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For hundreds of years, pilgrims have come to this street to have their first decent meal after weeks or months of being on the road. And even now, it's still catering for the weary travellers. Just looking around here, it's really whetting my appetite. Everywhere I look, there are appetising plates of food. There's a good little market near the cathedral. It's called Abastos. It's a bit like a farmers' market. And right amongst it is a tiny restaurant, run by a couple of young guys called Iago and Marcos. Because their restaurant is so small, they've had to come up with novel ideas on how to use
all available resources to the best advantage. [Iago] Only 10 seconds. [Rick] Witness the first time I've ever seen cockles cooked in 10 seconds by the steam from an espresso machine. That's all you need for a tapas dish. The cockles couldn't be better. Sweet and firm….and not a hint of coffee. Today, we are going to choose the best fish. I think that today there is hake. A very good hake. And seafood too. [Rick] I love seafood! It's my passion! [Iago] Let's go to the seafood. [Rick] OK, come on.
[Rick] Cigal… [Iago] Cigala. [Rick] Cigala. How much would they be about? Three… Three kilos, for us. [Rick] And how will you cook those? [Iago] Yeah. Today… Er… hot water. [Rick] And salt? Yeah. Laurel. [Rick] Laurel? Oh, bay leaf! [Iago] Yeah. Bay leaf. - Todo? - Let's go. (SPEAK IN SPANISH) - He has to work now. - He's got to work. Do you want to… OK, fine. Yes, he's got to work. And we'd held him up so much, I felt honour bound to give him a hand.
Well, I must say, I didn't know I was going to get enrolled to doing a bit of prep when I turned up here this morning, but they're so short. They've got this lunch for 12 people, and they're going to shut the restaurant, but it's really a very elaborate affair. And of course, I could only help them. They've only been open for three months. Basically, it's such a good idea. And it's so nice to see young people getting involved like this.
I mean, gosh, if I was their age, I'd be so excited. Set up in this lovely little restaurant next to a lovely market, and just going around the market every day, buying what you want for that day's cooking only, changing the menu every day so you can just cook what's best in the market. I mean, it's like every chef's dream. (SPEAKS SPANISH) [Rick] This sort of cooking is right up my street. I mean, first of all, he's just saying that he's only cooking these clams a la plancha, which means on the griddle, for two minutes. And they're saying that quite a lot of the Galician customers like them cooked longer,
but he just likes them cooked as little as that. This is the sort of way that I think Spanish food is so perfect. It's sort of like Japanese food, in a way. The best ingredients cooked as simply as possible. And now he's just adding a little bit of oil on top of there. Just look at those on the plate there. Just a little thin stream of oil. And then just some fried parsley. I mean, that is just simple, perfect expression of great seafood.
I thought cider was really popular from Somerset to Cornwall. I should know because I've drunk quite enough of it in my time. But here in Asturias it is, without a shadow of doubt, the most important drink in the region, far more important than wine. This festival in Gijón is one of many to celebrate it. It's curious, but after a couple of glasses you get quite used to the way they pour things. (SPLUTTERS) Can we do another one? Stronger than it looks. Whether a beer or cider festival, it's an amazing place to meet people.
This is my husband, he's English, I'm Asturias. He's, erm. Just tell us about Asturias. What does the cider, Asturian cider, mean to you, people from Asturias? To me it means our culture, because the way you pour it. [Rick] Yeah. [Woman] You drink it straight from the bottle. It's not the same. It's not broken. It has to break on the side. [Rick] Break? We call it break. If you break the. [Rick] Yeah. And it looks different. It's not as transparent. It's more. [Rick] Cloudy.
- Cloudy. - Yeah, yeah. It has to be like that. You're supposed to leave a little so that you go like that. [Rick] Why? This is because you all drink from the same glass, so the way you drink, you throw it so it gets clean with the alcohol. So the way I drink there, I have to drop it there. Yes, it means a lot. We are always drinking cider and party, party. [Rick] Thank you. Hello to Cornish people. I love Cornwall. [Rick] It was a rather rainy, cold, early spring evening. It felt more like Shepton Mallet than Spain.
