Memories of Alcalá 19 – Bread, chacina and cheese

Spanish original

There are three things that people from Alcalá will never forget about their homeland; the bread, the chacina¹ and the cheese. The bread from Alcalá was famous throughout the region. It was sent to Cádiz, Jerez, Algeciras …. There was a flour-mill in the Prado and all the bakers in town went there for their flour. The miller was Julio Romero, and it was located a little beyond the bottom of the hill of La Salada, on the left hand side. Julio Romero was a friend of my father, who had been godfather at the baptism of Salvador, the smallest of the eleven children they had at that time. Later there were thirteen. Thanks to that, we never lacked bread or flour for the poleás².

I think that mill was turned by the water in the River Barbate. There was another mill, which can still be seen from San Antonio, situated on a hill and whose sails were turned by the wind which blew continuously in that spot. It was a beautiful view which I always enjoyed seeing when entering Alcalá via San Antonio. But I can't remember whether it produced flour or oil. It can still be seen, erect and graceful, as if it were a work of the Romans or the Moors.

There were various bakeries where delicious bread was made in wood-burning ovens. One was in the Alameda and belonged to Pileta, the local policeman. When he took the loaves from the oven you could smell the bread all over the Alameda. Another one belonged to Agustin Pérez, and was on the left of the hill which went from the Calle Real down to the Playa. Another was in the Callejón de Bernadino, the Horno de Luna, which is still going in the same place. Whenever I go to Alcalá I go up the Calle Real and into the alley to by bread, olive-oil cakes and soft rolls there.

Another traditional product of Alcalá was chacina. Before Christmas there was slaughtering of the pig, and it was a real ritual. The butcher was an expert, who turned the job into a spectacular event. But the whole family was involved in the task of making the sausages, black puddings and crackling. Right from the start, there was flagon of wine for the slaughtermen. The killing took place in the courtyard of the house, at an early hour, so there would be enough time to work on all the meat, the fatty bacon and the various sausages. At midday, a seductive smell wafted down the whole street. People caught a whiff and said “There's a slaughtering going on”. They were Iberian pigs raised on the acorns of the Alcornocales, but these days it is hard to know what food they give to the pigs.

Very close to my house in the Calle la Amiga, Manuel Romero, “Trinidad's Manuel”, had a shop next to Vicente's bar where he always sold his own meat products. Manuel was a good friend of my father's and the two of them would sit drinking coffee in Vicente Jimenez's bar, at the end of the Calle la Amiga. The smell of the meats being cooked with the spices would reach as far as the Playa. When we came out of Don Manuel's school in the afternoon, we would grab a chunk of warm bread with manteca colorá³ and a slice of cured loin or chorizo. With those calories inside us we could carry on playing until suppertime. But the one thing that couldn't be beat, which nobody could copy, was the Alcalá chicharrones [pork crackling] and asadura [chitterlings]. The blood sausage, black pudding, chorizo and crackling were flavours that would endure forever. Nobody talked about cholesterol in Alcalá, because the animals were healthy and the produce was made by people who knew what they were doing. The children were strong but not overweight, because it was an ideal food for children and adolescents.

When we moved to Jerez and, shortly afterwards, Manuel and Trinidad arrived with the children, we all met up for Christmas, bought several kilos of meat and Manual made chacina in the Alcalá style. It was absolutely delicious, but Manuel himself told us that it wouldn't be the same as it was in Alcalá because the raw material of the pork was different. There was a big difference between the Alcornocales pigs of Alcalá and those which were sold in the butchers' shops of Jerez.

The third product made locally was cheese. This demanded a special manufacturing process and not everyone knew how to do it. But there were families who had the tradition and preserved the style from one generation to the next. Opposite Antonio Mansilla's tannery in the Calle Real was a little old lady called Vicenta. She had a little shop where she sold queso emborrado⁴, a special cured cheese with a strong smell and and a flavour that went perfectly with the Alcalá bread. In the summertime and autumn, the children had bread and cheese as an afternoon snack. We children used to say “Pan y queso saben a beso” [Bread and cheese taste like a kiss], and “Pan, queso y uva, saben a beso de cura” [Bread, cheese and grapes taste like a priest's kiss]. I don't know where these sayings originated from.

Cheese is still made today in Alcalá and many people go there to buy it. I don't know if it's the same cheese as I ate when I was a child, for the childhood memories of colour, smell and taste can't be fooled. But we buy it because Alcalá lives on its revenue and because of that saying “El que tuvo, retuvo” [What you had once, you will always have].

