Esmorzaret

October 9th, is Valencia day, a regional Spanish  "bank holiday" to celebrate the day that King Jaume I entered the captured city of Valencia to bring it under the reign of the Kingdom of Aragon in 1238. 

In 2006 my friend Pepa told me, that on Valencia Day, one of the typical things to do was for lovers to give each other little handkerchief-wrapped bundles of marzipan sweets in the shapes of fruit, piulets, and tronadors (even having seen pictures, I don't know how to translate those words into English). So, on that first 9th October in Pinoso, I sneaked out to buy some from a local bakery, as a bit of a surprise for Maggie. I found all the shops were fast shut. It may be the tradition in the Valencia province of the Valencian Community, but it isn't here in Alicante. It's like paella. Up in Valencia, they have that bright yellow stuff with big prawns in it and round here we have a muddy brown-green paella with rabbit and snails. Ours is much better.

I get most of my news from the radio, but I also read an online, left-leaning newspaper, elDiario.es. Like all newspapers, it has proper articles, opinion pieces, fillers and clickbait. I read an article about esmorzaret by a bloke called Roberto Ruiz. Blog material I thought. Now I've actually seen esmorzaret, just once. I was a bit early for the guided visit I was doing to a citrus farm near Oliva, and I noticed the strange breakfast/brunch ritual of the locals. I did wonder if this was another very Valencian tradition, so I asked the same Pepa about this esmorzaret, and she came back to say that it was both trendy and traditional so much so that she and a group of friends were going out to get one the following weekend as a bit of an expedition as part of a group she's a member of "And after retirement; what?"

I need to add a bit of background here. Spaniards often reckon that they eat five times a day: desayuno/breakfast, almuerzo, comida/lunch, merienda, and cena/dinner. Whether the merienda is real or not, I'm not sure. British Victorians took tea at teatime, but teatime isn't that real for most Britons on most days anymore. Here though my concern is the distinction between breakfast and almuerzo. To overgeneralize, most Brits get up, shower, get dressed and eat something like toast, cereal or eggs—they have breakfast. Most Spaniards don't do that. They get up, have a breakfast drink like coffee or Nesquik, and go out to study or work. For the majority of the Spanish population their first substantial food is taken two to three hours after starting the day. They may go out to a bar or have a pack-up. If the office job starts at 9am and you eat two and a half hours later, it's probably going to be called almuerzo; if you started at 7am and eat at 9:30am, it's more likely to be called desayuno. The idea is the same. Sometimes an early lunch is called an almuerzo too.

Back at the newspaper article, the writer was waxing lyrical about the heritage of the esmorzaret which is basically a sandwich roll breakfast. Far superior, he said, to the foreign brunch and how the Valencian variety existed long before brunch was a twinkle in some foreigner's eye. How, for the food loving Valencianos, the esmorzaret is, not eating for the sake of eating, but rather a sacred custom that must be observed; a social ritual deeply rooted in the local culture, a ritual that has been passed down from generation to generation, from the labouring and peasant classes to having become a daily appointment for many Valencians today. But, the writer stressed, it's more than just a culinary tradition. It is also a time to disconnect, relax, and enjoy good food in good company. In fact, according to him, having a sarnie for breakfast is a fundamental part of the Valencian identity. One not to be overlooked if you are  a visitor and you really want to get to know the customs of this region. 

Roberto goes on to tell us that many people have their daily esmorzaret with their work colleagues, but it is the weekend lunches that are chosen to share the morning calmly with family and friends. Now isn't that a surprise? He says too that bars start to serve the esmorzaret from nine till mid morning. Here again we bump into a possible cultural difference. Morning in Spain lasts till you have lunch. So, for most people it's still morning till 2pm though I suspect that mid morning stretches no further than around 12:30pm.

The next three paragraphs are substantially his. I suspect he may get paid by the word.