I've just been watching three of those guys serving the cider. The cidre. And I think macho comes very easily to the Spanish. The way they were standing there, hand held high, looking straight in front of them, pouring into the glass. And I was just watching. They were sort of getting it as close as they could to their chest, and I was sort of thinking a bit like a matador in a bullfight.
Not quite so dangerous, I have to say. You know, when they stand there and the bull's horn, goes so close to their really smart chest. It's like that. It's the same sort of, like, seriousness on their face. Love it. Love this too. One of the things I really like at these sort of local festivals is to go and buy some of the food that everybody eats. So I've got some - at some cost to me, I can tell you. The queue was enormous. Some local food. I just find it so appetising.
You know, as much as I like the odd hotdog, this is much more attractive to me. First of all, we've got fabada. That's a sausage, ham and bean stew, beans being the most important. Then here, we've got tripe. A lot of people don't like tripe, but I love it, particularly with this sausage and pimentón. Really good way of eating it. Here, we've got more chorizo. Well, it is Spain. But this time done in cider. I really like that. It's really nice and acid. And finally, of course, Cabrales cheese, just on a slice of very nice bread.
I've tried some already. Cabrales, the second most famous cheese in all of Spain after Manchego, number one cheese in Asturias, made from three different milks. Goat, cow's and ewe milk. Ewe's milk, sorry. Matured in caves. Fantastic. I'm going to see a friend, Chris Hadlington, a chef from Plymouth who now owns a house in the Cantabrian mountains. He's spoken fondly about the village where he now lives, and I had warm expectations. [Chris] Well, here we are in the village of Somballe.
[Rick] It's not very picturesque. [Chris] It's beautiful, isn't it? - What? - We're very high up. - It's atmospheric, I must say. Nearly 1,000 metres. - Really? - Yeah. - God, it's cold. - Very cold. Especially for May, yeah. - So where's this bar, then? - Here is. this is the bar. It looks like a shed. Well, literally the guy that runs it, he owns the barn. And this is a community bar, so it's not licensed.
It has no taxes. And it's literally run for the people in the village. - Gosh! - It never closes. If there's nobody here, you just help yourself to a beer and pop the money on the counter. My gosh! - Here you go. - This is wonderful. This is a real boys' bar. [Chris] And here we are. Always a nice bowl of, er. - That is it? - Yeah, that's the caldo. Caldo is literally, er… They'll give you a shot, just to warm you up. But it's made with the bones from. These are beef bones. And garbanzos, which are the chickpeas.
Pimientos - the peppers. Carrots and onions. And you drink it in a little cup or a little glass, and they'll just give you the clear broth. And the stock is just stunning. Well, you'll taste it in a minute. - So it's called caldo? It's called caldo. "Caldo" is just stock. It's the Spanish word for stock. Yeah, caldo. All the time there, it'll warm you up. Fernando. Fernando looks after the bar. Very, very nice to meet you, Fernando. Can we have something to drink?
I would have thought some. - Dos vinos, por favor. - Vino. Well, I mean, it's unbelievably fabulous. I had no idea. I just thought it was all going to be neat and tidy. But this is rougher. Rougher than I could have imagined. It sort of reminds me, like, in Cornwall, you've got all these like pretty villages full of holiday cottages. Then there's a few villages left that have got these disused cars, you know, with the wheels off on blocks. And it's just like this. Well, this is very much a working village. This is where the people look after the cattle, look after. Well, do you ever get any tourists up here?
- Never see a tourist up here. - I'll bet. That's the joy of coming up. And what about the food then? Oh, the food in this part of the world! Well, you know, living amongst the mountains, it's fantastic. They hunt wild boar, they hunt venison. The rivers are full of fresh brown trout. In fact, my neighbour last night when I got home had just fished out two brown trout for my supper. How fantastic's that? Straight out of the river that day. It sounds like Ernest Hemingway. It's great. So what would you eat? What do they…?
