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Spain 3: bread and sausage

On our second day in Spain, we headed to the University of Vic, also known as UVic (- and I guess, fair enough, they have more claim to the name than Victoria, which lacks a school of idioms).

On our way across campus, we passed a steely statue commemorating Catalonian poet, the letters of whose name had been picked off the base, so I can’t tell you who it was. But perhaps we can assume a towering intellect?

We had a presentation by a nouveau baker called Francesco Daviva who runs Forn de Pa Altarriba, where for 25 years he has been trying to radicalise bread. He talked about the shape of bread (there are only three: round, baguette, loaf/square), its presentation on restaurant tables, and the various ways of making it divisible for diners. Mediterranean tables seldom have bread plates, so there are issues about crumbs and cutting that quite naturally have to be considered: the sorts of things I suppose bakers used to instinctively incorporate into their work instead of giving a stand-up lecture. Although we passed a few rolls around to look at shape and colour and aroma, we were not offered anything material to chew on, and wandered off for an hour or so before reconvening for lunch in a campus cafeteria. (The bread at lunch was, well, unremarkable.)

It was blistering hot when we followed the leader to our next destination, Casa Riera Ordeix, to see some more sausage-making. Curious emblem over the door…

Fuet, (Salchichon de Vic) the sausage of Vic , has been made for about 150 years in the centre of Vic, run to this day as a family business. This was high quality meat: nothing but prime cuts of pork (well trimmed legs and pork belly for fat). They produce 3000 kg of sausage per week from January to July and then double the volume between September and Christmas, as it’s a product traditionally eaten at Christmas. They have a strictly scheduled week: Mondays they fill the casings; Tuesdays through Thursdays they trim the meat, as we saw:

Fridays they grind and season the meat, which is left to macerate over the weekend. The sausages are hung from nails in aging rooms where the temperature and humidity – much like prosciutto di parma – are regulated by opening and closing windows; the local flora of course play a part in the curing.

The sausages are brushed and re-hung periodically until they have done their two to three months’ stint. The product was absolutely delicious: spicy and peppery, firm and chewy. They sell the sausages everywhere in the world — except Canada and the US whose hygiene regulations exclude these and a great many artisanal products. (Hey y’all: the Europeans eat this stuff every day and are still standing…!)

(Except for the one who fell ill during the tour; perhaps heat, perhaps an early symptom of the flu that would catch up with her later.)

We packed our bags and headed to our next destination in Calafell, where we checked into the weird and somewhat horrible Hotel Solimar, a massive complex where we got to witness European-style mass tourism close up. Luckily our university escorts reviewed the offerings at the hotel buffet we were supposed to eat from that evening and realised it was in fact an inedible wasteland of fried and processed foods, prefixed by stacks of badly washed plates, and so we got to choose our meal in the somewhat better offerings along the seafront.

Canada Day, and the pain in Spain

Just got back from nine days in northern Spain: a record breaker for the university, I think, as being the sickest stage ever. We racked up the following ailments which affected, if I counted right, 18 out of 24 of us (some people had more than one thing) requiring 4 hospital visits:

3 respiratory tract infections/bronchitis
1 attack of vertigo
1 sinus infection
1 jellyfish sting
1 grazed knee
1 dicky hip
1 stiff neck
7 nausea/vomiting
1 incapacitating hangover
1 sore throat (that stopped there)
5 or 6 colds
1 scary allergic reaction

We arrived in Vic on Canada Day and celebrated with some contemporary tapas (outcome: two sick stomachs). Novelties included a salad with a frozen yogurt dressing:

Delicious cheese flowers: a taste similar to high quality gruyere, and oh so pretty:

Some sausage and the omnipresent Pan con Tomate (tomato bread):

Bacon-wrapped dates:

Not sure why anyone would do this to perfectly nice asparagus, but it looks impressive:

Massa to Mosaiko

Last weekend, in an attempt to escape the unending heat of Parma, we took a trip to the seaside, in search of cooling breezes and nice chilly marble museums. We found a breeze or two, and a few other things of interest.

