Preparing the brasero with buring vine prunings

It's raining today so Antonio is preparing the brasero on his terrace

It was pretty cold yesterday. It had dropped to near 10 degrees and I was seriously considering putting on my long-sleeved shirt. Villagers, on the other hand, regard this season as deep winter. They go swamped in pullovers and fur. They are masters of the  traditional pseudo consumptive hacking cough, which crackles round the streets. I know it’s winter here because each morning my neighbour, Antonio Pino, places a bunch of dry vine prunings tied in a leathery tendril by his patio gate. Sometime during the afternoon he brings out his brasero – his brazier – and sets fire to the twigs. Only, he says, to drive off the smoke. He is practicing the very ancient art of Neolithic central heating. He assures me that it’s absolutely safe – safer than electricity (I can believe that!), clean because there’s no smoke, and free because the fuel is a by-product of grape production. Although wood is relatively scarce here, vine cuttings are plentiful and free.

The brasero is an ancient device, supposedly invented by Etruscans, though referenced in the Iliad in the form of princely engraved bronze or copper fire bowls. Antonio’s version, the poor man’s peasant fire bowl is made of plain iron and sometimes has legs. It is supposed to have been brought to Spain by the Romans.

Antonio explains how it works. First you must line bowl with “lima”. In my dictionary this means sand, which I suppose would do as well. In fact Antonio is referring to fine wood ash. He lines the bowl with a thick layer of this and lays the dry prunings on top. He then places the bowl in the road for “safety”, leaving just enough of a gap for a small car to squeeze between the fire and a concrete wall opposite if any of us want to leave the village. The ash, he tells me, insulates the bowl and stops it getting too hot, while directing the heat (upwards I suppose) and conserving it. The wood burns fiercely, driving off steam and smoke, and Antonio carefully heaps ash around it in a sort of miniature version of the charcoal burners’ technique.

The brasero burns for about an hour. “An hour to burn it down gives twelve hours heat” says Antonio. The brazier can be simply put into the middle of the sitting room without fireplace or chimney. There are no fumes or smells. However the traditional way is to use  a “mesa camilla”. This simply means “round table”, but a shelf underneath has a hole to take the brasero. The brasero is seated in this lower shelf and the family sit around the table which is covered with thick blankets. Their legs are warmed under the  table by the brasero. Most older couples in the villages regard this as normal “central heating”, often to the disgust of the younger members of their family who complain that you must be glued to the table in order to stay warm!

The mesa camilla, ready for the brasero, note the thick blankets, ready to cover cold knees!

9am It’s Saturday but we don’t do weekends. Guests often arrive and leave at the weekend. They don’t today but today’s “prep” so I get to slouch around in my dressing gown while I catch up with the ironing ahead of next week’s arrivals in all three lets. Judy cleans the flat. Then she cleans it again. And again. It’ s made with “rustic” materials – you can’t clean it. My favourite things to iron are pillow cases.  Flat and compliant they are instant gratification – you can do one in a couple of minutes. My least favourite are “fitted sheets”. You can’t lay them down. They have bits of elastic in them. You have to go all round the edge then all over the middle and you always miss bits. It doesn’t help to remember that  fitted sheets never fit. Next time I buy a bed I will get the bed, the mattress and a fitted sheet all at the same time thus ensuring that I don’t end up trying to fit a “queen” to a “double” or a “king” to a “queen”.

10.15 Jon comes round. Jon’s an artist. He’s in his late 50′s like us but looks 80. Gaunt and shaky, he has spent his life rejecting medical care and taking wierd quack potions made by wierd quack gurus by the waxing and waning of the moon. He has long had arthritic conditions that have now damaged his liver. He wants us to print a new book he has made but our machine rejects his flash key with red virus warnings. Like owner like flash key.

2pm I have done about 4 hours of ironing. On radio 7 I listened to the last episode of “Hard Times”, a Colin Dexter short story, three episodes of Alan Bennet’s “Telling Tales”, and on radio 4 to the news, tomore news and to Melvyn Bragg chatting to three academics about Miracles. Thank God for British radio. Thank God for “listen again”

2.45 The peeping of the bread machine signals lunch. The bread is made with a German bread mix from Lidles. Hot and spongy. Jude produces some glorious sandwiches.

3.45 I trail down to the veg garden, splattered by inevitable raindrops. The sky has been dark and threatening all day. We are halfway through strawberry time and it still feels like winter. In the garden there is chard and ruby chard, onions, purple sprouting, Lombard red cabbage, broccoli, celery, parsley, spinach, early tomatoes and broad beans. The haricots died in the cold and dark. Chillies that I planted out are dead for lack of sun and heat. My lettuces are huge and going over through the massive surfeit of water. I cut three lettuces and some “come again” leaves, some rocket. I leave half with us and take the rest to Beatrice at the Chemists.