I mean, presumably there's no restaurants around here… No. No restaurants up here. Down in the valley, you'd get restaurants. You'd eat whatever was available. I mean, when I first arrived here, you'd think, "Well, the food's fantastic." And then you find you go to another restaurant and it's the same food. And the same food, the next restaurant. But what you realise is that they only eat A, what's local and B, what's in season. So then you start to become very, very picky. Who cooks the best cocido? And how important is food and eating to locals here?
Oh, it's a religion. It's very much a religion. I tell you, these people, whatever happens, at one o'clock, it's lunchtime. [Rick] For a snack, Fernando fries fatty, salted belly pork, which goes really well with the wine, and then slices of black pudding. This was made by Audelina in the next village down the valley. I know this is not to everyone's taste, but it is to mine. And it may not be around for much longer.
Aude's just been mixing some rice which she's boiled and cooled in this lovely terracotta pot. And then she's added fat - onions fried in fat, twice as much onion to the fat. And I think the onion, the very, very slow-cooked onion in lard is - apart from the blood, which is just about to go in - that's what makes really good morcilla to me. It's got that slightly sweet taste of onion in it. Now she's adding sweet paprika - dulce. (SPEAKS IN SPANISH)
That's very good. It's a bit like Cataluña. You've got the sea on one side and the mountains on the other. It's very lush, as you can see. But unfortunately, it's also very rainy, which is rather a shame. Because the Basque Country, particularly up here in this sort of, just going up into the mountains. It's incredibly attractive. You've got lovely limestone peaks and they're really jagged. So I'm really disappointed that you can't see them in the mist. But I'm on my way to a restaurant, which was recommended to me by a very well-known Australian chef called Neil Perry.
The thing I like about it, the sound of it, is that everything the chef there, Victor, cooks is cooked over homemade charcoal. And apparently, it's all to do with his background in the region, in the mountains here. That he's just very familiar with cooking in this way, right back to his childhood. So as a bit of a fan of barbecue cooking anyway, I'm utterly looking forward to it. Victor, that's him in the black T-shirt, and his chef Lennox, run what's been described as the world's best barbecue joint.
Victor designed and built these grills that can be lifted or lowered to control the cooking speed. And anyone who has a barbecue will know what a bonus that would be. Lennox, would you ask Victor why he cooks in this way? Sure. (SPEAKS SPANISH) [Rick] He's saying, opening this restaurant was a very emotional journey. As a child, brought up in a house without gas or electricity, all the cooking was done over a fire, a wood fire. So his earliest memories of food were always influenced
by the flavours of smoke from the charcoal, and the food never tasted better. And now, 40 years on, he works to recapture those flavours from his youth. Even as a young adult, he worked as a forester in the hillsides and would cook just like his grandmother did, out on an open fire in the woods. He said it's the most natural and the best way to cook. (SPEAKS SPANISH) [Rick] So basically, it is an emotional journey for him.
[Lennox] Very much so. That's really interesting, because I'm a cook too. And, I mean, the funny thing is that I do feel, from listening to that, I suddenly realised all I try to do is go back to my childhood and recreate those flavours of when I was little. That's all I do. And so I'm totally simpatico with the way. with what he's saying. These prawns are special. Look at that. [Lennox] So these are the gambas de Palamós. Could I? I feel diffident about. I'm just going to be very Spanish and just.
Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh! They are just. Oh, I'm sorry. Ask any chef in Spain where the tastiest prawns come from and they'll say Palamós, a fishing port on the Mediterranean in Catalonia. They're quite amazing. Just gently warmed. Just, you know, warm in the mouth. The succulent flavours of the. Sorry, I'm having a difficult moment. I can't… I can't talk any more. It's just so, so wonderful. I know this steak is going to be great too. Victor said it actually came from a dairy cow about 12 years old, not a young, prime, three-year-old steer.
