Maluca Duran preparing centollas at Posta do Sol. Photo by David Lansing.

Driving around yesterday afternoon, I was starving. Was it the dewy green hills dotted with spring lambs and baby calves that made me so ravenous? Or the rivers and estuaries with their perfumed air of salt and seaweed? Or maybe it was Eva describing in minute detail how her grandmother would prepare Galicia’s signature dish, pulpo a la gallega.

“As a little girl, I would watch her dip it in the hot water, take it out, dip it in again, take it out. On and on. You see, it’s all about cooking the octopus at the right temperature for the right amount of time.”

And then she would tell me about some of her other favorite Galician dishes: the sweet berberechos (cockles) and the tiny, much-prized goose barnacles known as percebes, “Which look like your fingernails, oh, and the centollas! Oh my god how I loved centollas!”

Centollas, she told me, were “something like spider crabs, only bigger and sweeter.” And she knew just where to get them: at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Cambados where the ria de Arousa, one of the five rivers that make up the Rias Baixas, flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

It took us awhile but after stopping and asking for directions a couple of times, Eva found the restaurant she was looking for: Posta do Sol. It was still early (not yet two) so we got a good table, close to the open kitchen where we could see (and hear) an old woman smacking giant crab claws with a large cleaver. “You see?” said Eva excitedly, “Centollas!”

This is how you eat the spider crabs at Posta do Sol. Photo by David Lansing.

The old woman smacking crabs was named Maluca Duran. She wiped her hands on an apron that looked more like a surgical outfit, covering her from neck to feet, and chatted with us. The restaurant, which she started with her husband, had been there for 45 years, she said. “No,” said her daughter who had joined us. “More than that.”

Maluca shrugged and smiled. “Who can remember?” she said.

It was still a family-run restaurant, said Maluca, who told me her real name was Amalia, “But people call me Maluca,” and who admitted to being closer to 80 than to 70. Her daughter, Masu, waited tables and helped cook. Her son-in-law, Manolo, was the bartender and also helped bring food to the table.

“Go sit!” said Maluca. Without us ordering, food suddenly began to appear at our table. First a plate of bright orange shrimp, their heads and tails still on, and then bowls of tasty mussels and the famous goose barnacles, and finally platters of the local centollas which were every bit as sweet and juicy as Eva had promised, all washed down with a couple of bottles of local Albariño. A meal fit for a king. All I wanted to do afterwards was take a nap. But Eva had other plans for us.

Horreos in Galicia. Photo by Aprendiz de Amelie.

We are driving through the Galician countryside to visit a winery in Rias Baixas, about an hour and a half outside of Santiago de Compostela. The terrain is green and rolling, the valleys cloaked in fog. Every once in awhile the road climbs, we get above the fog line, the sun is suddenly intense, and there sitting on the rocky hillside is a barn on stilts. A hórreo, the singular symbol of northern Spain. Some are made of wood; others of stone. They are square or rectangular or even round. Their roofs are thatched or tiled, pitched or double pitched. In other words, there is no singular architectural image of what constitutes an hórreo. Except that they are all built on stilts, usually stone pillars known as pegollos.

Photo by Javier Pais.

They say the hórreo was brought to Spain from the Roman Empire. Originally they were used as granaries, their elevation above the ground necessary in this the wettest part of Spain. Every once in awhile we come across a hórreo still being used to store corn or hay, but more often they hold firewood or chickens or even bikes and gardening equipment. Some have been turned into country houses; others look abandoned and sit listing on the side of a grassy hill, charming monuments to the days when the Roman Empire passed this way.

Photo by domingoaleman.es.

The giant Botafumeiro in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela.

I had to go to mass today. Not because of all the nasty things I said about people who believe the fairytale about St. James’s body being discovered by a crazy religious nut back in 813 (769 years after he was beheaded in Jerusalem), but because they were going to bring out La Alcachofa Grande—The Big Artichoke.

The Big Artichoke is a thurible. A thurible is a censer—one of those things you put incense in and swing around in church to make everybody get all mystical. I was an altar boy when I was a kid and I loved being the guy that got to swing the censer around. It was like being Merlin.