JUAN LEIVA
Translated by Claire Lloyd


Notes
1. This term covers a whole range of edible products made from the pig.
2. Baked dough made from flour, water and oil, sometimes sweetened and used in hard times as a “filler” for an empty stomach.
3. Pork dripping or lard flavoured with spices that give it an reddish-orange colour.
4. Goats' cheese marinated in olive oil and turned regularly so it becomes coated in the sediment of the oil.

Memories of Alcalá 15: Edible Wild Plants

Spanish original

In Alcalá there existed a rich variety of edible wild plants. They were eaten as wild vegetable produce or as seasonal fruit, much appreciated especially by the children. Nobody cultivated them and they appeared punctually each year on the commons and wasteland. The children knew them all, and on Thursday afternoons, when there was no school, we would go out into the countryside in search of its fruits. They were the plants which God gave to the poor and to the children, without anyone having planted them. In the postwar era there were many families who made a living from wild asparagus and edible thistles.

The most popular wild plant was always the asparagus [Asparagus acutifolius]. The asparagus plants of Alcalá were so famous that people came from far and wide to search for them or to eat them in the local restaurants. It has still not lost its prestigious reputation. It is a plant from the lily family, very common in the whole province, but the best plants were found in the interior triangle between Medina, Alcalá and Paterna. They called it espárrago triguero [wheat asparagus] because it was said that the best plants grew alongside wheat-fields. The plants produced their stems with the first rains and the sunshine of our region. There was a place between Alcalá and Paterna known as “Mesa del Esparragal”, i.e. a place full of asparagus. It was used in many incomparable home-made dishes; in stews, fried, mixed with scrambled eggs, served with hot gazpacho, made into omelettes ...

Another plant of well-deserved fame was the tagarnina [Scolymus hispanicus - golden thistle or Spanish oyster thistle]. It was given its name by the Moors: “ta-karnin” or milky thistle. It is a species of edible thistle belonging to the family Compositae. The stems of its leaves, stripped of their spines when still tender, are much enjoyed sautéed with other components of the famous berza alcaláina [a type of stew]. But it was also used in combination with asparagus-based dishes. It couldn't be used on its own, because it was a tough, wild plant which grew in the most difficult places. It was the cookery of Alcalá which made the most use of the tagarnina. In other places they didn't know how to combine it with the other ingredients of the berza.

The cardo [artichoke thistle] is similar to the tagarnina, but with more diverse uses. It has spiny leaves and round blue heads. It is scraped to obtain the clean fleshy parts and the tender, edible part is cut into pieces. It too is exquisite in the berza, but the fleshy parts are also fried at Christmas. The smallest ones are called cardillos and are also much used in home-made stews. There are many other types of cardo: borriquero, with curly, spiny leaves and purple flowers; corredor, with thorns on the edge of its leaves and spiny fruit; estrellado, with hairy stems, leaves and flowers with white spines; lechar, with a woody stem covered in sticky fluid, and orange flowers; and santo, which has a furry quadrangular stem, veined leaves and yellow flowers, and is used as a medicinal plant.

The palmicha, or fruit of the palmito [European fan palm] was much enjoyed, a type of sour berry which became sweet when ripe. They started off green, turned yellow and ended up red. The stems and hearts of the same plant were delicious too; today they are cultivated and I have seen them used in restaurants in mixed salads. But the cultivated palms never have that pure, wild flavour of the palmitos of Alcalá. With their leaves, the country folk made tomizas, plaited threads used to make ropes to tie up sacks or animals, or slings to throw stones. This was taught to us by the Romans and the name tomiza is Latin. The Roman soldiers used the slingshots as arms against the enemy.

The mirto [myrtle], a type of shrub, looked very similar to brezos [heathers], agracejos [berberis] or lentiscos [mastic]. It produced a small, round fruit with an agreeable flavour; they were deep blue covered by a whitish bloom. We ate them by the handful and our mouths would be dyed blue.

The majoleta or majuela was the fruit of the white hawthorn, a plant from from the rose family with white thorns, wedge-shaped toothed leaves, white flowers and a very sweet fruit. They released a sweet juice which made your hands sticky. In some places they are called wild plums. They are generally associated with the worm of the olive tree. In some zones they are grafted with the nispero [medlar].

The zarzamora or zarza [bramble or blackberry] was abundant in the gulleys, riverbanks and other damp places. It is a thorny plant of the rose family. The children liked it because it provided two edible products: one was the tender stems, before they hardened and became spiny. When the skin was stripped off they provided a pleasant but indefinable mouthful. But more precious were the berries, known as moras, shaped like little pine-cones composed of clusters of tiny fruit, with a delicious flavour.

