Food, food, glorious food

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Paul

What Galician food lacks in finesse, it usually makes up for in taste, and often quantity.

Our last trip presented some opportunities for great food and as always we grasped them with both hands and made proverbial ‘pigs’ of ourselves.

The first opportunity came at the trout festival in A Pontenova on the fiesta Wednesday when after we’d witnessed the weigh in we bumped into our neighbours (the Madrilenos) who suggested that we sample the trout fayre and a beer at the makeshift but massive festival bar/restaurant.

troughtweigh

I’m not a massive fan of trout as it is usually a bit ‘muddy’ but this was nothing short of sensational, nothing like the trout I’ve had in the UK. Absolutely delicious; simply gutted and thrown in the deep fat fryer until crispy.

troutandbeer

Wash them down with a beer and a pidgin Spanish conversation about music with my new friend Oscar and the simplest possible meal becomes a memorable experience, the very fabric of Spanish life.

The following day we went to the big shopping centre at Lugo to search for items off an increasingly long list of requirements for the house, mostly without success. To break up the day we grabbed a quick snack at a new restaurant which has opened up where a fusty old bar used to be, and chose from their special menu which allows you to select three savoury dishes which are served on a round plate divided into sections (two quarters and a half).

As a concept I am not sure it works, but it seemed very popular with the local shoppers. What did work very well was the ‘Calamares Negro’ dish (black squid) which I ordered and which, while most unappealing on the plate, was delicious. The other two offerings didn’t fare quite so well but if I ever see this on a menu elsewhere I will choose it, despite ‘black’ usually being the antithesis of good food.

pulponegro

That night we met with Stephen and Kay and two friends from England, Tony (who just as Stephen had previously warned is as mad as a box of frogs) and Anne (known as ‘the long suffering Anne’), and we went back to a favourite little back-street restaurant in Vegadeo. Here we had half a dozen brilliant tapas between us, all washed down with great local beer/wine. I was enjoying the food and the company so much that I forgot to take any photos.

The final night in Galicia saw us hunting for a restaurant with Neil and Rosa and after we’d found the previously recommended one closed, we ended up in Meira and wandered into a blacked out restaurant next to the park in the centre of town. The bar was open but despite it being after 10pm we were a little early for the restaurant. They switched on the lights and brought a beer and the menus.

The prices were cheap, even by Galicia’s usually cheap standards, but the food was again great.

I ordered Merluza à la Gallega which was fresh, succulent, plentiful and tasty for €7 (about £5.50).

hakegalician

But the dish of the day, for carnivores at least was Neils’ chuletón de buey (Ox Steak) which was ridiculously enormous, about two inches thick and served with fries and pimientos de padron.

churretondebuey

It took him twice as long as the rest of us to strip all the meat from his bovine beast, break into a sweat, and call for beer re-enforcements to assist him to completion. All that for just €12 (about £10).

With all these great meals there was never room for desert.

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Spanish time, different to UK time

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Paul

The more time I spend in Spain the more I convince myself that it is a country which operates in a different temporal paradigm to the United Kingdom.

There are still nominally sixty seconds in a standard minute, sixty minutes in a standard hour and twenty-four hours in a standard day, but they seem to disappear at a far faster rate than they do at home. It seems that time is in some way accelerated, you look at your watch and it is 10am and what feels like a couple of hours later is actually seven or eight in the evening. It is simply bizarre.

Let me try and explain.

We arrived in Spain on Monday 29th April and left on the 4th May, five and a half days in total, but it felt like we were there for no more than two or three days at a maximum. In that time we only completed a fraction of the work that we had planned for the trip, despite the aborted kitchen and doors fitting which you might have thought would have left us kicking our heels.

Each day seemed to pass on turbo time, so much so that on occasions I did consider whether I was losing large chunks of the day suffering from bouts of narcolepsy. No sooner had the alarm gone off in a morning than it seemed to be time to think about making plans for an evening meal.

Stopping on the coast at 1pm to eat a bit of empanada and an apple, turns into deciding that as it is already 4pm, we really ought to be making tracks back to the house to start the days work that we had planned.

RinloCoastline

Amanda and I have started calling it Spanish time. Not simply an hour in advance of UK time, but a time which moves faster, despite an apparently more relaxed pace of life.

Being profound for a second (as profound as I can muster), I am sure that time seems to pass faster as a symptom of age. When I was a youngster the six week school summer holiday seemed to stretch on forever, I believe because six weeks was still a big chunk of a ten year olds entire life on the planet to that point. Now, hurtling towards middle-age, six weeks is a far smaller percentage of my total life and seems to pass relatively much more quickly. But this doesn’t go any distance to explaining why time moves faster in Spain than here.

It must be something to do with the lifestyle.

In Spain we don’t rush, we take our time. We stop and take in our surroundings and nature; the bird song and the babble of the brook;  impromptu chats with neighbours and time spent trying to describe an item to a shopkeeper with actions once my limited vocabulary has been exhausted. Perhaps we’re being hypnotised!

It is a worry, I don’t want time to pass so quickly when I am Spain, just when I am in the UK between trips.

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England 0 – España 2

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Paul

There were two main reasons why we booked a week in Galicia in late April/early May; to be there while the kitchen was fitted; and, to be there while the internal doors were hung. These were the two remaining major structural items that would, between them, see the completion of the barn with the exception of decoration and furnishing.

