Who are the Basques: where do they live; what language do they speak? Where does their passion for action and freedom, their staunch individuality and, above all, their love of good food come from? What today is known as the Basque Country, or ‘Euskadi’, consists of the provinces of Baja Navarra, Labourdie and Zuberoa on French soil and Alava, Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya and Navarra in Spain.
The Basques have always been seen by the other inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula as rather brusque, with great sincerity and strength of character, with an unswerving attachment to tradition, deeply religious, and with an obvious seafaring vocation. The novelist, Pio Baroja, wrote: ‘I cannot define the Basque character concisely; all that I can say is that most of them have a warlike streak, that nearly all those who inhabit the countryside are slow of understanding, and that they are men of few words, who are rarely idle; calm, thoughtful and silent.’
The land where they have lived since prehistoric times lies either side of the western end of the Pyrenees, both inland and along the coast washed by the waters of the Cantabrian Sea. As you travel from Castile into the Basque Country villages, clustered around churches as though in search of shade, begin to stretch out along a single street, until eventually they become completely isolated farmsteads. The contrasting landscapes are sometimes calm and tranquil: the wheatfields of Alava, the maize plantations of Guipúzcoa, picturesque little fishing villages; at other times they are harsh and moody with a series of cliffs or mountain-peaks, partially clothed in luxuriant, leafy beechwoods, and with barren crags showing the harsh limestone rock at its most beautiful and unyielding; it changes mood dramatically according to the capricious and unpredictable climate. Hours of calm and blue skies may suddenly give way to unexpected and noisy storms when thunder and lightning rage furiously, the wind roars and the sound of the leaves as they rustle against each other is like an angry sea.
According to Father Barandiarán, one of the great experts on Basque matters, this is a culture which goes back 50,000 years. For his part, the ethnologist, Julio Caro Baroja, feels that one cannot speak of the ‘Basque Race’ since, apparently, up to the present-day all attempts to clarify the origins of such a race have proved useless and are lacking in scientific rigour. On the other hand, Baroja maintains that it is possible to speak of a ‘Basque Tongue’ – in his view an obvious survival of languages which predate the Indo-European invasion and, according to him ‘whose form may have changed, but which survives’. The same author believes that the Basque language is related to that of the Aquitaine of south-west France.
In fact there are four main Basque dialects and more than twenty dialectic variations and subdialects. According to the historian, Martín de Ugalde, the Basque tongue and the Basque race are two mysteries which refuse to be solved or to die out in this corner of the Pyrenees.
Unamuno, the great philosopher and Basque writer, wrote of his nation: ‘Until recent times it has played only a minor role in the live drama of History’. It has been said that since nations without a history are said to be fortunate, the Basques must certainly have considered themselves so for century after century, as they danced and sang in their mountains. The Nation has apparently looked on as others have undergone centuries of change and thus has succeeded in protecting its special character and, more importantly, its language. The Basques have not related or written down their own history, with the result that this has always been subject to interpretation by others.
From what we do know of the history of the Basques, we are conscious of a warlike, independent spirit, which is indivisibly linked with the sea. Navigators, adventurers and fishermen, the Basques have sailed the oceans and seas in search of lands, gold, adventure and fish. It is very probable that during the Roman occupation in the second century Basque vessels were used to transport minerals and it has been established that during the Norman invasion around AD 858 the Basques defied the invaders from the North and built ships in order to defend themselves by sea.
Focusing on Basque cuisine, or the several Basque cuisines, we can say that, above all, they are based on the sea and the mountains; one cannot isolate a country and its cooking from each other since one identifies the other. In this book I have tried not to write a complete cookery compendium; what I have attempted to do is to reflect the perfect duality that exists between man and food in the Basque Country, to the point where it becomes, to all intents and purposes, an obsession. People talk about cooking in just the same way as they might about the weather, or their children, that is to say, in most cases knowledgeably and to the point. Although it may mean that as a result they are unable to pay the February rent, nevertheless, on the day of the San Sebastián Tamborrada (drum parade), come what may, they will eat their ‘casuelita’ de angulas al pil-pil (‘little dish’ of elvers cooked with chilli) and spend a good while telling their friends that the best sort are the ones with the black backs. It is simply a question of understanding their order of priorities and, as far as the Basques are concerned, the delights of the table head the list. In the words of Julio Caro Baroja: ‘Basques are not interested merely in quantity, they always look for quality’. I shall always remember the harsh words of a Basque cook on the piperade prepared in front of the television cameras by a well-known British cookery presenter; what had offended her most of all was not the man’s ignorance of the correct ingredients for the dish, but the levity with which they had been prepared. As far as she was concerned Basque cooking was something to be taken seriously, with no place for frivolity.
If I close my eyes and conjure up a scene of Basque cooking it takes the shape of an earthenware dish, cooking either on a farmhouse range, or on a stove in a Gastronomic Society kitchen; the first tended by a woman, the second by a man. In both cases we are talking of a style of cooking which is basically home and family cooking and which has always been passed on by the old women to the young ones who will eventually come to take their place. We are talking about cooking in a society which men, incorrectly, describe as ‘matriarchal’ – certainly not true of the Basque Country, where it is not the women who wear the trousers; the fact of the matter is that in this society the areas of responsibility are, or at least have been until now, very clearly delineated, particularly with regard to life in rural areas and little fishing towns, and until relatively recently this was the only sort of life that existed in such places. There can be no doubt that in the Basque Country it is the women who are the driving force behind all sorts of activities, but it is a far cry from being a society where the women give the orders. Nevertheless, we are talking about cooking which is also done by men, although outside the home, in Gastronomic or Sporting Clubs, at sea, in the open-air and in the competitions which they are so fond of. Everybody without exception considers patience in preparing and cooking the dishes properly to be absolutely essential. In practice it is traditional cooking which is the most important, in spite of the new trends which are felt even here, thanks to the defenders and promoters of the new Basque cuisine, which, to give it its due, has achieved well-deserved prestige.
Talking about Basque cooking, the chef Pedro Subijana says: ‘It would be very difficult to define this cuisine precisely. It has its roots in the cooking of the people and it is true to its culinary traditions and practice. There are slight variations between the cooking of the different provinces of Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya, Alava and Navarra, but they all pride themselves on using local produce in season. Basque cuisine has several different sources of inspiration, ranging from peasant dishes to the cuisine of the bourgeoisie; it is alive and constantly evolving, without losing its uniqueness and identity; it is very close to the heart of all Basques’.
Although the portraits in this book depict the men and women of the southern Basque Country, I should like to add a few words on French-Basque cooking, which is undeniably an inseparable part of the whole. Its main characteristic is that it is an inland cuisine, relying on the fruits of the soil, with a bias towards dishes using meat, together with maize, the cereal which came to revolutionize the life of the Nation when it arrived from the Americas; these are the twin pillars on which depends its success. This is an obvious contrast to Spanish-Basque cuisine, which, although it also incorporates inland dishes, is at its most characteristic when it creates delicious dishes using the fruits of the sea. Piperade, poulet basquaise and gâteau basque may be seen as the acme of French-Basque cooking, which also relies on high quality ingredients such as Bayonne ham. Many of us have enjoyed a tasty Cassoulet at some time, or a good plateful of Eltzekaria, an ancient soup whose name derives from the word ‘Eltze’, or ‘cooking pot’ in the Basque language, or that grand fish soup ‘Ttoro’. And I wonder what sweet could possibly compare with a preserve of cherries from the garden served with a selection of ‘fromages de brebis’?