The kindness of strangers: An A for A Coruña

With an address in my hand and a rucksack on my back I waddled out of A Coruña bus station and sought the help of the nearest granny. I asked her if the number 1a would take me to the city centre. Like a magnet I began to draw in grannies from all corners, fighting to help me. On the bus, when one granny got off, another took her place at my side. This continued until to a chorus of aqui! aqui! (here! Here!) I got off the bus only for the relay to be picked up by a passer -by who chaperoned me to the door of my hotel. I either have a disturbingly helpless face, or this city is full of kind hearted people. I am hoping it is the later, as nothing is better than the kindness of strangers.

Hotel Lois smart and chic and situated perfectly in the slim intersection between the beach and the port. In A Coruña the beautiful ocean breathes a sigh of calm through the city. I drifted out and walked the city for the first time on my own. It was earlyish but my eyes were drawn to Café Comba. 1) it had a menu del dia for £7.50 2) there were bottles of wine ready on the tables 3) people were already eating at half one. Before I could take a seat the waitress reeled off the menu, shouting back to the cook as she went. I  chose caldo, a Galician staple. Within minutes a large metal bowl was placed in front of me with a ladle, serve yourself. These menus are often something of an honesty bar situation. Ask for wine and an entire bottle is placed before you, drink a glass or the lot, da igual (it’s the same). The soup, a meaty broth bobbing with beans and grellos (Galician turnip greens) was comforting and filling. It arrived at the same time as a small elderly woman asked if she could sit with me. As I accepted she wished me que aproveche (enjoy your food).

Through the courses we shared reflections on our food, the waiters and then her time in Paris as an artist and well, life in general. Our seconds arrived, carne asada for me, roast pork that slipped of the bone, heavenly and unbelievable for the price. Fina was so content with her merluza (hake), she took a restaurant card to give to her Russian neighbour. At 7.50 euro for three courses it beggared belief. After homemade flan Fina and I continued the conversation along the beach, all the way to her apartment, through her studio where we looked at her art and right back to the city, until I was too tired to go on. What a powerhouse, at eighty she out walked me, out thought me, but didn’t quite out eat me. That afternoon, life felt like a movie.

The movie reel kept turning when back at the hotel Senor Pepe invited me to have a bite in the hotel restaurant. For a minute I was compromised, had I been confused as a restaurant reviewer? The seafood on display solved that moral issue for me and I showed up at nine with my camera and a notebook. Little plates started rolling out from the kitchen, an excellent selection of what Galicia has to offer. Treats like feather light croquetas of hake (the best I’ve ever had) and spider crab mousse displayed technical skill, but Marie the chef knows when you have stellar natural ingredients you barely need mess with them. Berberechos al vapor, cockles steamed just enough to open, were explosions of freshness, juicy and light with a punch of the sea. As I finished the gorgeous tarta de abuela (grannies tart) Marie told me her love of food started by cooking with her grandparents, and it showed. As I left she said ‘siempre tienes una casa aqui’ (you always have a home here).Inside I was glowing and I don’t think it was only from the amazing food.

And so from A Coruña my journey in Galicia began. A green land where people still know how to grow, fish and make their own food. Where I’ve given up listing every foodstuff they do excellently, even the basics of bread and wine are art forms here. Most importantly where each day I was reminded how decent and kind people are.

Fork notes:

• I walked the Camino de Santiago. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. If you can, do it!
• Las Islas Cies are spectacular, even for a day it is worth venturing to Vigo and hopping on a ferry.
• Eat; pulpo, grellos, bread, empanada, seafood (parillada de marisco), churrasco.
• Drink; Estrella de Galicia beer, especially a bottle called 1906, any local wine. 

The Galician good life

Right from the start I was impressed by the Spanish ability to avoid processed food. I watched with awe as my housemates soaked beans overnight and boiled them the next day with jamon bones, to make a killer stew. This admiration rocketed when I visited Sandra’s rural Galician home, beautifully orchestrated to keep fine food on the table year round. They rear, butcher, and cure their own meat, milk the cows, make cheese, collect fresh eggs and pull up veg from the garden.  Within moments of arriving I was sitting next to the wood-burning stove, eating a selection of home cured meats and cheeses, followed by a stew of home grown grellos (gallego turnip greens), potatoes and chorizo with onion, washed down with home bottled red plonk. One meal, and I was sold of the success of their sufficiency (and her Granddad Pedro is literally the most handsome man I’ve ever met!).

In the morning we ducked in and out of beautiful stone buildings, the milking shed, stables for pigs, sheep and a calf. We went to feed the chickens. They ate kitchen scraps, corn, and potatoes, and in return gave eggs and poultry. Next door, are the rabbits, another source of lean meat, and behind them a giant wood oven for baking bread stands in its own outhouse complete with a giant trough to mix the dough in. There are grain stores balanced on stone stilts, and a hay loft. Potatoes and onions have their own shelter, and in the green house giant lettuces sprawl and tomato plants are beginning to sprout. Outside the huerta (veg patch) was still full of grellos. Each section perfectly organised and charming, but the place that really got me excited was the curing room.

