Rick Stein Explores Authentic Spanish Dishes and Local Food Traditions

What I really like about making these programs is so obviously we have a bit of an, you know, schedule and places to go. But what I really like is just finding people by chance, just as I did down in the square in Trillia just now, a New Zealand couple called Chris and Lindy who said, "Oh, you've got to film this guy Victor. He makes really good MGAS, but he's got this really old a lotment just under the castle walls." He said, "There's no other. There's none left like And I just come up here and it's just wonderful cuz because he actually he's almost self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables and I sort of walked through into this sort of Aladdin's cave really. I mean it's like the ultimate shed and he's

cook now cooking these migas for me in Migas are legendary in Spain. Anyway, after frying garlic and peppers, Victor puts in strips of cured belly pork. And through an interpreter, I asked him about his love of cooking. Where did it come from? Amazingly, he said that he was left alone when he was only a little boy of 7 years old because his parents had to move cattle to the cooler lands further north. They went away for weeks at a time. He had to look after himself. And it became necessary to cook things like migas and patatas braavas and other simple dishes. He also puts in charito and soon these strips of belly pork are cooked. Now the main point of this dish, the breadcrumbs, he splashed them with water

and they go into the oil which has been flavored by all that garlic, peppers, chero, all the strong flavors of Spain. What I like is the fact that he's got well in addition to those peppers and of course they're the local pimentoon peppers, lots of garlic. You never would have put as much. Lots of olive oil and then really fat belly pork and lots of spicy chara. I mean it's it's that combination. I wouldn't have got it. And also I got the breadcrumbs too small. They are quite chunky. They're not really breadcrumbs. They're just bits of cut up bread. So I can't wait to try it. This is the food of the poor. And like many dishes, it originated with the shepherds ages ago. Even Cantes wrote

about the joys of Migas or Mihas for the afficionados. It's probably the oldest dish in the whole of Spain. Well, this is Chris and Lindy who I met down in the square who put me on to this. I must say I'm very pleased. It looks great. It's a shame that most of us has lost the use of bread really, isn't it? It's all always regarded as a sort of bit of a ancillary whereas to the Spanish it's absolutely at the center of their cooking. I really surprised to see you down there because you know it seems so sort of remote here. I mean um what brings you so far away from the normal tourist track then for most people who live in other countries they think of Spain as being a bit like a polo mint

that there's lots around Losta. Very good. There's nothing in the middle with but there is lots in the middle. There's lots and lots of history, Roman history, wonderful architecture, wonderful people, and especially wonderful food. Natural food. Being Seville, I had to go to the most authentic Flamco bar I could find. Not one where all the tourists turn up in buses, but one tucked away where the true afficionados of Flamco go. My god, it's cramped. I have no clue. Not the slightest of what is being sung. It could be about a lost love or a lost cat. But I do know that Flamco is purely about melancholy, tragedy mixed with fury and passion.

The singer and dancer both take risks that expose their true innermost feelings. And when that happens, the audience shout o to show they've been touched by duende. Seville is the city of the night. They don't eat dinner till way after 10:00. And any good evening here starts with the allimportant Tapas. Well, there's no doubt that Tapas came from this part of Spain. And actually, this is the oldest Tapas bar in Spain. Founded in 1670. It's probably worth mentioning how Tapas came the word where it came from. And you can imagine this

is in Seville is really dusty and hot in the summer. And they just used to serve obviously glasses of cherry and wine with a little cover which might be a bit of bread and it was like the top the tapas and it grew from that for to start with just to cover it then you'd start eating it then you get a bit on top of the bread and so it became the tapas that we know and love today. I've come to meet Roger Davis a Welshman who fell in love with Ander Lucia and its food and now lives here full time. By far the most popular drink in pretty much all the tapas bars here is feno. A refreshingly cold dry sherry.

Here you go. Cheers, Roger. Very nice. Perfect drink in a tapas bar. Yeah. Excellent. Lovely tapas. A fantastic place. Is this your favorite? It's definitely I say one of my favorites. I mean you need fantastic. I mean look at these hams here. I know. You know, they've been buying the grandfather of the people who run it now started buying these hams from the grandfather of the owner of the ham factory in 1933. So they've been buying that for nearly 80 years. They've been working with the same producer. So that's incredible.