5.30 I am working at the computer and suddenly find myself asleep, slumped over the desk. Hypoglycemia. These diabetic attacks have become more sudden and stronger in the past few weeks. There is not quite enough suger running my brain for it to instruct my muscles, so I can’t move. I seem to hang as though  in the air for years and years and. . . Judy puts a bottle of coke in my hand. “Drink it, Drink it all” she says. I do as I’m told. My head clears. Coke is the most powerful suger rush known to medical science. I’m soon sentient again. Now I really do want to sleep, and sleep deep as though sleeping off a huge hangover. . .just curl up and sleep . . .

We fed them on rice, linseed and bread rolls, and in return they danced for us. .

Dancing Peacocks

Aunt Lil and aunt Win are the real weather forecasters. The “professional”,  “scientific” weather forecasters of “Forecasting House” on the other hand are nearly always wrong. More often wrong than if you flipped a coin.  Having forecast a “mediterranean” summer and a “warm” winter in the UK they have recently been forced to accept that their long-range forecasts are unmitigated bullshit and not worth the hot air upon which they are bourne. Previously we were expected to regard forecasts as “science” – evidence based and therefore not to be  questioned by we mere mortals. So it seems that they can’t short-forecast and they can’t long-forecast but they know all about climate change.

We non scientific experts love to gossip about the weather. So do the weather scientists, which is why most “forecasts” are ninety per cent descriptions of how the weather was. We are all superstitious and secretly think we can control the weather just by talking about it. I thought we English were obsessed by the weather but that’s nothing to the obsession here in Spain.

It has just stopped raining here in Cutar. From June 2009 to Dec 17th 2009 we didn’t have a spot of rain. Auntie Lil’s bit of seaweed would have been as stiff as a board. All the old boys in the village had been forecasting slow progressive climate doom for as long as we have lived here. Visiting Dutch botanists would take it for granted that the Axarquia was turning into a desert. Needless to say we have never had a hose pipe ban here – not like my Dad, who lives in Hampshire where there’s always a water crisis and where it’s always raining.

Anyway, after seven months of unmitigated drought it rained and rained so you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. It rained solid like that for two weeks and then turned Welsh. You know the thin relentless rain that soaks you to the skin while not appearing to touch you. Fortunately all of our self-lets were occupied by Canadians who are the last of the world’s great pioneers, don’t give a damn, and sat under a dripping roof in their shirt sleeves through Xmas and New Year saying “Well, its minus fourty in Saskatoon, what do we care about a bit of rain?”

God bless them. What do we know about climate change? We are poor little monkeys and are dead almost as soon as we are born. How can we possibly see the big picture when the little picture keeps us guessing?

Serving paella. Note the paella paddle

Paella (pronounced Pa!-eYa) is part of the traditional peasant fare of Andalusia. It used to be  basic rice and stock with whatever meat, fish or sometimes snails and veg was available. In paella a little goes a long way. It was cheap because the Valencian paella rice crop was reliable and relatively local. It used to be cooked in the fields in vast pans over wood fires for agricultural labourers so they didn’t wast time going back and forth for lunch. Today, ridiculous “fast food” versions are available to Costa tourists, and more traditional but richer versions are offered as part of the “Menu del Dia” in village bars. Bar Lopez in Almachar has it every Friday. It’s made in nearby houses and rushed into the bar’s little kitchen ready for lunch. It’s served as a starter course. The  paella in the photos is different again, it is part of the hospitality of the pueblo, a massive dish made in the open air at an annual fiesta when free food and drink is given away to all.

In case you want to do this for your community, the following recipe gives rough quantities that will feed a whole village plus friends, family, hangers on, and the band of scroungers who trail from fiesta to fiesta looking for a free lunch.

Paella del Pueblo: Serves 500 people as a small plate light lunch.

Chef demonstrates pan and paddle Benamargosa 2009

What you will need:

Two massive paella pans 1 to 2 metres in diameter, on stands.

• Two long steel paella paddles
• A large supply of seasoned wood. Olive is best but almond and lemon wood are also good
• Two large chefs in stained t shirt and shorts to mix the paella
• Two assistants with hoses to hose down the legs of the chefs
• Two or three assistants to serve
• 500 little paper plates
• 500 little plastic forks
• Ingredients (more or less):

1. 100 litres of water
2. 50 kilos of paella rice
3. 50 kilos of mixed frozen seafood (100g per person) Including prawns, squid, mussels and small clams frozen in their shells. The seafood should be thawed but still slightly icy.
4. 8 kilos chicken wings (optional)
5. 5 litres Olive oil (not virgin or extra)
6. 1 kilogram sweet pimiento powder
7. 200gr saffron powder
8. The “secret ingredient” that no-one will tell you about but I think is fish stock powder and garlic powder to taste

