Elizabeth David, French Provincial Cooking
Ah, good old Liz. No doubt she ruffled a few feathers when she penned this little gem, but it’s no less true for that. I wonder how she would respond if she and I could sit down together today, and I was to tell her that I think the charcuterie is even better this side of the Pyrenees. I like to think she’d agree. Three times I visited France this summer, three times I came home more convinced than ever that if anyone knows a good sausage, it’s the Catalans.
The Spanish may have jamón all wrapped up, and I defy anyone to find a pork product superior to the pata negra de bellota of Huelva or Extremadura, but the variety of flavour, richness and succulence of Catalan embotits take some beating. At the time of year when our social lives exist more than ever for the pleasures of the table, what could be easier, or less stressful, than a board laden with a selection of local sausages, a wheel of cheese, some good olive oil, tomatoes and a loaf of crusty bread.
In Catalunya, you’ll find neatly tiled xarcuteries on every block of the cities, and scattered throughout the towns and villages of the region. Local markets have entire aisles dedicated to them where the butcher is as much the gourmand as a Michelin-starred chef. Vic is a market town about an hour north of Barcelona, nestled in front of the foothills of the Pyrenees. It’s also the spiritual home of Catalan charcuterie, which all aficionados, at some point or other in their lives, must gravitate towards. At the weekly Saturday market, you must now make the depressing trudge through forests of nylon knickers and plastic handbags to find the tiny corner still reserved for farmers selling fruit and vegetables, eggs and cheeses, mountain honey and baskets of wild mushrooms in season and, if you’re very lucky, a plump, prime sausage from the previous season’s matança (pig killing festival).
In an official capacity the matança is no longer considered acceptable behaviour under EU health-and-safety guidelines. In reality, many farmers still enjoy the feast of feasts for their own pleasure and nourishment in the year to come. In many villages it has become far more formalised. A qualified butcher is usually employed to do the killing on behalf of everyone who has a pig during the brief season that lasts from mid-December to February. Once the organs have been cleaned, the buckets of blood neatly arranged and the intestines washed ready for stuffing, samples of the flesh and innards are rushed off to the local vet to test for disease. All being well, the sausage-making rites then begin, and though most of what makes it to the kind of elegant, old-world, postcard perfect delis that writers wax lyrical about in food articles are commercially made, the process is much the same.
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Starving
Posted by David November 20, 2009 19:50:29