What really makes a bill for you then? What is so special about Well, it's I mean look at the atmosphere here. People are Is this like is it this like a Yeah. Every Friday, Saturday night is like this. Like people like to be out. People like to enjoy themselves. I mean, here you can be at home, a couple of friends call you, and in half an hour you got a party organized. And you'd be like, "How many like tonight if you were with a bunch of friends, how many tapas?" Well, we'd probably go to four or five different bars. You'd come here, we'd have a drink, a few tapers, and depending on what we'd want to eat, we'd go from one place to another. See, that's what I think doesn't work about tapas bars elsewhere.

You don't have enough. You need lots of them. Exactly. You have to be able to walk from one through that. I mean, Cilla has got more than 3,000 tapas bars. Says it all, really, isn't it? And if you want to eat cheese, well, you go to this bar or that bar. If you want to have seafood, you go to another place. This one's ham presumably. Yeah. here for ham, for a lot of traditional tapas, things like uh spinach and chickpeas, the cheeks from the Aarian pig, garden tomato, they have superb cheese here.

I mean, absolutely brilliant. This place was immortalized by an English writer called Gerald Brennan, who came here having lived through the horrors of the First World War. He wrote a book called South from Granada, which turned out to be the inspiration for the couple I'm going to see, Chris and Anna Stewart. Chris was the first drummer in Genesis. But more important than that, he wrote an international bestseller called Driving Over Lemons, a book I love about living up here and being self-sufficient. I thought that was someone about to take a potshot at me. It's so far off the beaten track.

See you. Cheers. Welcome. Hello. Well, you must be Chris. And you must be Rick. I'm Anna. Yeah, it's a big moment. This is a bigger moment for us than it is for you, really. But gosh. Well, I bought you some gifts from Lancho. I was just trying to think. Well, these people gave us loads of garlic. I mean, loads of garlic. I'm sure you've got lots of garlic, but um not this year. No, that's really Yeah, we've had a bad year. And that'll keep us going. That'll keep us going for a couple of weeks, I'd say. I thought I hear you're going to do us a wild boar um stew. Are you? Is that right? Yes, we are. So, we got some lancha wine as well. Oh, holy.

Just the right thing for a wild boar stew. Well, I didn't realize it was going to be quite so far away. I mean, I've read your book and I loved it, but um it is really remote. There's something sort of rounchy and natural about it. We like it that way. Chris's lunch is going to start with a tablet made with bular wheat. Tabule. They call it kabule down in Australia. Taboule. [snorts] But today we'll have tabolet, I think. So what normally you do is you get lemon. You cut it in half and you'd squeeze it through your hand like this.

Lemon squeezes are for wusses. It's nicely using lemons because after all I wouldn't want to see you cooking with anything. Absolutely not. No lemons, as you can imagine, are a big part of our lives. So where did you get the inspiration for driving over lemons? The title, it's a good title, isn't it? Yeah. Really good. And the book sellers will tell you the important thing about a book is the title and the cover. The stuff that appears in a book is not really neither here nor there. [snorts] But it came because as you might have

noticed when you drove in through Tikola, the village, there's a lot of lemon trees overhanging the road. And after a wind, when the lemons are ripe, hundreds of them fall on the road. It is it's like driving over a mat of lemons. And when I first came here, I couldn't bring myself to drive over them because a lemon in a British supermarket cost you about four bob back in those days. And so I would stop and go round each lemon. Until somebody said, "No, drive over lemons." And nowadays I do. I drive over lemons because there's just so many lemons about there. Great title. You did crack it.

Yeah. I think it was a good title. Chris was worried about stealing my limelight as a TV cook, but I was overjoyed to watch somebody else do it. He seasons the wheat with salt and black pepper and then chopped onion from their garden. And now tomatoes. He swears by these local tin ones because the wild boar can't get at these and the fresh ones aren't in their prime yet. So that's it. That's the tab she stands at the moment. And we just let it sit around and the bulgar wheat should now absorb the juice from his tomatoes and the onion and the [snorts] lemon juice. And then at the last minute, five

minutes where you're going to serve, you chop up your mint and you chop up your parsley. And then you drizzle oil all over the top of it. And then and if you're really lucky, you sprinkle it with pomegranates. That's how we can do that. We live in pomegranate country. Not only pomegranates, but their own almonds, lightly toasted and sprinkled with pimenon. And then the peppers deep fried in olive oil and served with sea salt. Here's a lovely salad with pine nuts, poppy seeds, and edible flowers. This is the life that his book describes, and I'm beginning to feel I'm part of it. But first, we start with a tablet with mint and parsley and those pomegranate seeds that shine like rubies.