Posted by: puebloman | July 25, 2011

Cheap Spanish food 1: Patatas a lo pobre

There are certain foods that it would be a feckless extravagance not to eat, they are so cheap and such good value. UK Cornish mackerel, and mussels come to mind. These foods, among the best this world has to offer, are so cheap that they are largely ignored. If they were ten times dearer , the stinking rich would niche them, clique them and otherwise celebrate them while the wheedling poor would claim them as a human right.

So before its too late let me sing the praises of one of Spain’s great humble potato dishes “Patatas a lo Pobre” – poor man’s potatoes. This has to be one of the world’s great peasant dishes. It’s a dish of onions and potatoes so no one is excused from eating it because of its price. It is delicious hot, cold and as a base for a wide range of Andalucian specialities.

Imagine your partner is out for the day, leaving you alone with a blank sheet of writing paper, a list of domestic tasks and the porn channel. What is the first thought that comes to mind?

“What’s for lunch?”

Exactly.  As a casual lunch it beats sardines on toast, beans on toast and toast. It also beats poncy elaborate dishes ( Yes I can cook) that are pointless if you have no witnesses or fellow eaters. “Lo pobre” requires 20 minutes of Tender Loving Care after which you can leave it to its own devices. For example you can pile it hot onto a hot plate, scatter pieces of bite sized serrano ham over it and top it off with two fried eggs. On the other hand you can just leave it in the pan and graze all day on it, stabbing your fork into it every time you pass by as it slowly goes cold.

  1. Take a deep frying pan or wok and pour in a wineglass full of well flavored olive oil. Extra virgin is a waste, but it ought to have sabor.
  2. Crush half a bulb of garlic cloves under a flat knife and put into the oil, skin and all.
  3. While they are gently sizzling, finely slice a large Spanish onion.
  4. When the garlic just starts to colour, remove it and put in the onion.
  5. While the onion is sizzling in the garlicky oil, peel and thickly slice a kilo or so of potatoes. Those huge white Spanish ones are best, that look like new potatoes but aren’t waxy.
  6. Add the spuds and turn them gently with the onions in the oil. Neither the onions nor the potatoes must brown, though a slight caramelisation is acceptable. The mixture should be slightly damp, not dry. Avoid burning the ingredients.
  7. When the potatoes are soft but al dente, turn the heat up and pour in a big glass of wine. The dry thin sherry called “Cobos” is best and gives the scent of Andalucia. White wine will do, resinated wine is good. I often use “Pasero” a very sweet sherry like local drink made from Moscatel raisins.
  8. Bubble off the alcohol, turning the mixture gently.
  9. Mash the cooked garlic cloves with a little salt. Remove the skins and add to the mixture
  10. Pour in half a pint (300 cc) of hot stock. Any old stock will do. I use old Knorr chicken cubes.
  11. Bubble the mixture at high heat, turning the mixture. Check seasoning. let it reduce until the spuds are just soft and coated with a shiny sauce.
This is the classic version. It can hardly be improved. Its just as good without the wine. Here are some variations:
  • In Velez-Malaga, where we live, this dish is served as “Broken eggs”. It is a Velez classic. The potato mixture is place in a small stainless steel frying pan – one pan per person and the mixture heated up up to frying temperature. Two eggs are broken into each pan. Once they have almost set, the mixture is gently stirred so that the eggs set round the potatos. The dish is topped with shredded Serrano ham, and each persons portion is served to the in their own individual pan.
  • Roughly chopped long green peppers are often fried in with the potatoes.
  • Add lightly crushed and whole black peppercorns at the frying stage
Non “classically” you can
  • Add Provencal herb mixture at the frying stage
  • Add a couple of rashers of chopped streaky bacon
  • Thinly slice two long sweet green or red peppers and add to the frying mixture

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Posted by: puebloman | July 23, 2011