We arrived in Massa and hopped a bus to the seaside which was large and developed. While looking for the information office we passed a rabbit park which was, well, hopping with rabbits. And little horses. And a lot of signs, like these ones.


A half hour or so in the information office was enough to convince us we didn’t need to stay in Massa, and while searching for other diversions, we spotted a castle in Aulla, which if all else failed was at least on the way back to Parma. And indeed it was a castle, the Brunella Fortress. Its address is number 3 Via Fortezza (why not number 1??) and within it we found a small natural history museum, with a few items of interest including a collection of rather sad looking stuffed animals. Nice views, though.


We walked up the hill and then down the hill. We passed a nifty looking fence.

And then in town, I made the acquaintance of a poet, Ceccardo Roccatagliata Ceccardi (1871-1919), who touched down for a few formative years in Massa (but not as far as I can make out in Aulla) during his life of poverty and peregrination. It was some consolation to having missed the Parma poetry festival…

We escaped back to Parma having found only this in the way of sustenance: is it Italy’s answer to Cheez Whiz?

After that, mercifully, it cooled down for a few days in Parma. We had our wine tutor Sandro Bosticco back for some informative tastings, and then spent the rest of the week alternately in a journalism workshop with Corby Kummer and learning about consumer psychology from Nadia Olivero.

Last night, a return visit to Ristorante Mosaiko: very nice indeed. We talked to chef Davide who told us his training route included France, England, Japan and Australia, and before that enjoyed the tasting menus: seafood for me, including in-house smoked salmon (with a touch of wasabi), followed by a mosaic of octopus on a tart nicoisey salad of green beans, potatoes, carrots, capers and more:

followed by some awesomely artfully seared tuna with fennel, oranges, olives and tomatoes and a tantalising pinch of je ne sais quois:

and what do you do when you can’t decide which dessert to have? Have them all of course. That Piemonte classic, bounet, like a chocolate/nut creme caramel as Corrie so rightly observed:

Tart lemon tart:

And the winner was… simple is best? delicious strawberries laced with citrus and topped with yogurt gelato:

And with that it will be over and out, for a while, as we head to Catalunya tomorrow.

Food reading

Just back from a sprint round northern Italy.

Meanwhile, a couple of journals we’ve been pointed towards. Food For Thought, self-described (in the spirit of nose to tail gastronomic studies?) as the Organ of the University of Gastronomic Sciences, is a beautiful thing, like all the Slow Food publications. Helpful in many ways to be part of an organisation started by writers.

And Anthropology of Food is a webjournal produced by a network of European food academics.

Piemonte Thursday

We spent our last day touring Torino‘s ethnic markets with Vittorio Castellani, journalist, broadcaster and self-declared gastronomad, known locally as Chef Kumalé. An anthropologist by training, he has put his background to good use in communicating the issues, circumstances and foods of Torino’s ethnic communities. He’s a writer as well, and worked with our friends at Lavazzo to write Coffee Roots. He was kind enough to agree to an impromptu book signing at our meeting point, outside the Hamam, which originally served as the bath house to Torino’s immigrant workers. We toured the facility later: abandoned for 20 years, it’s been refurbished and offers meeting spaces, a cool and tempting basement restaurant and a turkish bath open on alternating days to men and women.

These are the tenements where the workers lived, above the market. Abandoned now, they held workers from the south of Italy and from many immigrant communities; they still host occasional squatters, many these days coming from China.

The food market is large and varied and sprawls across many streets and buildings: this is the farmer’s market section, an unusual feature in Italy where the food markets nowadays tend to be straight retail operations selling imported produce. One of Slow Food’s projects is to try to develop a network of farmer’s markets around the country.

The market changes to reflect the communities it serves. In the enclosed section of the food market, Italian traditional producers now also sell cheeses and salumi tailored to Romanian tastes. There are areas of the market for all the different regions of Italy as well: we passed a little slice of Puglia, way up here in the north.