For almuerzo, you don't go to a bar, order a sandwich, eat it, and leave. The esmorzaret goes much further. It starts with choosing the sandwich you'll have today, perhaps from a menu, perhaps a suggestion from the bar, or perhaps you choose the ingredients you want to put in the bread yourself by choosing them directly in front of a display case. Once the order is placed, you can then wait with a plate of cacau del collaret (peanuts) and another of olives, and in most places with a basic salad of lettuce, tomato, and onion. To drink? A beer, with or without alcohol, or wine, maybe pop.

Then comes the sandwich, the big moment. The variety is enormous, but some sandwiches never fail. The chivito is one of the best known, with chicken breast or pork loin, fried egg, bacon, ali oli (think garlic mayo), lettuce, tomato, and cheese. Also the brascada, with beef fillet, onion, and cured ham. Or the almussafes, with sobrasada (a paste made from ground pork seasoned with paprika), cheese, and caramelized onion. Or why not the ones with sausage, black pudding, and tomato; cuttlefish with ali oli; loin, pepper, fried egg, and chips; spanish tortilla de patatas with an infinite number of variations; or baby squid with ali oli. Practically anything you can fit between two layers of bread.

To finish, as tradition dictates, the best thing to do is to order a cremaet—a café solo with rum, lemon, sugar, and cinnamon, although the liqueur can be adapted according to taste. It is usually served flambéed and served aflame. All this, from when you started with the peanuts at the beginning to when you finish with the coffee, is the famous Valencian esmorzaret.

And back with Pepa she sent me a photo of the deserted Saturday morning tube station in Betera, where she now lives, to get in for a 10am esmorazet with her friends at Paiporta, a small town just South of Valencia city. Then she sent me pictures of the sandwich she chose, the accompanying chips and ali oli, the guindilla salad and the peanuts. 

El Mossett in Paiporta wasn't one of the ten recommended trendy spots to get your esmorazet in the article. If you're up there and you want to have a go then the mentioned spots were La Pascuala (El Cabanyal, Valencia), El Pastoret (Nàquera, Valencia), Va de Bo (Alfarp, Valencia), La Mesedora (Algemesí, Valencia), Nuevo Oslo (Valencia), El Racó de Vega (Xàtiva, Valencia), Kiosk La Pérgola (Valencia), Cremaet (Valencia), Mistela (Valencia) and Mesón Canela (Valencia)

 

PS It's also a "bank holiday", Hispanic Day, El Pilar, on 12th October but, as it's on a Saturday, and the shops, in the Valencian region can be open if they wish it will, probably, be a bit unremarkable.

Not raising a glass but it is a toast

A couple of weeks ago we went over to Extremadura. It's a while since we've been there and it's a nice part of the world. Easy to get to too. No planes, no passports, no luggage restrictions. Just tank up the motor and point it in the right direction.

We took the scenic route. We stopped over for the night in Andalucia, in Córdoba, before heading on to Zafra, Mérida, Cáceres, Trujillo and Plasencia. It's a while since we've been so far from home in Spain and it reminded me of something I already knew, but often forget, those small but significant regional differences.

Toast for breakfast. Usual, traditional, commonplace all over Spain. Near to home toast is, usually, half of a smallish breadstick or baguette. Just the half, media or, if you want the whole thing entera. The most basic version comes dry and you self add the oil and salt. The next step up, pricewise, is to add a layer of grated tomato (in Catalonia they usually rub the tomato directly into the bread). Richer people add serrano, cured, ham and even cheese. In trendy spots they offer avocado too. 

In Andalucia the differences from home are subtle. There is a tendency to flat slices of bread though "burger bun" molletes are also pretty common. Bread apart, the routine with oil and grated tomato is much of a muchness. Pork dripping, with or without paprika, wasn't on offer. In Sevilla and Cádiz it would have been. The next day, in Zafra, now into Extremadura, the tomato looked completely different. It had been mashed up with garlic and oil and then blitzed with one of those hand blenders. To be honest it looked a bit unpleasant. Our cats have been known to produce something with a similar colour scheme and texture. Fortunately I'd chosen to be radically local and I'd asked for the local paté, cachuela. Adding pork products to toast is big in Extremadura because of the fame of the local, cured ham - it's often quoted as the best in Spain. Maggie was stoic as she chewed on her toast with tomato. Next morning she wondered if they might have the Madrid (and ever so English) variant of butter and jam. In Madrid, where Maggie lived years ago, butter and jam was the norm. Usually in Madrid the bread has the same colour and consistency as a slice of Mother's Pride but three times as thick. Extremadura offered sliced bread too but from far less industrial looking loaves. In Trujillo they even offered brown bread. I wonder if there's a doctorate in this?  Varieties of toast on the Iberian Peninsula.