Again, he said when he was growing up, this is what they used to eat for a special treat, and he doesn't want to change that. Well, I can't wait to try this, having watched Victor cook it. I mean, this is just central to any meat lover's love. Today, I'm meeting Floren and his wife, Mercedes - vegetable growers who supply some of the top chefs in the restaurants in Spain.
Chefs who really put Spain on the culinary map. Artichokes… (SPEAKING IN SPANISH) [Rick] What is it in Spanish? - Alcachofa. - Alcachofa? - Alcachofa. [Mercedes] This is beans. [Rick] Oh, broad beans, I love them. I just discovered you supply Ferran Adrià and Juan Mari Arzak with their vegetables. - Sí. - So, you're the vegetable king? He start 25 years ago. So when Juan Mari is not so famous, Ferran Adrià is not so famous.
They start too. So all of them start together, so they grow up together. So you're all a formation of the nouvelle cucina? Nouvelle cuc… Sí. [Rick] Floren and Mercedes had the perfect dish to show off their selection of vegetables. A minestra, which is like a thick soup made entirely from young vegetables. There are runner beans, which take about 30 seconds to blanch, and Floren chops up some borage stalks. That's a new one. I've only had it in Pimm's.
He then blanches those, too. Next, he shows me how he prepares the young, freshly picked artichokes. They're soft enough to be peeled, and the flower part of the tip removed, and then split in half. [Mercedes] These artichokes, we cook yesterday. [Rick] Good Lord! How come they're sort of turquoise green? [Mercedes] Just water and salt. [Rick] Water and salt? Water have to be 2,000. magnesium, is the word? (SPEAKS IN SPANISH) And more. (SPEAKS IN SPANISH) The water from here have this.
I don't think I can do a recipe for it. It's a great colour. Oh, I've got to get that. I've got to take that back to my restaurants. (MERCEDES SPEAKS IN SPANISH) Now we're going to clean the asparagus. We're going to show you how we clean. [Rick] OK. [Mercedes] Like that. I love gadgets. Can I just have a look? [Mercedes] Yes. Of course. Oh, I've got to have one of those. I'm surprised Floren hasn't got his name on it.
This one, the other one. He's going to present to you his knife. [Rick] Oh, I'm very. [Mercedes] It go with you everywhere you go. (FLOREN SPEAKS IN SPANISH) [Mercedes] You're going to remember us together and our vegetables. It's for you. A present for you. (SPEAKS IN SPANISH) He's going to be your partner in your trip. So. [Rick] The asparagus will take about five minutes to soften, and Floren is ready to start the final part of the process.
He's frying off onions - again, picked a minute ago from his huerta - along with some young, tender garlic stalks. And all at that stage, straight out of the ground. They're mild and subtle. Now he adds flour, because a minestra is quite thick. That will absorb some of the oil while it cooks out. And then for the stock. He uses a cupful of water from the asparagus….and another from the electric soup. I mean, that is great. It looks a bit like something out of science fiction, but I mean, that will give the finished minestra such a lovely green, spring-like colour.
Now he puts in the artichokes. The thing about this dish is that you use whatever is in season when it's just at its tippy-top best. And I think it's a great thing to cook in an allotment. That's if you get the weather. I like these baby broad beans, sweet and tender. They'll take seconds to soften. And now for the asparagus. The Spanish love their fat, white asparagus. Look at that green now. Just the water? I just somehow can't believe it. Then more runner beans. One of my favourite vegetables.
Fresh and young. And lastly, tiny peas, which Floren calls the caviar of the land. It's lovely watching this in this allotment. Lovely cooking outdoors, you know, because it seems right. You can go and pick the artichokes and the broad beans. You know, the queen of the vegetables, right? King, king, king. Sorry, yeah. Well, but he has long hair, so maybe.