Cheap Red Spanish wine: reading the label – a crib list

Reserva, Grand Reserva and Crianza all under €4

Reading the label on a bottle of Spanish table Wine

Where we live, in the Axarquia, Andalucia, you can’t grow a good grape that produces table wine. It’s far too hot. Here we grow muscatel grape that produces a sweet white “digestif”or an “aperitif” these are not usually drunk with meals, though of course drinking is always accompanied by food, usually tapas.
West of us, around Jerez, they produce sherry of course. North of us, around Granada, it is colder and grapes can be grown that produce table wine. It’s said that the grapes must be kissed by frost to produce grapes for table wine.
The world class Spanish grape, on a par with Cabernet Sauvignon,  is the Tempranillo grape.
One of the great things about life in Spain is that you can talk about “Grand Reserva” wine and cheap red wine in the same breath. And this is not because Grand Reserva is a meaningless term. Very far from it. In fact the wine buying consumer with little or no experience of buying can have every confidence in the terms on the label.
You may or may not like the taste of the wine, but this is, well, a matter of taste. You can however have no doubt about the quality of the wine, the expert assessment of its vintage, the work that has gone into processing it, or the commitment of the vintners. It is benchmarked at every stage, and each bench mark assessed by experts. Our favourite cheap red wine at the moment is called Vespral. The Denominatio d’Origen is Tierra Alta. That’s where it comes from, a region almost as famous as Rioja. The grape is tempranillo and granache. Native Spanish grapes. A Crianza is €1.99, A Reserva is €2.49 and a Grand Reserva $3.49.

Someone thought it worth investing 6 years of shelf space in this wine. Laid down in 2005

To find out the value of these wines, see the crib below.

Spanish wines: what it says on the label

  1. Vino de mesa: the cheapest table wine, often blended, with no indication of its geographic origin
  2. Denominacion d’Origen This little badge is found on all wine bottles whose wine has been tested and tasted by a committee of vintners and professionals from the area in which the grapes are grown, and been found to be of an acceptable standard and conforming  to the statutory processing standards.
  3. Vino joven: new wine, usually from a qualified Denominacion de Origen, occasionally with slight ageing, without qualifying as “roble” or “crianza”
  4. Roble: ”roble” in Spanish means oak. Sometimes a wine is very lightly oaked and some regions are allowed to use this term on the label for wines that are oaked but don’t reach the requirements of a “crianza”.
  5. Crianza: Is a good D.O. wine, aged for two years, with a minimum of six months in oak barrels
  6. Reserva: Is a high quality wine at least three years old. At least one of these years must be in an oak cask, with a further 2 years of ageing after bottling, made from top vintage grapes.
  7. Gran Reserva: quality wines usually aged for at least two years in oak barrels with three more years after bottling, made with grapes from the exceptional vintage years

Supplementary information:

  1. Bodega = From a named winery, always named, usually a family business
  2. Añejo = Means aged or matured
  3. Cepa = The type of grape – tempranillo, cabernet for example
  4. Cosecha, vendimia = The year, or the vintage

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Posted by: puebloman | July 16, 2011

The European Banking Authority shits on Spain

The European Banking Authority, an organisation commanding little respect among world investors, today sought to attack and undermine the Spanish economy by publishing a spurious and misleading report on Spanish Banks.

Headlines report that five of the eight banks that failed the “stress test” applied by theEuropean Banking Authority were Spanish.

There is of course, no room in a headline to observe that all of these apparently  failing banks – CaixaCatalunya Savings Banks, Unnim, Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo, Caja 3 and commercial bank Banco Pastor, are all little co-operative banks, largely set up to finance farmers whose businesses are collapsing for entirely temporary and passing reasons.

Germans lying about the cause of an e coli outbreak for example, causing Spanish farmers to dump their entire crop of cucumbers in the the river bed.

Such “investors” invest relatively miniscule amounts of money, so their failure to repay would have no affect whatsoever upon the security of the Spanish economy.

The Bank of Spain has correctly insisted that no injections of capital are required to sustain these banks. Nevertheless the headline “Five out of Eight banks that failed the stress test are Spanish” – strikes at the confidence of the reader, to the obvious detriment of investment in the Spanish economy.

The central bank has explained that the definition of capital did not include generic, or anti-cyclical provisions. These are unique to Spain, and are convertible bonds with mandatory later conversion dates. If these items are included, no further capital is required at all to sustain any Spanish bank. Nevertheless the headline “Five out of Eight banks that failed the stress test are Spanish” – strikes at the confidence of the reader to the obvious detriment for investment in the Spanish economy.

Of the 90 banks “tested” in 21 European Union countries, 25 were Spanish — almost the whole of Spain’s banking system and about 35% of the overall sample. One hundred percent of listed Spanish banks and all of the cajas (co-operative farmers banks) were “stress tested”.

By contrast only the great corporate banks in the United Kingdom, such as the Halifax were tested. It is well known that the Spanish Banking system is not only strong but it can and has eaten the British banking system for breakfast. Note Santander’s purchase of the RBS and the Abbey. Needless to say the main Spanish banks such as BBVA andSantander pass the “stress test” with flying colours. Nevertheless the headline “Five out of Eight banks that failed the stress test are Spanish” – strikes at the confidence of the reader to the obvious detriment for investment in the Spanish economy.