Anyway, the thurible at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela is so honkin’ big that its nickname is The Big Artichoke (but it’s officially known as the Botafumeiro). The Botafumeiro weighs over 175 lbs. and is over five feet tall. The eight guys that swing it, called tirabeleiros, use shovels to fill it with 80 pounds of charcoal and incense. You have to see this thing in action to really get an idea of what I’d talking about (see the YouTube clip below and watch what happens to the tiraboleiro at the end when he catches the Botafumeiro to stop it from swinging).

They started using this giant censer back in the Middle Ages when all these stinky pilgrims were arriving from all over Europe after making their pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela. Of course the first thing they’d want to do was attend mass in the Catedral del Apóstol. But they smelled like dead goats and many had various diseases (see my earlier blog about the hospital that was built for these buggers which is now a luxury hotel), which didn’t make it real pleasant for the locals.

So what to do?

Build a gigantic thurible and swing it from the roof of the church over the unwashed masses. It wouldn’t clean them up but at least it would mask the stink in the church. Besides, it was thought at the time that the incense smoke had a prophylactic effect against things like the plague (which wiped out something like 30-60 percent of Europe’s population in the 14^th century). So swing away!

The cathedral built over the supposed grave of St. James discovered by a religious hermit 769 years after he'd died. Photo by David Lansing.

Santiago de Compostela is a beautiful city. The Catedral del Apóstol is magnificent. But the whole reason for why this city is here is a joke. It doesn’t speak of man’s faith in The Big Kahuna. It speaks of man’s incredible gullibility. It makes me want to pull my hair out and run around screaming What’s wrong with you people?

Here’s the fairytale: In A.D. 44, King Herod had the apostle, James, beheaded in Jerusalem. Ouch. His body was put in a stone boat (of course) and sailed to Padrón (why not?), way up in the northwest corner of Spain.

Now, if you flew from Jerusalem to Padrón today, you’d get 2,500 frequent flier miles. But that’s as the crow flies, crossing over northern Spain from Barcelona almost to Portugal. If you were going to go by sea, you’d have to follow the northern coast of Africa, through the Straits of Gibraltor, and then up the coast of Portugal. Maybe adding 600 or 700 hundred miles to the trip. In a stone boat. In 44 A.D.

Never mind. You did it. It wasn’t easy, but what the hell. You got that corpse (which is probably a little ripe after godknows how many months upon the sea) to Northern Spain. Now you find a cart and you drag that coffin another 20 klicks or so inland and bury it in an unmarked grave. Where it rots for the next 769 years. Until a religious hermit (what we now call a “homeless crazy person”) claims that he’s rediscovered the grave. Hip-hip-hooray! Send a letter to King Alfonso II. Who actually shows up and says, What the hell—let’s build a big, honkin’ cathedral where the loony guy says St. James is buried. Why not? There’s nothing else here. Maybe it will be good for tourism.

Which it is. Dozens stop by. Thousands. Tens of thousands. It becomes the Disneyland of Europe back in the Middle Ages.

Meanwhile, these nasty Moors have been messing with things. Good Christians are getting pissed off (sound familiar?). For a good 400 years, Christians and Muslims and Jews throw things at each other and slit each other’s throats. Finally, in 1482, the Christians decide that what they need is a good ol’ fashioned Holy War. And if you’re going to have a good ol’ fashion Holy War, you need some sort of a war cry. I know! How about, “Santiago de Compostela!” in honor of the apostle who mysteriously floated back to Spain in a stone boat? Perfect! Yell your war cry and then stick a sword in a Muslim!

By 1492, it’s all over. The Moors plead uncle. All the Jews are kicked out of Spain (or worse). The Moors are given three choices: Convert to Christianity; leave Spain; or die. (Actually, sometimes the choices are combined. For instance, it’s not at all unusual over the next 150 years or so for a Moor to convert to Christianity and then be put to death.)