[Rick] Well, it's time for lunch. And that, I'm pleased to say, means a glass - or possibly two - of wine. Although not as famous as its neighbour Rioja, I think the wines here in Navarra are just as good. You see what I mean about this dish? It is just like a thick soup. - Salud. - Salud. - Cheers. What's really nice about this, they're all friends, they're all restaurateurs. Well, I think one's got a disco, but maybe he or she cooks at the disco. One of them cooks at El Bulli, which is just around the corner. But what I really like about it is they're all good cooks. So I'm picking up tons of stuff.
And I know that everything they cook will be the best possible dish. So I'm very excited. Once the fish is fried and put to one side, the pan is deglazed with fish stock and then in goes some romesco paste. That's all mixed together and immediately sieved to achieve a smoother sauce for the stew. Finally, the fish goes back. And remember, they've chosen fish which Rafa refers to as duro. That means it won't break up in the cooking. While that simmers, Rafa finishes off the fideuà by ladling in fish caldo. Fish stock. I've just been talking to Rafa and he's saying that dishes like this, these fish dishes, originated from the fishermen.
I mean, basically they would just be coming home from sea, got all. sorted all their good fish for market and kept all the little ones for making a stew for themselves. And they'd just boil up, sometimes in seawater, with whatever was available - olive oil, garlic, tomato, sometimes a pinch of saffron. And that would be a dish. And now they fetch big money in top restaurants. [Rafa] OK. (SPEAKS SPANISH) [Rick] I think I'm right in what Rafa's just said, because I wondered why he was putting this newspaper on top of this pan. And he said it's just to scare the little vermicellis.
Yeah? To scare them. And they all come up like this, so they're all pointing upward. Maybe you put them in the dark and they're saying, "Where's the light?" [Rafa] Yeah, yeah. That's right. Oh! [Rick] And sure enough, as the little pasta pieces soak up the stock, they begin to point upwards like delicate little flowers searching for sunlight. Finally, it's time for lunch. Late even by Spanish standards. The fideuà is traditionally served with alioli, a fiercely garlicky mayonnaise, which works so well with the pasta that has soaked up the good fish stock.
Excellent. Really good. Rafa's just said what's lovely about occasions like this is not just the food, it's to be here with all his friends, who love his cooking as well. This is the most important. [Rick] After eating the fideuà, it was time for the fish stew, which has been cooked with that fabulous romesco sauce. And it didn't disappoint. With great food like this, everyone got into the celebratory spirit. It may be to do with all the wine they had while making lunch, but in this part of the world, next to their love of food, it's football and their beloved Barcelona.
# Barca! Bar-ca! # At their house, his partner Rosa prepares something very Catalan. It's what everybody eats in this part of Spain. The basic version is toasted bread with tomato, salt and olive oil. But she's using roasted vegetables - sweet red peppers, onions and aubergines - all softened and skinned. Then she puts in a couple of anchovies and more olive oil, and that, with a glass of dry sherry, makes a very agreeable elevenses. Antonio, though, is making something much more substantial for lunch - a dish from his childhood. So what's it called, this, Antonio?
- This is called habas a la Catalana. Broad beans, Catalan style. [Rick] So this is a typical Catalan country recipe, I guess? [Antonio] Absolutely typical. Typical mainly in the country because this is product of. product of the farms, you know, fresh. Even the onion, you know? We are using fresh onions because if they're fresh, the flavour is. aromatic. [Rick] So you used to be a rock'n'roll drummer.
Why have you. - I used to. - You used to. Because I don't know, you know, it's a mystery. Passion. I mean, cooking is an artistic thing. I cannot paint a nice picture, but I can do something here full of colour. But not only colour. Smell, taste, everything. Everybody must do that. Why not? [Rick] He bought the new season's garlic from the market that morning, and he uses the green stem as well as the bulb.