about this thing of trying the local variant I should mention my consternation in not noticing something in Córdoba before I ordered. When in Rome and all that. There lots of people were having pitufos for breakfast. I've only ever used the word pitufo to describe what we Brits call Smurfs but in Córdoba a toasted sandwiches with oil, cooked ham and cheese is a pitufo. I understand that they're more typical of Malaga. 

Now moving on to croquetas...

Breakfasting

This last weekend we popped over to Murcia to see las Cuadrillas in Barranda. The event is principally a folk music event with bands on every street corner but there's also a big street market.

We were looking for breakfast and there was a stall in the market selling migas. Now migas come in all sorts of shapes and sizes but the ones in Barranda seem to be fried flour and water crumbs with lots of sausages and vegetables mixed in. Because it's broad bean season the beans were offered as garnish; migas con habas. Migas are nice but the stall also advertised Spanish, run of the mill, sandwiches or bocadillos which use the bread we Brits call French sticks. The migas were still being prepared so we were able to queue jump by asking for a couple of the sandwiches. The man serving on asked what we wanted to drink. Tea, the drink of Gods, wasn't an option, in fact options were few and far between. The question was really, "Do you want a red wine?" So we breakfasted on red wine. Early morning wine drinking seemed a little strange to us but we know an elderly couple in Culebrón who would never consider any other breakfast drink. Just stop to think about the area and its history and it's quite easy to see how wine could become the all purpose cheap and plentiful drink. 

We learned something new about coffee, perhaps a more universal breakfast drink, while we were in Barranda. I thought I knew what café de puchero was. I thought it was just poor person's coffee made in a big pan to make the most of the grounds. Another stallholder put me right. It is a poor person's coffee but the Murcian variety is, so we were told, made with chicory and then flavoured with lots of sugar and aniseed. In my youth I knew people who had grown so accustomed to the wartime rationing workaround of chicory essence for coffee that they still preferred it to real coffee.

In an earlier blog I mentioned that I went to see a foundation which curates varieties of citrus fruit. They keep alive, literally, the sort of oranges, lemons, grapefruit and limes that don't sit well with the unblemished, uniform and visually attractive produce required on supermarket shelves. On the day of my visit I arrived a little before kick off time so I popped into a local bar to get a coffee (not a wine). I was surprised to see lots of people tucking into a late breakfast of a bocadillo with salad, monkey nuts and olives. There is a bit of a cultural gap between what we Britons think of as breakfast and the Spanish almuerzo which is the first substantial meal of the day. Breakfast for many Spaniards is a very light affair and almuerzo is more a sort of mid morning fuel stop to make up for that. The almuerzo I saw on that day is called bocadillo con gastos or esmorzaret in the local Valencian language.

Gastos, as an everyday word, means something like an outlay or an expense. The use of the word in the context of food comes from the idea that this sort of almuerzo was paid to the daily farm labourers as a part of their wage package, a fringe benefit. Workers took the sandwich from home but the landowner of wherever you were working threw in the drink, wine, and something that probably came from the land the labourers were working. Apparently the esmorzaret is currently having a bit of a resurgence with lots of trendy eateries which are doing modern versions with big, mixed sandwiches. 

When I was checking up on this I came across a piece which said that these sort of gastos should not be convinced with the traditional picaeta. Now anyone who lives in Pinoso will know that there's a bar here that bears that name, it's closed at the moment but the bar is emblazoned with the name. Picaeta is another Valenciano word and it's, apparently, what the rest of Spain calls aperitivos. The little things that you eat as a preprandial - traditionally a few peanuts or olives, pickled veg, lupins (those yellowy oblate spheroids that look like beans) and suchlike.