From an Asian-run stand, you can buy a bit of pork tongue or veal nerves. Why not?

We checked out a local Moroccan bakery, serving that community’s needs for pastries and sweets. These are part of its culture; a social currency as well as a food tied to religious observance. When breaking Ramadan fast, sweets and pastries are some of the allowed items. Packed with dates, nuts and honey they are a quick, effective source of energy to bodies depleted by fasting.

In the courtyard at Torino’s mosque. It’s the simple grey door left of centre in the photo, situated in the courtyard of a tenement well hung with laundry and plastic sheeting. There were 24 of us there, which was comfortable; every Friday afternoon 20,000 moslems head in here for worship, aiming for one of the 200 spaces inside. The ensuing tension and conflict are widely reported, but nobody seems to know what to do about it.

After we parted from Vittorio, we leapt back into the bus and sped off to Eataly for lunch. Built in a former vermouth factory, it’s a large and impressive edifice, one of the new wave of groceries (not unlike Whole Foods?) promising products for all budgets and offering a whole consumer experience. We started our day there with very good bread and lovely pizza (mine had fresh tomatoes, ham, anchovies and burrata – a fresh mozzarella with cream).

We travelled round the facility with Sebastiano Sardo, Slow Food’s man in Eataly. He shows us a whole lot of beer. Unusual for Italy.

A whole lot of wine. Not so unusual.

A Spanish wood fired oven explained in part why the bread and pizza were so good…

Education is a big part of the picture: the seasonal wheel shows families, as they enter the store, what’s in season here.

The store has a library where you can browse food guides, surf the internet and even buy books and Slow Food paraphernalia.

The foods of Piemonte, a special display which gives a bit of history and background to the foods of the area.

Paying tribute to the building’s origins, there’s a vermouth museum on the top floor, with these cool copper sniffing devices which give you a sense of the relevant aromas.

Piemonte Wednesday

We had a morning at the Pollenzo campus with some of the Slow Food folk on Wednesday. Representatives of the Slow Food International, Slow Food Editore and the Foundation for Biodiversity gave us a talk on their mandates and activities. It was a helpful boost to our understanding, half a year since our last talk from them, and was particularly useful for classmates hoping to do internship postings with the organisation. We left for Bra, where the offices and our lunch were waiting.

Where it all began: the restaurant in Bra where the Slow Food movement became a reality.

Italian sushi, quipped Piero Rondolino, who joined us for lunch. We had lardo, salsiccia di Bra – a delicately spiced raw veal sausage, and carne cruda battuta al coltello (raw, hand-cut veal). All delicious.

Then some pasta, followed by the best panna cotta in the world? Maybe, surely in the running, lots more research needed. It was sweet, soft, delicate. Creamy but not too rich. And very pretty.

Back on the bus, after a shuffle round the hot, closed-for-lunch town, and away we sped towards our final Italian winery in San Martino Alfieri. Not sure what was ahead, we strolled up the path…

Heading in the right direction for Marchesi Alfieri winery…

A very old grapevine (for table grapes)

And hey presto there we were in a castle with beautiful grounds, meeting our winemaker Mario Olivero, who gave us another talk about my beloved Barbera, which is the main one of the several varieties of red wines they produce. A neglected grape, it was dismissed as fit only for table wine until about fifteen years ago, when a few and then many Piemonte winemakers began to take it seriously for its fruit and body and capacity for ageing. Now there are some 50 million bottles produced in the region, and it’s the area’s second most important variety. We sampled a couple of different years each of Marchesi Alfieri’s Alfiera and La Tota wines, and yes they were very good indeed.

After the cellar tour, Marco introduced Elena Rovera, from Cascina del Cornale, the organic cooperative that is an agriturismo, restaurant and seller of organic products, situated in Magliano Alfieri, between Alba and Asti. And what a spread she put on for us…