- Now, this is the ham bone. When you finish eating the Iberian ham, you put this. This, to me, is very important because this reforms the flavour and gives you the old-fashioned flavour, like Granny used to do. I remember when I was a child and to give this special taste….put a ham bone. [Rick] Now, fresh broad beans. This is the centrepiece of his dish. At the start of the season, they're highly revered and quite rightly. I just love them. And they go so well with ham and fatty bacon and some fresh mint. So what's that? Is that going in now? The secret. And what is it?
[Antonio] This is aniseed. [Rick] Oh, yeah. That's a new one on me. And now stock, chicken stock. How long are we going to cook it for, then? [Antonio] 25, 30 minutes. [Rick] OK. - They used to put piece of paper on top. - Uh-huh. And this and leave it. Minimum, minimum fire. - Yeah. - Chup, chup, chup, chup. For 25 minutes. 10 minutes before, we put the sausage. And that's. I'm finished. - Great.
Chup, chup, chup. Antonio, while we weren't looking, puts in a couple of thin slices of belly pork. And now the black pudding, the morcilla. And he cooks it for a further 10 minutes. Finally, it's time - thank goodness - for lunch. It's time to drive into the very centre of Spain. Well, I'm here in La Mancha, and most of the people I know that know Spain well just said to me, keep going when you get to La Mancha. It's just somewhere. Unless you have to stop, just keep going. But I rather like it because it's just these vast plains. And I think there's something rather magisterial about big open spaces. And also, I think it's something that one has to experience
if one's really to take on board the real Spain. Mainly because of Don Quixote, because of course, this is where the book was written about. And what I like is everywhere you go in La Mancha, there's reference to Don Quixote, as if he was a real character. But to me, it makes it live. Because I've read the book and it is an essential part of Spain to me. But also, I'm quite impressed. I've only been here a day or so but I've tried their wines and they're really good. And when I arrived in La Mancha, I kept seeing these what look like giant water bottles lying everywhere. And I just thought they were, you know, for irrigating the land.
But then I discovered they were the old way of making wine, big concrete vessels, and it was always cooked. But now they've learned to make the wines using refrigeration, they're really good. For years, La Mancha produced largely cooked wines. In those stone vats, it overheated in the sun, so it tasted almost stewed. Virtually all the grapes were tempranillo for red and airén for white. But now they're growing other varieties, like cabernet sauvignon, which goes really well with tempranillo. We're not talking about high-priced wines here, but good wines worthy of anyone's consideration. I've come to meet up at the Campo de Criptana vineyards with someone who knows about these wines, Jaime Baeza, who's a wine writer from Madrid.
Right now, being the largest vineyard in the world, as it is, it was about time that some curious people or people with passion said, "No, I'm going to make good wine here." And here they have something that is unique. You have all the sun that you can get. You can achieve that. And this has been like this for 400 years. The main producer in Spain is the core of Castile, the core of Spain and the core of Spanish wine. You speak really passionately about La Mancha. You obviously not only care about your winemaking, but also this country where you live.
What does it mean to you? - La Mancha is dry, it's flat. La Mancha is a place that is very far from the mountains, very far from the sea, but very close to the sky. You see, we have sky all over. That's our main weapon. We have the sky and the sun and this flatness. And with that possibility, then the only thing you have to do here as a winemaker is to tame the sun. And this has been like this for 400 years. [Rick] Jaime talks about taming the sun. By that he means the pickers start at five in the morning and finish before the sun reaches its height. Then they'll start again when the grapes are cooler.
So if you're going into a supermarket back home and you want a good deal, you want something that's really good value, La Mancha every time. Mancha and Castile. [Rick] I often wonder about the ingenuity of mankind when it comes to food. Who'd have thought that the stamens of this little flower could enrich the dishes of the world? They call it the "red gold of La Mancha" and the harvest takes place in October. Usually, it's carved up by family groups.
Sometimes, there'll be three generations and each family would hope to get something like 8lb of pure saffron a season. That's worth its weight in gold. More, in fact. The stamens are dried very gently over an ordinary domestic heater. And then they're ready to use in such classic dishes as fabada. And where would paella be without saffron? Another culinary icon of La Mancha is Manchego cheese, made from ewe's milk.