When will these pathetic euro-aparachiks learn? No-one is suggesting that the consumer should be deceived. To be sure deception has already happened, with the help and collusion of the European Banking Authority that is clearly too frightened to ruffle the fur of the big cats, and would prefer to state the obvious with regard to poorly capitalised local co-operative banks. All we ask is that these idiot “stress testers” take time and space to make their information accurate, or that they shut their stupid mouths. Any street cleaner taking a coffee in their local bar is better informed than these self-regarding besuited oafs.

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Posted by: puebloman | July 14, 2011

What is Rosada?

rosy fish on the slab

I guarantee you will find “Rosada” on every menu in every bar in Andalucía. You can get it “frito” (deep fried) or á la plancha (gently braised in a persillage of finely chopped parsley and garlic in olive oil). It is a white fish, flaky and juicy like Cod but of denser texture. Anyone who eats it will choose it again. Brits starved of the “fish and chip” experience can slake their nostalgia with Rosada. Like all great classic fishes it is best served plain.

But what is it? On the plate it is white, although its name translates as “rosy” or “Pink”. If you haven’t got a clue what this fish is or how to find out, you are not alone. We have seen it translated on menus as “Pollock” (wrong), Hake (wrong) and “Salmon” (ludicrous).

Descriptions of the fish as a dogfish (cartilaginous shark like fish) however, is down to the great fish aficionado Alan Davidson (Mediterranean Seafood, Penguin 1981 p26), who wrongly describes Rosada under “Sharks” thus:

. . . the Spanish “Rosada” (a pretty name applied to fillets of various dogfish). . . .

That’s it. No more information. He doesn’t even suggest you smother it with a “sofrito” (a sort of blokey concoction of tomatoes onions and garlic that he employs whenever the word Mediterranean threatens to border on the foreign).

Yes, this really is rosada

To call a fish “a sort of shark/dogfish” gives rise, of course, to all those Chaz and Dave chip shop English names – Huss, Dutch eel, Rock Salmon. These now join the catalogue of mistakes on badly translated Andalucían “cart” menus. Perhaps Davidson regarded this fish, possibly the most popular lunch in southern Spain, as falling below his culinary pretensions. Or perhaps he felt that the name itself is simply too unspecific and you can’t guarantee what you are going to get. I’d sympathise with that point of view.

Oh. It isn’t conger eel either.

To hunt down “Rosada” you have to gather what scant clues there are and aim for the Latin name. It’s the only way to pin the damn thing down.

It seems, for example that“Rosada” is not the fish’s full name. The full name is “Rosada del Cabo”. Rosada de Cabo means “rosy thing of the cape”. The Cape refers to South Africa

So it turns out that this fish, though massively eaten in Spain, is not Spanish at all but from “The Cape”. Spanish Salt Cod, the most eaten fish in Spain, comes from Nova Scotia. Now it turns out that Andalucia’s favourite  fish lunch has nothing whatever to do with Spanish fishing or fisheries.

Rosada comes from the temperate marine waters of the southern hemisphere, the south African Cape, the waters of Argentina and of Chile, the south Atlantic round Brazil and the waters round New Zealand and South Australia.

Rosada in fact, is Kingklip, but this doesn’t reduce the confusing flood of common names associated with it. In Europe it is known as cusk eel; in New Zealand as ling and in South America as congrio or cusk eel. Golden kingklip is also called golden Dorado, golden congrio and the red as pink cusk eel. There are three colours – Golden, Red and Black. The red or “rosy” is considered the best eating and with the best shelf life since the black version with its thin skin goes off quickly.

This is rosada too

Golden kingklip has skin of orange with brown and golden hues. Red kingklip has darker skin with strong red markings. The white meat is of good quality and firm-textured. The weight of whole fish averages 3-4 kilos (10 pounds).

Its scientific names are genypterus blacodes and genypterus chiliensis. The South African variety genypterus capensis was the first to be marketed. They hardly vary except in skin colour. The Rosada has the head of a Pollock with two whisker sensors under the chin, and the body of an eel. The skin is characterised by golden yellow to pink ground colour, overlaid with mottling spots and with irregular dorsal blotches. It hunts between depths of 22 m and 1000 m. feeding mainly on crustaceans like small crabs and scampi. It also preys on fish such as anchovies, sardines and cephalopods. It can be caught throughout the year.

