than those of her amachu or mother. Kika says that her mother spent all her life at home, and in a way has become rather sad and quiet. The Civil War with its tragic consequences, had left her deeply scarred, as though numbed, and she took care of her home and children silently. Kika remembers the household suffering all kinds of privations, including hunger. She can still recall the colour of the ration-cards and the hours spent queuing interminably for practically nothing, or just a few pieces of dark bread.
In her own life, Kika attempts to find a compromise between tradition, which she will struggle with all her might to defend, and the personal fulfilment that she needs to go on living from day-to-day. She enjoys looking after her home and family, just as her mother and her grandmother did, and would never abandon it, but she always feels the need to do more. At present Kika does not go out to work. Until a few months ago she used to work in a friend’s clothes shop, but this meant that she lost her freedom and so she decided to give it up. ‘I am already over forty and I don’t want my life to fly past without spending some of my time doing the things which really matter,’ she says passionately, ‘such as fighting against the construction of a tower block which would shut off our view to the sea, or attending political meetings and discussions.’
Like her grandmother, she lives a city life and goes out every day to meet family and friends. On Friday evenings she and José Ramon always go out together with friends. In winter they usually go to a cider house in Astigarraga and Kika is responsible for taking some meat which she buys in the market in the morning. They sort out their expenses afterwards, at the end of the evening in a little bar where they have coffee and a brandy. In summer they usually go to one of the little villages along the coast to eat fish grilled in the open air. She adores to share such moments with José Ramon and their friends, to chat with them all, to enjoy the cider or txakolí.
Like many of her generation, Kika also revels in the traditional fiestas which have not yet disappeared. Every year she and José Ramon go to Tolosa for the Carnival celebrations, which here become bigger every year while in most Basque towns they have almost gone forever. The celebrations run over a whole week and involve a great deal of eating and drinking, especially on Jueves Gordo, Fat Thursday. Chorizo is offered free of charge in all the bars as an appetizer, and in the restaurants, gastronomic societies and private homes they make a dish called picacha, using onion, lamb’s blood and intestine. After Fat Thursday, comes Viernes Flaco, Thin Friday, so called because after the previous day’s excesses most people feel somewhat under the weather and rest their stomach for a day which is followed by a normal Saturday. Then at last it is Carnival Sunday, announced by the alborada, audade or dawn music at six o’clock in the morning, when the txistularis play in every square. ‘Get up early, today is fiesta’, they sing all round the town. As well as the official ceremonies, there are others – sometimes a play or a float that travels around the streets – devised by different groups of friends who have been rehearsing for months in great secrecy.
A few months later, at the end of June, Kika, José Ramon and the children go back to Tolosa to celebrate St John’s Eve at the small caserío of their old friends Asensio and Milagros. Until a few years ago, Asensio was the proprietor of the paper-works, a traditional industry in the area which declined in recent times, but now he publishes Basque language books on culture. He is especially interested in the ancient pagan rites in honour of water and fire and every year invites friends to celebrate St John’s Eve just as their primitive forbears would have done with a feast and bonfire. Although the Roman Catholic Church appropriated these ceremonies, they were originally pagan and date from long before Christian times. In days gone by weeks were spent building bonfires using timber, shrubwood and a great trunk of bay representing the branches which were blessed on Easter Sunday. The fires could be seen burning from a distance, twenty or even thirty of them in front of the doorways of the caseríos and even in the town streets, their flames consuming a rag guy, which had been made from old clothes, and who represented any evil spirit which had lodged there during the past year or might do so in the future.
Asensio engages a neighbour to organize everything for the occasion, from the huge bonfire to a system of poles and ropes which will be used to roast the kid, in a similar way to that used in the caves of Zagarramurdi (described in my chapter on The Tradition of the Kaiku-Maker). Afterwards they usually have a good cheese which Asensio buys from a shepherd in the Aralar mountains.
Kika is a modern woman who has kept inside the love for her family, for Euskadi, for friendship and for her town. The way of life she grew up with, including her family’s political beliefs, has remained with her as it was with her ancestors. You can see her as a woman of today who often goes to demonstrations which manifest themselves in several different ways: processions with giant carnival figures and representations of Basque folklore; impassioned speeches in the Plaza de la Constitución sometimes in Basque, sometimes Castilian, with excited speakers trying to make a point; or dancing crowds with traditional music. She is caught in a cross-flow of tradition and modern beliefs in which, until now, the traditional values have had the upper hand.