Seafood There Travel Guide and Tips

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 travelers. Just looking around here, it's really wetting my appetite. Everywhere I look, there are appetizing plates of food. There's a good little market near the cathedral. It's called Abastos. It's a bit like a farmer's 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.

Only 10 seconds. 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 a hake, a very good hake, and seafood, too. I love seafood. It's my passion. Let's go to the seafood. Okay, come on. Let's cigala How much would they be about?

Three guys for us. And how will you cook those? Yeah, today. Uh hot water. And salt? Yeah. And laurel. Oh, and Bailey. Yeah, Bailey. Let's go. He's got to work. Okay, fine. Yes, he's got to work and we've held him up so much. I felt honor 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. Um and they're going to shut the restaurant, but it's

really a very elaborate affair. Of course, I could only help them. They've only been open for 3 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. I mean, 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 2 minutes and he's 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 I think Spanish food is so perfect. It's sort of like Japanese food in a way. Just 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 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. Can we do another one? Stronger than it looks. Whether a beer or cider festival, it's an amazing place to meet people. Yes. Daddy, Connie.

Connie? Yes. Huh? Hello. He's my husband. He's English. I'm Asturian. Hello. He's from Very good. Well, He's a Just tell us about um Asturias. What does the cider Asturian cider mean to you, Asturian people from Asturias? Well, to me it means a culture because the way you pour it. Yeah. You drink it straight from the bottle. It's not the same. It's not broken. It has to break on this side. Break? We call it break. If you break the Yeah. And it looks different. It's not as transparent. It's more Cloudy. Cloudy?

Yeah, yeah. It has to be like that. Yeah. Then you're supposed to leave a little so that you go like that. Why? This is because you all drink from the same glass. Uh-huh. 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. Right. And it means a lot. We always drink it together. Party, party. Thank you. Yeah. Hello to Connie. I love Cornwall.

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 sidra. 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 them they were sort of getting it as close as they could to their chest. I was sort of thinking, a bit like a matador in a bull fight. 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 appetizing, you know. Much as I like the old hot dog, this is much more attractive to me. First of all, we've got fabada. That's a It'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 pimenton. 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 milk. Goat, cows, and 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 spoke in fondly about the village where he now lives, and I had warm expectations.

Well, here we are in the village of Sumbay. It's not very picturesque. It's beautiful, isn't it? What? It's very high. It's very high, I must say. Nearly 1,000 m up here. Really? Yeah. It's cold. Very cold, especially for me, yeah. So, where's this bar then? Well, here it is. This is the bar. It looks like a shed. Well, literally the guy that runs it's 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. closes. If there's nobody here, you just help yourself to a beer and pop the money on the counter. My gosh. There we go. This is wonderful. This is a real boys bar. And here we are. Always nice bowl of That is it. That's Yeah, that's the caldo. That caldo is literally they'll give you a shot just to warm you up. But it's made with the bones from the these are beef bones and garbanzos which are chickpeas, pimienta, 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 just Called caldo. Caldo is just stock. It's the Spanish word for stock, yeah, caldo. All the time there warm you up. Fernando. Fernando looks after the bar. Very nice to meet Fernando. Can we have something to drink? I would have thought some um Dos vino, 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 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 got these disused cars, you know, with the wheels off on blocks and then it's like this. Well, this is very much a working village. This is where the people look after the cattle, look after Would you ever get any tourists up here? Never see a tourist up here. That's the joy of coming up. And what about the food then? What Oh, the food in this part of the world.

Well, it's it you know, living amongst the mountains is fantastic. They hunt [snorts] wild boar. They hunt venison. The rivers are full of fresh brown trout. In fact, my neighbor, 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. This is This sounds like Ernest Hemingway. It's It's great. So, what would you eat? What do they eat? I mean, presumably there's no restaurants around here. But so 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 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. What you realize is that they only eat A, what's local, and B, what's in season. So, then you start to become very picky. Who cooks the best cassido? And how important is food and eating to the locals? Oh, they It's it's a religion. Very much a religion. I'll tell you these people that they, you know, whatever happens, at 1:00 it's lunchtime. 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 Adelina 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. Adel's just been mixing some rice, which is boiled and cooled in this lovely terracotta pot. Then she's added um fat, onions fried in fat, twice as much onion to the fat. And I think the onion, the 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. Esto es dulce.