The reason it’s not very well known to Spanish fishmongers even though they sell tons of it, is because it arrives on the fishmonger’s slab beheaded, filleted, gutted and skinned. It’s not caught around Spain so the fishermen don’t know what it is either. It is invariably frozen, which is why you can have Rosada and chips seven days a week, but fresh fish only on fishing days. Rosada is sometimes known as a “substitute” for local Merluza (Hake). Rosada is far superior to Hake both in texture and flavour, and freezing doesn’t impair it in the least. In fact modern freezing methods have the fish preserved more or less immediately it’s caught so that so-called “fresh” fish is often considerably older than the frozen.

Rosada is a good substitute for any recipe that calls for cod. It is not presently endangered. Its deep water rock habits make it difficult to kill en mass, and it is usually taken “on the side” during expeditions for other fish. Recipes follow!

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Posted by: puebloman | March 28, 2011

Cheap Spanish wine: How to read a wine label

A bunch of Monastrell grapes

At the time of writing this wine can be bought in Lidls for 10€. Not 10€ each of course, 10€ for six bottles, with a free corkscrew thrown in. Corkscrews are still used here in Spain where wine is not always drunk the same year as it is laid down.

This is marketed as an ordinary wine to be drunk in quantity. In our household at €1.80, it would come in at about fourth bottle in a dinner party at the point where guests’ finer sensibilities had been somewhat blunted, but before they had got into a fight or lost the will to live.

At big parties/celebrations it comes middle to late night.

What can I say about it? It’s a good dark red and has a reasonable “body”. It’s “soft”. What I mean by this is that it’s not thin and sour like all the French wines I might buy at three times the price. It’s not “jammy” like those “full of fruit” southern hemisphere wines. It’s a “single note” wine, by which I mean – have a sniff, have a sip, drink some and swallow it. No point in embibing aroma or swilling it around your mouth. What you taste is what you get. No point in hanging around, this is not a wine to be savoured.

On prima fascie evidence, I would not take this wine as a present to a dinner party unless I actively disliked the hosts, which I often do. You might try a bottle in this category on the sort of host who whisks your bottle away saying he’ll save it for a “special occasion” as though your presence wasn’t special. He’ll then ply you all night with expensive but poor value wine in an attempt to convince you that he “keeps a cellar”. But I digress. . .

The wine in question is called “Cinglano” and in deference to John’s comment (see my last post) re the seductive beauty of wine labels, I’ll analyse the back of the bottle so as not to be distracted by the design on the front.

Here is the label:

Cinglano label

At the top right hand corner it says “Crianza ’06″. This simple cypher carries lots of information. This wine costs €1.80 or $2.50 or £1.50 a bottle remember, so it’s very inexpensive and yes I know it’s not cheapness but value that interests us.  So let’s consider the value. This is a five-year old wine. A wine must be laid down for five years if it is to become a Grand Reserva. Wines can only be designated “Grand Reserva” if the vintage is also up to scratch and a little research shows us that the year 2006 is indeed a vintage year. So, has the vintner laid it down in the hope or expectation that it might be sold as wine of the highest quality? For some reason the wine didn’t make it to Grand Reserva but has been through all of the processes of elaboration and quality control.

The description tells us that its made from the Monastrell grape, made world famous under another name (Mourvede) in France but the French can only just grow it because it needs a Mediterranean climate. It is a Spanish grape, drought resistant, bearing a small black berry with a heavy yeast bloom, which delivers a high tannin punch that mellows with age.

The description on the label says that the wine has been matured in barrels of american oak for 6 months, confirming that it is a “Crianza” –  a mark of quality. It must be at least 2 years old plus 6 months in oak for Crianza (18 months for Grand Reserva).

Further down the label, the word “Jumilla” denotes a well respected Denominación de Origen situated in the south east of Spain north of Murcia. This D.O. confirms a quality that  is reenforced by the additional little D.O. badge beneath the main label. No wine can be a Crianza without being D.O., and this is a special D.O.

Jumilla itself is a little known jewel of Spanish viticulture. The sandy soil kept down the phylloxera insect that devastated European all vineyards in the 1880′s, so Jumilla now posesses (though it fails to advertise) some of the oldest vines in the world and the largest number of ungrafted Monastrell vines anywhere.