Among the most popular fruits were those of the madroño [arbutus or strawberry tree], an evergreen shrub belonging to the Ericaceae family. It was very common in the shady mountains around Alcalá. It was associated with espino [hawthorn], [wild laurel], agracejo [berberis], and lentisco [mastic]. It was also found on the riverbanks with the adelfas [oleanders] and ojaranzos [rhododendrons].

This is a topic which deserves much more space, but I want to limit myself to what I personally remember from my childhood in Alcalá. There is much more to the local flora than all this. Another day we will devote some space to the trees and shrubs of Alcalá.

JUAN LEIVA
Translated by Claire Lloyd

Memories of Alcalá 3: Juan Ramos's cakes

Spanish original
"Juan, go and get the cakes from Juan Ramos's", my father would say to me while he was drinking his camomile tea. My father was a man with a delicate stomach, which meant that he had to watch what he ate, almost everything made him feel ill. Perhaps that was why he got in a bad mood sometimes.

But my mother understood this well and took good care of him. Every morning before breakfast, she brought him a cup of strained camomile and some of Juan Ramos's cakes. Father tipped the camomile tea into a bowl to cool it down, and drank it in small sips. I sat at his side to watch him drink the infusion and await the order.

The camomile of Alcalá was famous. It was a wild plant which a man brought in a sack from the Sierra del Aljibe, over by the peaks of the “Pilita de la Reina”. Many excellent aromatic plants for making infusions grew up there; thyme, rosemary, camomile, lime flower, lavender … But the camomile was the best in the world. The people of Alcalá appreciated it greatly and were addicted to it.

When my father gave the order I jumped up, grabbed the money, went through the gate and ran like the wind up the Calle la Amiga. I passed by the barracks of the Guardia Civil, where in summer there was always a guard in the entrance, sweating, with his jacket undone and a jug of water on the floor, typing away. I took the “Carril Alto” and went down the street drawn by the smell of hot bread, buns and cakes. That street now seems to be called “Fernando Casas” and opens up into the Plazuela. On that corner where the Carril joins the Calle Real, Juan Ramos's little shop used to be.

Juan Ramos was an easy-going chap, a shopkeeper by vocation, who knew all his customers so well that as soon as someone came in he knew what they wanted. For me he would wrap up half a dozen round, soft, warm, sweet-smelling tarts … They looked like the famous macaroons from Utrera, but they were even better. Their smell and their flavour have remained forever in between my salivary glands and my childhood memories.

I went back the same way, running, because my father was very impatient and had to be at the Town Hall by half past eight. I would watch closely as he dunked the cakes in the cup to moisten them with the coffee. Sometimes there wasn't time for them to get from cup to mouth, and they would fall on the table. Then he would say “This one is for my Juan”. My mother would bring me coffee with milk and some toasted bread with oil and sugar, but by then the cake would already have disappeared.

Alcalá's home-baked sweets and pastries were excellent; cakes made with olive oil, almond cakes, tortas de chicharrones¹, cakes with raisins, “angel hair” cakes, meringues, marzipan ... the latter was also one of Juan Ramos's specialities. He made elaborate little marzipan figurines and sold them to the kids in the streets, to the delight of the little girls and boys. They were playful figures of animals and real-life characters from Alcalá.

The fried sweets were equally exquisite; doughnuts, honeyed fritters, fried bread or picatostes, leche frita², fried pastry rings, tejeringos³ made by a gipsy who had a stall on the Alalameda … And the sweets made at Christmas and Easter: rice with milk; pumpkin in honey, the honey of the Alcornocales; stuffed cheese with honey; quince in syrup …

They say that we were taught how to make many of these sweets by the Moors. And in truth, when I've been over to Morocco I have seen them in refreshment stalls on the city streets, at fiestas, in the soukhs and in the markets. But the buns of Juan Ramos I have never come across since. Sometimes, when I pass through Alcalá, I go to the Horno de Luna in the Callejón de Bernadino and buy bread, soft rolls, tortas de pellizco⁴, and other whims to stir up my childhood memories. But those cakes and those marzipan figures have disappeared forever along with Juan Ramos.

Notes
1. A savoury-sweet cake made with sugar, lard and crumbled pork scratchings.
2. Dessert made of milk thickened with flour, coated with egg and fried.
3. Local name for churros, thick batter squirted through a syringe and deep-fried.
4. Sweet buns leavened with yeast and sprinkled with cinnamon.

JUAN LEIVA

Translated by Claire Lloyd

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