Lots of people die. How many? Too many to count (besides, nobody cared about body counts back in the Middle Ages). What’s important is that by praying to St. James, the Spanish have been able to slaughter the Jews and Moors and get them the hell out of Spain. Hip-hip-hooray. Let’s go there and say a prayer!

And that’s how Santiago de Compostela became famous.

And people say religion is ridiculous…pshawww!

The following is an excerpt from the excellent Lonely Planet book, World Food: Spain:

The wines of Spain were not always of the high quality we have come to expect these days. When they were good, of course, they were very, very good. But when they were bad—Diablos! But instead of wasting it, the Spanish would take the bad wine and put something into it to mitigate the taste. Sometimes it was just water, sometimes it was other wine, often it was spices or fruit juice.

Over time a few recipes came into being that pleased most and offended none. To this day, sangría is an idea, not a chemical formula. Some people might use apple juice, or pineapple juice. Others might use nutmeg, or cloves. But a fairly standard recipe calls for citrus and cinnamon. How much of this or that to add to the wine depends on the wine—how good, how bad, how sweet, how dry. The final product should be refreshing and quaffable. Unfortunately, when served in tourist restaurants it is usually cloying sweet.

Sangría

2 lemons

4 oranges

1/2 stick cinnamon

1 liter red wine (cheap stuff)

750ml soda water or lemonade

ice

Take a 5cm strip of zest from a lemon and one from an orange. Place them and the cinnamon in a large pitcher along with the wine. Squeeze the fruit, add the juice, and stir well. Let the mixture sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Stir in the ice, then add the soda or lemonade just before serving.

Hostal dos Reis Catolicos in Santiago de Compostela. Photo by David Lansing.

I am staying at a nunnery, the Parador Hostal dos Reis Católicos, in Santiago de Compostela. Actually, it’s not a nunnery. It just feels like one (maybe because there are so many nuns walking around here). It used to be a hospital. Does it make me feel better to know I’m staying in a former hospital rather than a nunnery? I don’t think so. My room is elegantly spartan, if there is such a thing—a plain wooden double bed, stone floors, some religious art on the wall—and last night I fell asleep imagining that I was in the room of the former Mother Superior. And who knows? Maybe I was. Even when it was a hospital, there were a lot of nuns living here.

The parador bills itself as the oldest hotel in the world. But that’s using the word “hotel” in a very loose sense. It was actually built in 1499 by Ferdinand and Isabella because they were tired of so many pilgrims sleeping on the streets of Santiago every night (this might be the oldest documented case of a government trying to deal with the homeless). Eventually it became evident that most of the pilgrims sleeping in the streets were also dying. Pneumonia, tuberculosis, bad blisters—you name it. So it became a hospital. And remained so until Franco had it converted into a parador in 1953.

I don’t know. To me, it still feels like a nunnery.

This Trader Joe's "Spanish Saffron" isn't grown in Spain either. But at least it only costs half as much as the so-called Spanish saffron in Madrid.

This afternoon we are flying to Santiago de Compostela. So in the morning Eva and I go to the Mercado de San Miguel. She wants to pick up some Spanish saffron to take home for presents.

“You know Spanish saffron isn’t really from Spain,” I tell her as we negotiate the crowd looking for stalls selling azafrán.

“What?” she says. “Are you crazy? Why do you think it is called Spanish azafrán?”

“Because it is sold in Spain.”

We have found a woman selling saffron in little plastic cases. It is ten euros for one gram, 25 euros for three grams. Eva buys two of the three gram containers. Holding them up in front of my face so I can clearly see the label, she says, “Spanish azafrán—the best in the world.”

“It’s from Iran,” I tell her. “Or maybe Afghanistan. It’s definitely not from Spain.”

Eva is outraged. In Spanish, she tells the woman who just sold her the saffron that I told her it came from Iran. The old woman shrugs her shoulder and looks away, neither confirming nor denying. “Esto viene de España, ¿no?” says Eva, pointing at the containers of saffron.

The old woman points to the label that says Spanish azafrán. “Eso es lo que dice,” she says.

“There,” says Eva. “You see? She said it is from Spain.”

