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.