Traditionally, the cheese was eaten by the shepherds to sustain them. The thing about Manchego is that it's amazingly tasty and keeps for a long time. Anyone from La Mancha disdains elaborate accompaniments with their prize cheese. Only membrillo, a jelly made with quince. I couldn't resist asking the shepherd Dionisio Sanchez about growing up in La Mancha and what he ate as a child. (SPEAKING IN SPANISH) [Rick] Basically, he said, in the morning they'd have slices of potatoes fried in olive oil.
Then at night, it would be beans cooked with chorizo and bacon. This would be on the stove, gently cooking all day while they were out with the sheep. Oh, and wine. Vino! [Rick] So to those friends who told me to give La Mancha a miss and head straight down to the coast, I say unto thee, I think you've got it wrong. This place is utterly magical, and it fits the Spanish love of myths and legends. With half-closed eyes, you can see why the courageous but slightly mad Don Quixote thought these were giants. Of course they're giants!
What do you think they are? Windmills? I can't think of a fictional character more important to a nation. So loved and cherished and understood by all that at the very mention of his name over here a knowing, almost loving smile appears on the face of whoever you may be talking to at the time. I like this. This is what first greets you when you come into the inn. "The sun began to usher in the morn, when Don Quixote sallied out of the inn, so well pleased, so gay, and so overjoyed to find himself knighted that he infused the same satisfaction into his horse, who seemed ready to burst his girths for joy."
In the book, it was the landlord of this tavern who knighted Don Quixote while he was very, very drunk. But the famous novel is peppered with culinary anecdotes, because food played an important part in the conversations between the knight and his fat squire. Quixote said, "While I'm eating, I know nothing. But when I've finished eating, I begin to understand." One of the most famous dishes mentioned in the book is pisto Manchego, a dish of fried vegetables in a sauce topped with a couple of fried eggs. I really don't think La Mancha would be La Mancha without Don Quixote and without Cervantes' enormous imagination. I mean, I feel we all feel very personal about Spain.
I mean, I was just watching all these Japanese tourists going through here. Do they know that it was a work of fiction? Do they know that this was only a fictional idea of where Don Quixote received his knighthood? They probably don't, I don't know. Does it matter? Because I think, sort of, Spain to me, my Spain is the same sort of place as Don Quixote's Spain. It's a sort of lost world of idealistic people, of innocence. I mean, Don Quixote himself was gentle, was idealistic, was altruistic, and he was lost.
I mean, he was mad and he was deluded, but somehow that has enormous strength to us all, really. I think we yearn for a world where those values existed. And sadly, it's vanishing. Vanishing from Spain today. What I really like about making these programmes is obviously we have a bit of a 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 Trujillo. 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 migas. But he's got this really old allotment just under the castle walls."
He said, "There's no other… there's none left like that." And I've just come up here and it's just… it's just wonderful. 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 now cooking these migas for me. And 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 seven 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 bravas and other simple dishes. He also puts in chorizo, 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 flavoured by all that garlic, peppers, chorizo - all the strong flavours 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 pimentón peppers, lots of garlic - you never would have put as much as that - lots of olive oil. And then really fat belly pork and lots of spicy chorizo. I mean, 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 Cervantes wrote about the joys of migas or "mi-jas" for the aficionados. It's probably the oldest dish in the whole of Spain. This is Chris and Lindy who I met down in the square, who put me on to this and I must say I'm very pleased. It looks great.
It's a shame that most of us have lost the use of bread, really, isn't it? It's always regarded as a sort of bit of an ancillary. Whereas to the Spanish, it's absolutely the centre of their cooking. I'm really surprised to see you down there because, you know, it seems so sort of remote here. I mean, 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.
There's lots around la costa, the coast… - That's very good, I must say! -.there's nothing in the middle. - Polo mint with… 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 flamenco bar I could find. Not one where all the tourists turn up in buses, but one tucked away, where the true aficionados of flamenco go.