“No she didn’t. She says that it says it’s Spanish azafrán. That doesn’t mean it was grown in Spain. Look it up. No one grows saffron in Spain anymore. The labor is too expensive. It all comes from Afghanistan and Iran. And is then packaged in Spain. So they can call it Spanish azafrán. Even though it’s not.”

“I don’t believe you,” says Eva as we leave the mercado.

“Fine. Don’t believe me.”

Eva puts the packages of saffron in her purse. We walk several blocks without talking before she says, “That was for my mother, you know.”

“It’s still a nice gift,” I tell her.

“Yes, just not as nice as it was before we went to the market. Thanks a lot.”

Okay, maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. I mean, it is good saffron. But the thing is, it’s not Spanish saffron. Not anymore it’s not.

Cocido, the dullest dish in Spain.

The following is an excerpt from the excellent Lonely Planet book, World Food: Spain, which, sadly, is out of print:

Now to that other famous Madrid-style dish, cocido a la madrileña. The word ‘cocido’ is simply the past participial form of the verb, to cook. It is a stew of chicken, chorizo sausage, maybe some ham or other cured meat, potatoes, cabbage and chickpeas and macaroni. Eat a dinner of it and it will seem to stay with you for three days. It is typically eaten ‘from front to back,’ starting with the broth along with the macaroni or rice, then you eat the chickpeas, then you eat the meat. You can do this at one meal, or you can do it over a span of three days. We recommend the three day approach. We have never seen anybody stagger from the table having downed an entire dinner of cocido. It is sometimes referred to as the ‘miracle of the loaves and the fishes’ because though there might not seem to be enough as you look at it, in the end everyone is full and there is always some left over.

But this is about the dullest dish in Spain. There are so many good things to eat that we don’t know why any non-Spaniard would bother with cocido except as an experiment in culinary anthropology. It’s not that we think it bad. It doesn’t have enough taste or smell to be bad. Its long cooking in much water seems to strip its good parts of their native goodness. And yet the Madrileños swoon for this stuff. They dream of it when away from home. They even compose songs to it. We tell no lie.

Eva pouring the Ribera del Duero wines of Valdubon.Photo by David Lansing.

The Ribera del Duero wine region is an odd bird. In 1864, an intrepid Spaniard with a very long name—Don Eloy Lecanda y Cháves—decided to start a winery in this very isolated section of Spain. The area he chose was well over 2,300 feet above sea level, way up in the mountains where it was very cold and the grape-growing season was very short. Not exactly someplace you or I would pick to start a winery. But his bodega, Vega Sicilia, did surprisingly well. In fact, through most of the twentieth century, Vega Sicilia was the most expensive wine made in all of Spain. Go figure.

But here’s the really odd thing: Nobody else opened a bodega in Ribera del Duero. Until 1972 when another guy, named Alejandro Fernández, decided to give it a go. Things did not go well for Fernández. By 1983, he was ready to throw in the towel. Except that just happened to be the year wine critic Robert Parker came to Spain and raved about Fernández’s wine and the Ribera del Duero in general. A legendary wine region was made.

Now there are any number of wineries in the region, many of which have opened up in the last ten years. Their signature grape is Tinto Fino, the region’s version of Tempranillo, which loves the cool nights and warm days.

Eva and I stopped in at one of the newer wineries, Valdubon, and did a tasting with the winemaker, Javier Aladro. The character of wines from this region are all determined by the weather, Javier told me. “Sometimes our summers are too hot. Sometimes we have a very hard winter and too much rain. When we have a less-than-ripe vintage, the wines can be pretty abrasive. On the other hand, the great vintages are, well, great.”

Ten years ago, Javier said, there were maybe a hundred wineries in Ribera. “Now there are over 250. I don’t know how they all stay in business.”

We sampled some of Javier’s wines while eating a simple lunch of bread, cheese, sausages, and olives. “We must not forget,” said Javier, offering me a plate of food, “that wine is a drink to accompany a dish. In Spain, we never drink wine without eating—even when we are just sampling.”

I like that idea. And I liked Javier’s Valdubon wines.