Great Taste(s) from Spain

Next Sunday I will not be in Spain, but I will be thinking of it, and at least one other person at the conference I am going to should be thinking of it, too. That's because I have volunteered to bring a door prize to the meeting, and I decided to put together a basket of goodies showing the best of Spanish food products. So I have been busy, busy, busy this week, scouring all the grocery stores I know, looking for specialty shops (they seem to have disappeared with the deepening of the recession) and keeping my eyes open for local foods that are representative of the region and also appealing to those who do not live here.

The first item in my gift basket, of course, had to be olive oil. Spain is by far the largest producer of olive oil in the world, according to the Olive Oil Times. In 2010 it produced 1.4 million metric tons of olive oil; Italy, its nearest competitor, produced 460,000 metric tons. My olive oil is from Pago Baldios San Carlos, which won the Gold Medal at the Los Angeles Extra Virgin Olive Oil contest in 2011. The contents of my bottle, however, are from the first harvest (Primera Cosecha) of 2012. This is a real premium product. I have to admit that it is not the olive oil I use in my daily cooking, or even for my usual lunchtime salad dressing.

Also in the category of expensive liquids is a Tio Pepe Jerez (Sherry); Palomino Fino, Fino Muy Seco. "A classic bone-dry sherry," according to La Tienda, a U.S. importer of "the best of Spain." I became intrigued with sherry production in Spain when we passed by the city of Jerez de la Frontera on our way home from a Thanksgiving Day in Cadiz a few years ago, without taking the sherry tour. Ever since, I have been making plans to go back to this center of sherry production to learn more, tour the bodegas, and try some samples. It used to be that large Tio Pepe bottle sculptures dotted the roadsides throughout Spain, but a law banning such ostentatious advertising has eliminated most of those today. The bottle of Palomino Fino in my gift basket doesn't look much like the bottles along the roadside anyway; it looks much more refined, just like the one in the manufacturer's website ad.

Finally, there is cava, that wonderful sparkling wine that Spaniards drink instead of champagne. I have a small (375 ml) bottle of Freixenet Carta Nevada Brut. Fortunately I thought in time that I had to get my treasures through U.S. Customs, and that there is a limit on how much alcohol one can bring in without paying duty.

What would Spanish food be without saffron, or azafran, as it is called here? I put in a package of azafran hebras, saffron threads. One of the attractions of this particular package from Azafranes Sabater was that it contains instructions for use in four languages. Here's the English:

(GB) INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE: To best using the saffron threads, roast them still protected by their paper envelope, by placing them onto the hotpot. Then grind in a mortar and add the ground saffron to the food you are preparing.

This small, lightweight package the size of a deck of cards (but mostly filled with empty space) contains four envelopes. Nowhere does it say anything about how much food you should prepare for one packet, so it's a good thing I also bought a package called Paellero, from a local spice company called Carmencita. This package contains five packets, each designed to flavor enough rice for six servings (600/700 grams of rice). It also has instructions in English, though the basic instruction is "Before adding the rice, pour the contents of one sachet into the paella pan. Do not add any other spice." The ingredients list reports garlic, salt (25%), paprika, corn flour, colour, E-102, pepper, clove, and saffron (2.5%). If I had been able to read the ingredients list in the store, without glasses, I probably would not have bought it, especially since it goes on to say that E-102 may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.

If you're making paella, you need to have the right rice, so I included a 1 kg. package of Fallera D.O. Arroz de Valencia de grano grueso especial para paella. This is the large, round rice that is grown in the region of Valencia, where the conditions of heat and humidity are just right for rice, according to the package. Paella Valenciana does not have seafood in it, by the way; it has bits of chicken, duck, and rabbit.

Another main dish that requires saffron is fabada, a hearty white bean casserole from Asturias, in the northern part of Spain. A couple months ago I went to three different stores and found three different sizes of alubia fabada, or favas, the special white beans. For my basket I chose the medium-sized beans, from El Granero de Levante in Bigastro, a small town just 10 or 15 minutes away. In addition to favas and saffron, this dish needs chorizo and black sausage, and lacon, or salt pork, but none of those would pass through Customs, I'm afraid. 

Also in my basket of great tastes from Spain is a small tin of bonito del norte en aceite de oliva, an excellent tuna fish in olive oil, and mermelada de tomate, this tomato marmalade from the province of Cantabria. These, plus olive oil, are excellent toppings for a toasted bread, or tostada, that we often eat when we are out for a  late morning snack.

Last, but not least--certainly not least by weight--is the kilogram of Mediterranean sea salt I tucked in the basket at the last minute. I really didn't want to take a whole kilo, but that is how it is packaged. We live in the Torrevieja area, which is famous for its salt lakes, but the salt processed here is the type that is often found on the roads of northern Europe in the winter. You have to go a bit farther north on the coast toward Alicante to find the huge mountains that eventually turn into table salt. We see them on the way to and from the airport, and stopping at the salt museum is one of those things I mean to do some day when there is time. But there won't be time when I head up that way a couple days from now to catch my morning plane to Indianapolis. I'll be bringing some great tastes from Spain in my suitcase with me.

What a Week!