My God, it's cramped. I haven't a 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 flamenco 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, "Olé!" to show they've been touched by duende.
(SPEAKS IN SPANISH) Seville is a city of the night. They don't eat dinner till way after 10. And any good evening here starts with the all-important 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. Probably worth mentioning how tapas came… the word, where it came from. And you can imagine, Seville is really dusty and hot in the summer. And they just used to serve, obviously, glasses of sherry 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, 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 Andalusia and its food and now lives here full time. By far the most popular drink in pretty much all the tapas bars here is fino, a refreshingly cold dry sherry. - There you go. - Cheers, Roger. - Perfect drink in a tapas bar. - Yeah, yeah. - Excellent. - Lovely tapas bar. Fantastic place.
Is this your favourite? It's definitely, I'd say, one of my favourites. I mean, it's fantastic, I mean, look, at these hams here. - I 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 Seville for you then? What is so special about it?
Well, I mean look at the atmosphere here. Is this like a normal…? Yeah, every Friday, Saturday night, it's 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've got a party organised. [Rick] And like, tonight, if you were with a bunch of friends, how many tapas bars? [Roger] Well, we'd probably go to four or five different bars. We'd come here, we'd have a drink, a few tapas. 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 to another. I mean, Seville has got more than 3,000 tapas bars. Says it all, really, doesn'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. [Rick] This one's ham, presumably. [Roger] Yeah, here for ham, for a lot of traditional tapas. Things like spinach and chickpeas, the cheeks from the Iberian pig, cod in tomato.
They have superb cheese here. I mean, absolutely brilliant. This place was immortalised by an English writer called Gerald Brenan, who came here having lived through the horrors of the First World War. He wrote a book called South from Grenada, which turned out to be the inspiration for the couple I'm going to see, Chris and Ana 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 pot shot at me. It's so far off the beaten track. [Chris] See him off! - Cheers! [Chris] Welcome. - Hello. Well, you must be Chris. - And you must be Rick. - Yeah. Hi, I'm Ana, yeah. It's a big moment, it's a big moment this. This is a bigger moment for us than it is for you, really. Oh, my gosh. Well, I bought you some gifts from La Mancha.
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. - Not this year, no. That's fantastic! - Oh, really? Yeah, we've had a bad year. That'll keep us going. That'll keep us going for a couple of weeks, I'd say. - I hear you're going to do us a wild boar stew, are you? Is that right? - Yes. Yes, we are. So we've got some La Mancha wine as well.
Oh, really? Just the right thing for a wild boar stew. [Rick] Well, I didn't realise it was going to be quite so far away. I mean, I've read your book and I loved it, but it is really remote. [Chris] There's something sort of raunchy and natural about it. We like it that way. [Rick] Chris's lunch is going to start with a tabbouleh made with bulgur wheat. [Chris] Tab-BOU-leh, they call it tab-BOU-leh down in Australia, tab-BOU. But today we'll have tabbouleh, I think. So what normally you do is you get a lemon,
you cut it in half and you squeeze it.through your hand like this. Lemon squeezers are for wusses. Nice you're using lemons, because after all, I wouldn't want to see you cooking with anything but. Absolutely not, no. Lemons, as you can imagine, are a big part of our lives. [Rick] 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 booksellers will tell you the important thing about a book is the title and the cover.
The stuff that appears in a book is really neither here nor there. But it came because, as you might have noticed when you drove in through Tíjola, 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, that. [Rick] 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 tinned 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 tabbouleh as she stands at the moment. And we just let her sit around. And the bulgur wheat should now absorb the juice from the tomatoes and the onion and the lemon juice.
And then at the last minute, five minutes before 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. - Can we? Have we got some? - We can do that. We live in pomegranate country. [Rick] Not only pomegranates, but their own almonds, lightly toasted and sprinkled with pimentón. 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 tabbouleh with mint and parsley
and those pomegranate seeds that shine like rubies.