Next to the house, an old apartment has been converted into what I like to think of as this family’s personal deli. Two deep freezes store the meat for the year, that of a cow, and a pig, that they reared and butchered themselves. Above them, pancetta, jamones and longanizas (sausages) are curing after being salted for two weeks and covered in a protective layer of fat. As if it couldn’t get any better they opened a fridge and revealed at least 30 perfectly formed cows’ milk cheeses patiently maturing. It is a gourmet food market, but where you can afford everything, i.e. HEAVEN. Susanna used to joke with me and say ‘voy a hacer compras’ (I’m going shopping) when she popped in there to get something for dinner.

I followed the family around for a few days, walking the cows out to graze in pastures, with four happy sheep trotting behind. Cows and sheep work well together as the cows munch through the long grass and the sheep with their dainty teeth nip off what is left. Nothing here goes to waste. The wet winter means the hills are still rolling with green grass and that means amazing milk. Every morning Pedro milks the cows, making for the best café con leche ever, but he also makes a cheese each day! He tips the fresh milk into a saucepan, places it in the sink and fills the sink with hot water. He then adds a little rennet, and leaves it 15 mins to work its magic. Then he gives it a whisk and leaves it for an hour more. Meanwhile Pedro turns the cheeses from last week in the fridge, making sure they cure evenly and don’t go mouldy. Every now and then he will give them a wash in water. When the hour is up, the milk has separated and he gives it a brief whisk before passing it through a colander. The fluffy cheese is then poured into a mould, and the lid is pushed down to squeeze away the whey, and compact the curds. And just like that we had a cheese, in fact we ate it at lunch time as queso fresco and I slathered it with local honey. Oh the good life.

After one of many amazing meals I shared my thoughts that I was completely enamoured with this lifestyle and thought that nothing could make one more content than knowing where all your food comes from. They laughed and said the only problem is if the power goes down and the freezers conk out. I told them in such an event they need only call me, and I’d be on my way to help them eat it all. 

You can't read my pulpo face

It was always exciting going to eat at your friend’s house after school. The different routines, customs (I once had to slyly retrieve a slice of cucumber from my mouth, whilst my friends family said grace), and of course the food. This month I found myself in Galicia, the birth place of my Spanish friends, Raquel and Sandra. Despite being older now, I was nonetheless very excited to be invited to their parents’ houses for lunch, and as I quickly learnt, no lunch in Galicia is complete without pulpo (octopus).

My first morning in A coruña I ran to see the sea. I say sea, but really it is the fierce Atlantic Ocean that, which continually swallows the promenade of the city and delivers some of the world’s best seafood. Menus are full of it, and so are the restaurant windows, packed to the rafters with bonkers looking shells and molluscs. Even in the countryside pulperias (restaurants specialising in pulpo) are a firm fixture in every village. Pulpo or polbo in Gallego, is what every Galician misses when they are abroad. I’ve heard stories of a Gallego chef in London flying over bottles of Galician water so that he could cook pulpo properly. So though to the unaccustomed eye it is a daunting dish, there was no way I was wangling my way out of trying it.

When I arrived at Raquel’s house a whole pulpo was bubbling away on the stove. The markets are amazing, and picking up a whole octopus here is like popping out for a loaf of bread at home. I am told it’s better to buy it frozen, apparently it gives a much better texture, otherwise you have to whack it several times to tenderise it. In fact just like steak there are those who prefer it well done, so depending on your preferences and the size of the pulpo, the cooking time can be anything from 25 to 45 minutes. However, before it meets its destiny in the giant saucepan Sandra’s mum says you have to asustar (scare) the pulpo by baptising it in boiling water three times, which helps keep the skin on.

Once the pulpo had been boiled and then rested, Raquel’s dad set to work with the scissors, snipping the legs into 1cm discs, pure white flesh surrounded by a purple skin and tiny suckers. Olive oil, sea salt and pimenton (sweet or spicy paprika) were generously poured over. In Raquel’s house we ate the pulpo with potatoes as a hefty second course at lunch. With Sandra’s family in Ourense it was served on a typical wooden board and we used cocktail sticks to spear our catch. In both houses we raced to dip delicious Galician crusty bread into the sea infused oil, ate too much and laughed a lot!

Each morsel is sweet like a scallop or crab but the texture is meatier and the flavour more robust. Like most things here, when you eat it the Ocean comes crashing back to you. Perhaps that is why it makes such a hearty home coming for the Gallegos. I now understand why to Raquel the Mediterranean Sea we walked along in Valencia no tiene nada que ver (is no comparison) to the mighty roar of the Atlantic, but perhaps it is what gets fished out of it that she misses the most.

Fork notes

• Some boil the pulpo with a whole peeled onion and others just with water
• The cooking water can be used to afterwards to boil the potatoes while the pulpo is resting
• If you get served it as a racion of tapas in a bar, look for the palitos (cocktail sticks) and you will look like a true Gallego
• It was traditionally cooked in copper pots
• Moitas Grazas to my favourite Gallegos Juan Pablo, Raquel, Sandra, and their wonderful families. Big love xxxxxxx