As I was checking bits and pieces of this entry I was surprised by the number of articles about breakfast traditions. The way they rub the tomato on the oiled and toasted bread in Cataluña, the grated tomato and toppings on toast in this area, the sobrasada and paté in Andalucia or the propensity for butter and jam in Madrid. I resisted though. Maybe I'll do the same the next time I'm offered wine for breakfast.

Down the bar

I was in a bar this morning. The bar is called Arturo but the boss isn't; his name is Salvador or Salva to his friends.

Arturo is a nice bar, an ordinary bar. Plenty of Britons use it but we tend to be mid or late morning users. Earlyish morning it's a pretty Spanish environment. Clientele wise it's for anybody and everybody from pensioners and office workers to parents on the school run and working class blokes.

From what I can gather lots of Spaniards seem to leave home without a decent breakfast. I get the idea that most shower the night before so they're ready to go in the morning. It seems to be up and out rather than dawdling over toast and cereals. But regular food stops, and a real interest in food, are very Spanish traits. Anytime between nine and eleven in the morning overall wearing blokes down tools and open up their lunch-boxes. In a similar time slot bars the length and breadth of Spain fill up with people getting something to eat as a sort of more substantial mid morning breakfast.

Back in Arturo's it's around ten-o-clock and I'm sitting at the bar waiting for someone who never turned up. The noise level is high, I mean high, really high. Spaniards are not particularly quiet people as a rule, especially where they feel comfortable. It's not class related. The after show hubbub in the theatre lobby and the noise level in a truck stop transport cafe are pretty much the same. In Arturo's, every now and then, laughter, raucous laughter, breaks through the general din. The young woman who's only been serving here for a couple of weeks looks a bit shell shocked. Salva is working like some sort of machine handing out bottles of wine, bottles of vermouth, cans of soft drink, finger spreads of wine glasses. Ice chinks, the coffee machine hisses, the door bangs. Salva can I have more bread?, What's that there Salva?, Salva give me some of those red chorizos, Gachasmigas Salva, Three with milk and one black when you can Salva, Toast with cheese and tomato today Salva, Salva, how much is that?, Go on then Salva I'll have a brandy too.

A group of four men hit the bar at the same time, two of them have their shoulders against mine, they all have that sort of workshop smell - oil and grease. They're talking to each other, they're asking for things. Salva is answering all four of them and talking to the cook in the kitchen at the same time. I marvel. It's not something new, it's not something unknown, it's not even surprising but I did notice it and it did make me chuckle.

Sorry about the snap. I didn't have any pictures of busy bars and none of the Google ones were any better.

Tortilla and coffee

Culebrón has a breakfast club. Well sort of. A couple of years ago, it could be even longer, some British chums made me aware of the Wednesday morning group at Eduardo's, our local restaurant, and I started to go along. It was quite a big group, made up of around the same numbers of Britons and Spaniards. I used to go most weeks but I stopped when I started Wednesday morning classes and I never got back into the habit. There used to be a lot of laughing as language failed and gestures and pointing took over so it was good fun as well as an opportunity to catch up on local gossip.  I haven't been for months but, this morning, with nothing better to do I went for a late breakfast and to see who was there. As well as the home team there was Belgian representation. Just me representing the UK and only seven of us.

One of the Spaniards who regularly attends the group spent a lot of her life in the UK and she is hoping to return there in the near future. She's still trying to decide between living near to family or near friends she made here. That set a discussion going about why she wanted to return to a wetter and colder UK and why other ex Breakfast Clubbers had left Spain. I suggested that one of the reasons was that living in Spain, without good Spanish, is quite hard work and that's why lots of older Britons decide they will "go home". In the UK they can, at least, make themselves understood faced with those problems that come with age. I was really surprised with how little sympathy there was for that idea. The group was quite vehement that all that was needed was a little application to learn Spanish and that most Britons are unwilling to make that effort and choose, instead, to live in a British ghetto sidestepping interaction with the locals as much as possible.