22:20
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 8 lb 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 prized cheese. Only membrillo, a jelly made with quince. I couldn't resist asking the shepherd Donisio Sanchez about growing up in La Mancha and what he ate as a child. Basically he said in the morning they'd have hot tea which was 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, I'm wind. 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. Well, I really don't think La Mancha would be La Mancha without Don Quixote and but 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 and there's they Well, do they know that it was a work of fiction? Do they know that this in was only a fictional idea of where a Don Quixote received his knighthood? I think they probably don't. I don't know. Does it matter? Because I think
sort of Spain to me, my Spain, it 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 from Spain today.