Method

1. About an hour before you want to start cooking light a fire under each pan
2. Pour in the oil and fry the chicken wings til light golden, stirring with your paddles
3. Soak the saffron or make a paste with water
4. Add the rice to the pan straight from the bag. Coat the rice with the oil and the fat from the chicken and let fry a little, stirring with your paddle
5. Throw in the pimiento and garlic. Stir to coat
6. Add the water
7. Dilute the saffron and add to the mixture. The liquid should be brightish yellow to orangish (see photos)
8. Add stock cubes or mix powder to a paste, add to the mixture and taste. Be careful not to over salt. If your stock is cheap and commercial, it is just salt and fat. Ideally you’d have 100 litres of your own home made stock . . .
9. The water will take ages to come to the boil. Go and have a beer. Walk over occasionally and poke the mixture as though you know what you’re doing but do not stir, beyond checking that the rice is not sticking.
10. Keep drinking but keep your eye on the rice once the mixture has come to the boil.
11. The rice will quite suddenly start to absorb the liquid. As soon as it starts to do this, chuck in some seafood. As the water comes back to the boil chuck in some more util it’s all in.
12. Let the mixture simmer for 15 minutes, watching carefully and testing for sticking. Taste the rice for doneness. It should be very slightly al dente because it will continue to cook while you serve it. Use your senses of smell and taste to let you know when its about to be ready . .
13. When there’s hardly any liquid left, toss the mixture with your paddles. Assistants hose down your legs so the fire doesn’ burn them.
14. Serve immediately on paper plates with plastic forks, piping hot.

Experienced chef apalled at the extremely small paella and the improvised paddle

Turn north into the hills however and everything changes. If you’re foreign you will need a phrase book, you will have to eat at lunchtime (mid afternoon) and not in the evening, you won’t be able to tell a shop from an ordinary house, and even if you can speak Spanish you won’t be able to understand anything anyone says. This is ‘rural tourism’ – pure, “authentic” and a world away from the union-jack shorts and lager-vomit of  “traditional” tourism. The junta here are determined that the hills will not end up like the coast. Last month the mayor of Alcaucin was hauled away in chains, his mattress found to be literally stuffed with the cash ‘bungs’ he received for turning a blind eye to illegal cortijos and swimming pools. More arrests are to follow and illegal builds have been served notice that they may be pulled down within a month without reference to legal process. In the past, Spanish law used to be so long winded that illegals often developed squatters rights while due process ground to its exceedingly slow conclusion. No more.

An altogether more upmarket  future is planned for the tourism of the hills – wholesome, healthy, cultural, educational, of the sort favoured by the young upwardly mobile and the solvent middle aged. To this end the junta have invented a number of genteel ‘routes’ , so that the discerning tourist can glean the greatest possible cultural bang for his increasingly meagre buck. There is, for example, the Route of the Moor, the Route of Wine, the Route of the Olive, and, bizarrely, the Route of the Avocado. Almachar and Cutar lie on the Ruta de la Pasa (the route of the raisin).  However, certain feckless young persons have found that by scraping one of the legs off the letter R they can create the letter P.  So “Ruta de la Pasa”  became “Puta de la Pasa”  or Whore of the Raisin. We now have Whore of the Moor, Whore of the Wine, Whore of the Olive, and, most disgusting of all, Whore of the Avocado. Although vandalism is a terrible thing, it does lighten up the landscape a bit while reminding us all of the fate that awaits the pure, when forced suddenly to make a living.

My working day is very different from when in London. Here it’s all physical, practical and dependent on common sense – something I don’t have much of. Judy and I have monday meeting where we designate deadlines and responsible officers (Jude or me). We then go away with a list. Mine looks something like this: repot the vine, paint the front of the big house, repair ceilings as required, sand and varnish the woodwork, write a contract form for customers, wash sheets, iron sheets, do spanish homework, cook meal for guests, meet guests, serve meal. Finish concreting the terrace, change gas bottles, hire (buy?) a dehumidifier, cut wood from Paco Manchester’s dead almond grove, shop for veg at the Thursday market in Velez, plant out tomatoes, weed the mangoes, repair the irrigation, crop the broad beans, crop oranges, juice the lemons, buy more seedling lettuce. Update blog. Write a Rambling page for the website, confirm hospital appointment in Malaga and London. Order insulin online, restock bleach, scourers, red wine. . . . .

There is a debate among hispanophiles as to whether this term is a specific attack on the  “sons of the waves” or  just everyday racism. We were introduced to the word by a friend in the village who came round every Saturday morning for conversation. The idea was to do half in Spanish and half in English but we always gave up and resorted to scabby village gossip in “Spangish”. Our friend told us that  guiri wasn’t at all offensive. She thought it was fair comment. “Every week” she said “I tell my friends I am going to teach Spanish to the “guiris”.”And every week” I replied ” I tell my friends that the cateta (the peasant) is coming round to learn English”

She was furious and told  us she couldn’t possibly be a cateta because she was at university studying business. So that put us right. Her position was clear. So was ours.

For those who enjoy guiri spotting, guiris can be seen in large shoals cavorting between the saucy birthday cards in the English bookshop, and the export Daily Mail stand oustide Eroski’s near Velez-Malaga.