To say that we were quite excited is an understatement.

But after almost three years of everything going right, we finally ran full speed into the ‘mañana’ buffer, derailing our best intentions and sending us home filled with disappointment.

This was the scene which greeted us arrival at the barn at the start of last week. Lots of lovely brown boxes packed with kitchen parts, all freshly delivered by IKEA and awaiting the fitter who was booked for Thursday and Friday.

kitchenarrival

We contacted the carpenter and he arranged to come to the house on Thursday afternoon to fit the internal doors and all was good with the world. Our long distance planning had seemed to have worked and everything was scheduled. Then the wheels came off, not one by one, but all four at the same time.

After doing various jobs around the barn on Tuesday and Wednesday we got a text, through a friend (it’s a long story) to say that the fitter would be with us at 10:30am on Thursday. We got to the house early, full of anticipation to see the brown cardboard boxes turn into a kitchen before our very eyes, and we waited, and waited. At 11:30 the fitter arrived, exchanged pleasantries, asked to see the plans and then told us that he wouldn’t be able to fit the kitchen as one of the walls wasn’t square and would need to be plastered (see below).

notsquarewall

As we’d earlier paid IKEA to send a surveyor to check the measurements and tell us of any preparation that we needed to do (a couple of sockets needed moving), we were stunned by his refusal. I suspect that he realised he hadn’t allocated enough time to finish, and that as an IKEA fitter he didn’t have the skills to do anything other than screw together unit carcases and bolt on the doors.

We called our builder who dropped everything and was with us in under ten minutes. He then spend half an hour frustratedly discussing with the adamant fitter, suggesting options to enable the fitting to start, but all to no avail. There was no backing down, he had the might of IKEA behind him, we would have to get the wall plastered.

The fitter then decided to check the delivered items against the manifest. Two hours in and he mentioned that the freezer we’d bought, independently of IKEA, was big enough for person. I took the opportunity to crack my first ever joke in Spanish; suggesting that a couple of hours earlier it was nearly him ‘dos horas antes, es para ti’.

He gave a nervous laugh!

Three hours after his arrival and all items correct and accounted for, he apologised and left, suggesting when we re-booked that we allowed four days for fitting (although IKEA are paid for piece work rather than time). We contacted IKEA who also apologised and offered to re-arrange at our convenience, I got on the iPhone EasyJet app and booked a return in early June.

To add to our woes, within ten minutes of the fitter leaving, the carpenter called to say that he’d just been to collect the doors and that he wasn’t happy with the finish. It would therefore be next week before he could come to fit them.

So that was it, the fatal second goal close to the end of the game, we’d lost, and Spain’s mañana attitude had won. So here is a photo of how the kitchen looked when we packed our bags to leave on Saturday afternoon.

kitchendeparture

England 0 - España 2.

 

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Vice-versa for once

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Paul

If you wade through the previous one hundred and eighty one blog entries on visitgalicia.co.uk I don’t think you will find one about the United Kingdom, and you’ll probably find one hundred and eighty one about Spain.

I normally blog about Spain for my English family, friends and other assorted readers who are kind enough to give a little of their time to read my ramblings. Today I am blogging about England for my Spanish friends, acquaintances and readers, because of the unprecedented weather that we suffered last week up in the hills above Huddersfield.

I’ve never in my life seen snow as deep, and I’ve been around a reasonable while. We probably had about half a metre where it fell deep and crisp and even, but the vicious swirling wind swept the fields bare and created mountains of snow which were up to five metres deep in places, usually in the most inconvenient of places.

The photos below tell the whole story and were taken in the days immediately after the snow storms. Click on the small image for a larger photo.

snowcarsnowamandasnowroadsnowgolfcourse

It was truly amazing, the most fantastic ice sculptures, but a nightmare for a rear wheeled drive car like mine which stayed embedded in the snow drift where I had abandoned it and didn’t move for a week.

 

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Fishy fiesta

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Paul

There is considerable excitement in our household.

We’ve booked a week at the house in late April, primarily to be there when the kitchen is fitted, but also to do some work on the area immediately around the house, to tidy up a bit, and to try and eleviate some of the scars of two years of heavy renovation.

salmon2013As if that wasn’t exciting enough we have now found out that we’ll be there while the ‘I Concurso do Salmón do Río Eo’ is taking place in Pontenova. This will be the first ‘fiesta’ that both Amanda and I will have been in-country for.

While we’ll not be picking up a rod or plunging our hands into buckets of maggots, there is sure to be some kind of feast associated with the event, open to anyone, and usually great value for money. It is likely to be a week when all you can eat in A Pontenova is salmon, cooked one hundred and one different ways.

The competition is likely to be fierce. As fierce as the Trout festival which happens in QA Pontenova later on in the year. There are a maximum of eighteen competitors and the fishing takes place on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd May with a salmon needing to measure 40cm to count in the scoring. It is so serious that lots for fishing stands will be drawn the evening before the competition starts, and entry is whopping 70€ per person.

To be honest, it is the kind of thing that we probably wouldn’t go anywhere near if it was to be in the UK, but there is a wierd fascination and infective enthusiasm with the way that the Spanish enjoy themselves, and if there is some decent food associated with it, then you can count me in.

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