On the down side, Cinglano is only 13% by volume, so wouldn’t pass Dad’s alcohol test. And it “contains sulphites”, which apparently do not go down well with those North London winos who like their liver failure to be organic.

All in all though, quite a lot of quality. Better not to waste it on dinner parties.

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Posted by: puebloman | March 27, 2011

Cheap Spanish red wine. A users guide

It’s about time someone wrote a wine guide for those who, like me, drink red wine by the bottle rather than by the glass. The pleasures of red wine don’t necessarily require a nose or even a palate – not after a couple of glasses anyway. Those who live by the bottle, however,  need not live by any old bottle, and those who of us who are on the primrose path as opposed to being at the everlasting bonfire, can still distinguish between value and cheapness.

I was talking to Jancis Robinson only the other day. we were sitting on the terrace of my 1 bedroom cottage in Cútar, and she had just uncorked a bottle of Vespral Crianza 2007 ( Lidle’s at €1.99) . “John” she said “Wine has got to be the most honestly and comprehensively described consumer product in existence”. Jancis of course is right. The bottle tells you when the wine was made, where it was made, what the local wine makers think of it, how it was aged, the grapes used in the must, its strength and so on. There are several quality benchmarks, not just one, and this is true not just for expensive wines but for all wines, even the cheapest.

We all have our personal reasons for selecting a low-price-high-value (to us) wine. My Dad for example, will pay up to £4 (3 for £12), and will not drink anything under 13.5%. This leaves him deep in the jungles of south america, or in the australian outback.  Even when he and I go out and treat ourselves to an expensive pint of bitter, he always prefers the beer that flattens out at about 6%. Being near the end of his life, he sees little point in indulging in low proof alcohol.

I am always interested in the date that the wine was laid down. Dad thinks this is a poncey way of choosing wine. This is because he thinks I am referring to the vintage, in spanish the cosecha. I am not. I am literally talking about how old the wine is. In Spain you can easily buy a five year old wine for under €2.50. In England your 3 for £12 are likely to be no older than 2009. Now, if a wine maker is prepared is prepared to give shelf space to a wine for 5 years, he must rate it a bit? So I look at the year. Of course a five year old wine will have other badges and claims to fame but we shall come to that in future blogs . . .

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Posted by: puebloman | March 18, 2011

How to select and drink cheap red Spanish wine part 1: reflections upon my juvenile drinking

There is a lot of posh talk about wine, most of it out of date. When my Dad was a lad he drank beer. Mild, mild and bitter, lemontop (for women) and snakebite that has cider in it.

I remember being sent to Switzerland to stay with my aunt in laws’ parents and learn French. I was 13. I came back with a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. nothing to do with Switzerland obviously but it featured in a school French lesson so I thought it would go down well. It didn’t. Dad spat it out saying it was sour and what had I learned over there? Well . . .mum and dad drank Blue Nun and Reisling in those days.

Dad will be ninety next birthday and his taste has developed. He still enjoys a bottle or two of Chilean Merlot between fags. He despises Spanish wine and doesn’t think much of French. He’s a “New World” man. And a Tesco man. Three for £12. Beer that used to cost a penny ha’penny is now a fiver a pint. Dearer than a pint of average Merlot, so we embibe it only occasionlly and as a treat. Red wine is the everyday drink.

In the following articles I will try to lure him towards the pleasures of Spanish wine – a delight as delicious as it is cheap, being largely unknown, unappreciated and denegrated by those snobs who believe that when it comes to drinking, reputation counts for more than taste.

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Posted by: puebloman | April 9, 2010

A history of Cutar in objects 5: the Moorish Arch

There isn’t much to say about the arch except that it’s a moment of elegant silence between the fountain below and the church above

This is where the uphill trudge takes you

Walking into the 10th century

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Posted in History | Tags: , ,

Posted by: puebloman | April 9, 2010

A room with a view 2

Here is mount Maroma (2000 metres and half as high again as Ben Nevis) lit up by the sun

The mountain, like the sea, changes its face and character second by second. Here the valley is filled with cloud. Bright sunshine sets it alight

Maroma a couple of seconds later, fluid, moody, unforgiving

See us on www.vivasiesta.com

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Posted in Me in Andalucia | Tags: ,

Posted by: puebloman | April 4, 2010

Stop Press! Vatican claims the latest victim in Catholic pedophile scandal is – the Pope!

The Pope - abused by the press. "The people of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the idle chatter of the moment," said the dean of the Vatican's College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano.

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Posted in Spain and religion | Tags: , ,

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