Food and Galicia

Si, si... xa sei que levo moito tempo sen poñer nada aquí, pero tedes que saber que teño boas excusas. 

Primeiro, como xa vos dixen, viñeron Amparo e Xulio a nos facer unha visita. Non me vou a estender. Simplemente vos conto que chegaron un venres, o sábado pola mañá levantámonos o Xulio e máis eu cedo (a iso das seis e media se mal non lembro) porque el quería ir dar unha volta en bicicleta por Oxford, e logo fomos a ver Londres, onde andivemos nun bus destes de toristas, tivemos unha visita con guía só para nos os catro e máis andivemos nun ferry polo Támesis.

O domingo pola mañá veu o Xulio a nos acompañar na nosa matutina carreira. Non sei se o teño contado antes aquí, pero tódolos domingos, aquí diante da nosa casa, Barrie (o noso landlord, ou caseiro) e os seus amigos xúntanse desde hai xa anos para ir a botar unha carreira. Barrie ten 78 e vai en bicicleta desde que o operaron do corazón pero James, que ten sesenta e bastantes; Helen, que andará nos cincuenta; e Ted, cincuenta e pico; van a correr. As últimas ‘adquisicións’ do Barrie’s Running Club somos Rose, dezasete anos, veciña tamén da nosa rúa, e máis eu. Ese día, como digo, o Xulio veu con nós, aínda que el acompañou a Barrie na bicicleta, porque había tempo que non corría e tiña medo de non nos aguantar o ritmo.

Despois da carreira o domingo dedicámonos a lle ensinar Oxford aos nosos benqueridos visitantes.

O luns Julia tivo que quedar na casa preparando unha charla que tiña que dar esa semana, e os outros tres marchamos a ver Bath.

 

Despois da marcha dos nosos visitantes tanto eu coma Xulia caímos enfermos. Ao tempo que todo o mundo falaba da gripe porcina (swine flu, que lle din aquí), Amparito creo que nos trouxo un virus moito máis sofisticado que nos deixou para o arrastre por uns días.

 

A pasada fin de semana fun a correr a Oxford Town & Gown, unha carreira de 10 quilómetros que cada ano percorre as rúas de Oxford para recadar fondos para a loita contra a distrofia muscular. A pesares de que tanto a visita de Xulio e Amparo coma o resfriado ese que collimos alteraron considerablemente o meu ritmo de entrenamentos, apañeime para acabar no posto 155, que de máis de dous mil non está demasiado mal, e facer un tempo oficial de 41 minutos 26 segundos, co cal quedei bastante contento.

Ademais, de todo isto, a comezos de mes comecei tamén a ir a clases de inglés ao Language Centre da Universidade de Oxford. Aí me colei nun curso de dous meses chamado English for spouses of members of the University, e aí ando agora a lle dar de novo aos libros e a facer deberes, coma se estivese no colexio outra vez.

O tema é que eses deberes inclúen redaccións e, claro, antes escribía os posts para o blog mentres que ía e viña de Reading no tren, pero agora o que escribo no tren son as redacións para a clase de inglés, co cal non teño tempo para vos contar aquí as miñas aventuras.

Así que o que vou a facer vai a ser tomar un camiño intermedio e poñer aquí algúns dos textos que escriba para a clase de inglés. Non agardedes obras de arte porque se non as fago en galego menos as vou a facer na lingua do pequeno competidor de Cervantes este que chamaban Shakespeare, pero prométovos que darei o mellor de min.

Síntoo por meus pais, que non se van a enterar de papa, pero... quen sabe, igual que cando me vin para aquí se puxeron e aprenderon a usar o ordenador... igual agora se escribo no blog en inglés lles da por aprender a lingua dos fillos da Gran Bretaña!!! :·D

 

En fin, antes de vos pegar aquí este meu primeiro texto en inglés, teño que vos dicir unha cousa, porque senón rebento. Isto foi o que me tiña escrito na última folla da redación a profesora, Amanda, cando ma deu de volta o outro día:

You write very well indeed. Thank you for such an interesting and detailed account of your food culture! Very good use of passive structures.

Logo, seguía corrixíndome un par de cousas, pero ese anaco vóuvolo a aforrar, porque xa corrixín o texto coa axuda das súas anotacións. ;·)

 

En todo caso, o tema é que ante esas tres frases, teño que dicir dúas cousas. Unha, que quedei tan contento que medrei dúas cuartas (agora paso dos dous metros ;·) ). A outra... a outra ten, por forza, que ser... gracias, Martiña!

 

Aquí vai! (a ver qué vos parece)

 

Food and Galicia

 

There is one big problem when it comes to food and Galicia: you don’t know where to start and where to stop.