This was not an easy week for me in Spain. On Monday evening the email account that has supported me with no  problems for more than ten years was compromised; I spent most of Tuesday reassuring friends and associates that I had not become a Viagra salesperson in my spare time, and making sure that my system was clean (it was). Wednesday I used more than six hours trying to access my banking account in the U.S., only to discover that the credit card had been stopped and access to the online banking account had been halted because the renewal card which had been sent to my Spanish address had been returned as undeliverable--and the bank is in California, so I couldn't even talk to them before 4:00 P.M. my time. Thursday a home renovation team arrived to do a "little job"--knocking a small wall from the living room into an empty space, so they could move the hot water heater from the kitchen to the new space, thereby freeing up an area large enough to install a new, decent-sized refrigerator and freezer in the kitchen. I was home alone during this time, so not only did I have to answer their questions, I also had to talk to the door-to-door advanced funeral arrangements salesperson who stopped by mid-day to pressure me into dealing with this "subject that we don't want to talk about." I really didn't want to talk about it then. And then mid-afternoon, the electricity was cut off with no advanced warning, just as I was in the middle of initiating a new alternative email account. I guess I was lucky--I could have been in my secure banking area.

So Friday morning, after I attended a brand-new Spanish class and came home to see that the renovators still had their stuff spread all over the first floor of the house, it seemed like a really nice idea to meet good friends and neighbors on the first day of a Wheel of Tapas in the neighboring town of Benijofar. I've written about these tapas festivals before. Generally the idea is that most of a town's bars, cafes, and restaurants agree on a particular weekend to offer a special tapa and drink for two euros--each restaurant has its own specialty, and the municipality produces a glossy brochure with a map to the establishments and a menu of their offerings, and if you visit enough establishments you can vote on the best and be entered in the drawing to win a fabulous prize. Only once before have we ever been able to stomach enough tapas and wine to qualify to vote and enter, but we always enjoy sitting in the sun on a weekend afternoon with a drink, a tapa, and some friends, and then moving on to the next place--once or twice.

That's what we did Friday afternoon this week. And it wasn't even a disaster when we discovered that we were too early for the festival--showing up at 2:00 PM when it didn't start until 7:00 PM. We just went to a familiar restaurant and offered to be the beta tasters for that evening's tapa, and it worked. We had a nice time and by the time we got home, the renovators had gone for the weekend, leaving a semi-clean house until their scheduled return on Monday. This noontime when I picked up Johannes after his morning at his cave art exhibition, we stopped at a place listing a tapa of milanesa a la napolitana, an Argentine specialty and one of his favorites. That plus the sausages from the Dutch bar next door made a very nice lunch, and we enjoyed sitting out, the two of us, in sun and watching the other foreigners and the Spanish taking advantage of the Wheel of Tapas and delightfully warm and sunny autumn weather.

Rain in Spain

Last Sunday it rained in Spain--not terribly hard where we live, but the thunder was loud enough and the lightening close enough that I didn't want to tempt fate by keeping the computer connected to an electrical outlet, no matter that it is protected. We went out to visit friends in the early evening and remembered to leave a light on because we knew it would be dark by the time we returned home. When we came back at 9:30 the light was off, though street lights were still lit. Fortunately a flip of the circuit breaker restored power to the house.

It rained on and off for the next three days, and the temperatures dipped into the low 70s F. though it seemed colder in the early morning when we went out to play pétanque. By midweek I was beginning to wonder whether it was time to bring out long-sleeved clothing and relocate my summer sleeveless next-to-nothings to my winter undershirt drawer. Procrastination pays off sometimes. I did not renovate my wardrobe, though I did start to wear 3/4 length pants for the first time in three months.

Our garden benefited greatly from the rain--everything is clean and fresh--but the local Euro Weekly News paper is telling us that the rain caused flooding in Orihuela, the largest near-by city. In the Valencia region, it was feared that extended rain could damage the rice crops, but the storms seem to have passed over by now. Grape vines were damaged in the Utiel-Requena wine district west of Valencia, however, and the grape harvest is expected to fall by 50% this year. That's not good news for the local wine industry that we are beginning to explore.

A Trip to the Bodega

Last Thursday we took a bus tour inland to the village of Jumilla, in Murcia province. It was pleasant riding up high in a large tour bus; even though some of the roadway was familiar to us, we saw vegetation from a different angle than when passing through the countryside lower to the ground in a common car.

Our destination was the Finca Omblancas, a small winery just outside the town of Jumilla, which is home to at least ten wineries and bodegas. We had a spectacularly informative tour of the winery, which was purchased by its present family owners in 2002, who have made huge investments in modernizing production methods and improving quality.

Our tour started out in the vineyards, where the slightest touch of autumn coolness was making its welcome entry after a long hot summer. We moved inside to see the chute where grapes are delivered, dumped, and inspected for the second time (the first inspection is done by hand-pickers out in the vineyard). Then we went down to the huge stainless steel vats where the grapes and their juice are collected and ferment. It was here that I learned about the monastrell grape, a variety unique to Mediterranean countries, and the only grape that survived the Phylloxera epidemic that destroyed most of the vineyards of Europe in the late 19th century.

We passed on to the wine cellar and tasting room, where we tried three of the Omblancas wines--all interesting and worth a purchase--and then on to a nearby restaurant, where we enjoyed one of those lovely Spanish menú del día three-course luncheons. I had a wonderful gazpacho and finger-licking lamb chops. And this menú featured two more Omblancas wines, in generous quantities.

If I had written this post immediately after hearing about the processing and the monastrell grape, while we were still in the vat room, I would be able to tell you many more facts about wine making and Omblancas. But since we proceeded to the wine cellar and the luncheon, those facts floated out of my head with the flow of wine, so if you want to know more, you will have to follow the links highlighted here, and also, perhaps, to an interesting book called Let's Open a Bottle: My Journey through the Spanish Wine Revolution.

And did I mention how nice it was to have someone else driving the bus on the way home?