Galicia was until the last years of the 20^th century a country in which the economy was mostly based on farming and fishing. You can still feel that when you travel through it, and see fields and woods divided into small plots with little walls made of stone and houses scattered all around. You feel it in the fishing villages, where you can smell the fish being brought every day to the lonxa (fish market) to be auctioned. And I believe that the farming and fishing tradition is present as well in the way people like, pay attention to and respect food.

 

Meat-based dishes are of course among the most popular in Galicia. Veal is tasty and tender, because calves are usually slaughtered long before they are one year old. Meat with Protected Designation of Origin ‘Ternera Gallega’ is particularly good and offers the highest standards and guarantees. Chicken is of course widely available, and if you are so lucky as to be able to get your hands on a real free-range chicken (not one raised on any kind of commercial farm but one who enjoyed its life in somebody’s own yard) you will have the opportunity of knowing what real chicken tastes like.

Game is also easy to find if you want to treat yourself, especially in places like the mountains of Ancares or O Courel. Wild boar cooked with chestnuts is a surprisingly tasty dish. “Exotic” meats like ostrich or buffalo can be found too as a consequence of the fact that these foreign species are being introduced into some traditional farms as a replacement for the native ones.

But in Galicia, without a doubt, the king is the pig. The act of pig-slaughtering has for centuries been almost a ritual in Galicia. Families used to gather together on a Saturday very early in the morning, the men would take the pig or pigs out of their cuadras, put them over a bench using brute force, where one of them would stab the pig in its throat just after somebody had put a bucket underneath to collect the blood, with which a particularly tasty black pudding called morcilla would be cooked afterwards. Immediately after killing him, the skin of the pig would be burned and washed, and then the pig would be opened and its still hot liver taken to the kitchen, where a tasty breakfast including potatoes and eggs would be prepared with it.

Nowadays freezers are used for the same purpose, but in the old days most of the pork, the neat big pieces, like the ribs or the legs, and others like the head, would be salt-cured. With the smaller pieces that remain after all the cutting process it is still mandatory to make those tasty sausages called chourizos. One of the greatest pleasures on earth is to have a hot bolo preñado, small bread roll with a chourizo in between, or to take a hot chourizo and roll it on a filloa, the Galician salty pancake that is a traditional Carnival dessert.

 

In the rest of Spain Galicia is particularly well known for its seafood. Galicia’s coastline is really special because of its bays, called rías, formed millions of years ago when the old chain of mountains went underwater. The rías provide a protected environment of warm water and abundance of resources where scallops, mussels, lobsters, spider crabs, razor-shells, oysters, barnacles, etc. can happily and steadily grow until they are harvested by the hundreds of marisqueiros that live in Galicia.

There is no wedding in Galicia that can start its reception without serving as starters at least three different types of seafood, but those serving four or five are not strange at all. That big mountain of seafood has to be followed by at least one more dish of fish and another of meat and after that, of course, the wedding cake accompanied by at least one other kind of pudding like ice-cream. Immediately afterwards you will be offered coffee or tea and lots of different types of liquors. It has to be borne in mind that, traditionally, the guests had already had something to eat and drink at the bride’s and groom’s respective houses before attending the ceremony, and something more after the ceremony and before the proper reception, whilst waiting for the couple to have their wedding pictures taken.

Fish is, as you would expect, a very important part of the diet for inhabitants of seaside villages. Sea bass, halibut, sardine or tuna, among many others, can be found fresh and at a reasonable price in the markets of fresh product that you will find in the main cities and towns. Inland people can either have their supply of fresh fish thank to vans that provide door-to-door delivery, or they can buy canned fish (Galicia has one of the most important fish-canning industries in Europe), or rely on salt-dried fish, which is really popular too. Without a doubt, the most popular salt-dried fish consumed by Galicians is the same for which their Portuguese neighbours are well-renowned world-wide: cod. A Galician recipe of cod does not differ very much from those you will find on Portugal, and those recipes of cod are one of the traditional dishes for Christmas Eve.

But when it comes to choose one dish that defines us as a country… well, that for sure can only be one: octopus.

This might sound weird, even bizarre for many people, but the fact is that octopus is served everywhere in Galicia, all year round. And the most common, popular and traditional place to eat octopus is neither at home nor in restaurants, but at fairs. In every town in Galicia which is celebrating something with a fair, you will find big tents with lots of wooden tables and benches underneath. On one side of that big marquee, some women will be boiling octopus in big cooper pots whilst some others are already taking them from the pots with a metallic hook, just to quickly put them over the counter, hold it still hot with their bare hands (the hotter the octopus the quicker you chop it, as one of those women used to tell me) and chop it into pieces with the help of special scissors.

 

And I have to say that there are few things that make me feel more homesick than to think of a good dish of polbo á feira (Octopus Galician-style), served with olive oil, salt and hot paprika on a dish made of wood, accompanied with bread and a cup of red wine, to be eaten with a wood stick under one of those khaki big marquees, whilst a group of bagpipers play muiñeiras.