Pals- medieval splendour

Pals is a town set on a hill some 6 kms from the Costa Brava and has been well restored in all its medieval splendour. The steep narrow streets winding up to the church and tower are full of interesting balconies, doors, courtyards with many colourful plants like hibiscus and bougainvillea growing everywhere.
Like all medieval towns the important characteristics are here, the hill and walls for extra fortification, the church and lords house and the tower which was a lookout as well as providing water storage in some cases. Pals was on the coast 500 years ago before the surrounding land silted up and watching for pirates was important as this was a wealthy town from trading agricultural commodities.
Rice from Pals is famous for its quality and flavour and they built an irrigation system to sustain the industry which dates back a thousand years.
Now the town mainly lives off tourism with many art galleries, shops selling local produce (chocolates and rice) and ceramics from the nearby La Bisbal pottery centre. There are many terraces to sit and eat and drink in the shade before admiring the views from the top of the village over the Islas Medes and the Mediterranean Sea.

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Priorat wine tour

The Priorat is one of the hidden gems of the Spanish wine world and luckily it is much easier to visit now that the access roads have improved and only takes an hour and a half to reach from Barcelona.
Why go there? Well the terrain is mountainous, the climate very dry and extreme and the roads narrow and winding but despite all of this the drama of the steep slopes planted with almond trees or vines, villages built on rocky outcrops and above all some spectacular wines are what should bring you here.
This is where the traditional varieties of garnacha (white and red) and cariñena are blended with newer arrivals cabernet, syrah and merlot to make some of the most powerful yet complex wines which reflect the wild herbs and red fruit aromas which send wine lovers all over the world into ecstasy.
It is fair to say that these wines have a bigger following outside of Spain due to what is referred to locally as "Riojitis" but cost has also been a factor since many of these wines have been overpriced. Reality seems to have set in and there are plenty of very interesting offerings in the 10-25? range as the number of Bodegas (wineries) has exploded from a dozen to nearly a hundred in only ten years.
A day trip visiting two contrasting bodegas with a full lunch in between is a great way to discover this wild area and I know you will fall in love with it just like me!
Contact: wine.walks@gmail.com for more details.

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Girona goes International-for a week

Girona only has a population approaching 100,000 and yet this week we have had and will have a truly international flavour with the 10th Religious and World Music Festival and the massive Tour de France cycling race hitting town tomorrow.

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Sitges-year round fun

Sitges, now famous as the gay capital of Europe, has always been a place the good folk of Barcelona escaped to for fun and frolics. The 40 km distance is an easy drive or train ride and when you arrive you feel this is a place where most things go set in a beautiful setting with beaches and a crystal blue sea in touching distance.

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Olive oil-the oldest industry in Catalonia

Olives and olive oil is what brought the Greeks and Romans to the Iberian peninsula some 3,500 yrs ago and it has been a crucial commodity ever since. The south of Spain produces the quantity with thousands of hectares cultivated in the poorest soils where nothing else will survive the extreme  weather, but around Lleida in the western part of  Catalonia there are also extensive plantations.

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Priorato cooking demonstration

As part of the wine festival there are also olive oil tastings and cooking demonstrations throughout the weekend. This one was held in the main square of Falset and everyone had the same accessories of either a butane camping gas stove or a small charcoal grill on which to prepare their dishes.
All the important ingredients of the area were being shown off in spectacular and imaginative style from wild herbs, pine nuts and almonds, olives and olive oil, wine, vinegar to season wild boar, hare, rabbit and some juicy pork products.
What cannot be passed on through the pictures is the amazing smells and of course the taste, next year you will have to come to sample for yourselves!

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Falset wine fair Priorato/Montsant

For the first weekend in may Falset becomes the wine capital of Catalonia when it celebrated their 14th wine fair. Priorato and Montasant are the remote and arid areas which became one of the poorest parts of Spain after the lead mining industry closed down in the 1970's and agriculture was always marginal at best.
Until a few brave and visionary souls decided to recover the old vines and plant new ones in the 1980's and 90's there was very little reason to come here other than for the mountain scenery and general tranquility of the villages.
Now it is recognised as producing some of the most exciting wines in Spain, with prices, in some cases, to match. Like most luxury goods, the last ten years has seen some real booms and these fashionable wines were leading the pack. Now comes the reality that from a dozen wineries to 82 registered with the regulatory body there is bound to be a pretty brutal shakeout process.
None of this seemed to worry the crowds who poured into this sleepy farming town for the festival to try the wonderful olive oils, varied local foods and of course the wines.The weather was truly summery and added to the festive spirit. Salud as they say here!

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Traditional Catalan meal Part 2

So, to continue the preparation for my Catalan meal with 90 year old couple Sion and Lluis from La Pera which is about 20kms from Girona.
So far we have the onions baking in the fireplace, the sausages are being grilled on the fire and now it is time to toast the bread in the flames. Once this is done we are ready to get the onions out (1.5 hrs in the fire) and peel the burnt outside layers off until we have the soft and moist interiors perfectly cooked. Olive oil an salt are added and we take the broad beans off the cooker too and take everything to the table.
So we start with cutting a whole garlic clove in two and rubbing it on the toasted bread followed by specially grown juicy tomatoes which also get spread on the bread along with olive oil and a little salt and then you can add some of the dry sausage or cheese on top. This is called "pa amb tomàquet" and forms the base (or starter) for many Catalan dishes and is perfectly acceptable as a meal in itself.
The wine I brought as my contribution is served from the bottle although Sion prefers her own from the barrell they keep in the cellar and she drinks from a "porró" which is easier to see and understand in a photo (see photos attached). The cauliflower salad is also on the table being one that Sion had made a few weeks ago with red wine vinegar and consequently looks red and tastes great.
Sausages with a garlic sauce "alioli" and the broad beans follows and by this time we are feeling not only replete but very merry and after dessert of walnuts, hazelnuts and fresh fruit we need a walk around the village to let it all settle.
This meal was not quick at some 3 hours but will certainly be one of the more memorable for the quality of the ingredients and company!  Thank you Sion and Lluis.

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Traditional Catalan meal Part 1

Food and its preparation are an important part of all communities but when you are invited to eat at the house of a couple who are 90 years old and grow almost all their own food you realise how much we have complicated our lives for the sake of saving time.
Sion and Lluis have lived in the village of La Pera (pop 40) some 20kms from Girona all their lives and in this house for 60 of them. They have an old gas stove but cook over an open fire in the kitchen where in winter they spend most of their days keeping warm. Their other modern appliance is a fridge/freezer where they freeze many of the vegetables they grow in their large vegetable garden for use during the winter months.
First Sion showed me how to pickle cauliflower, an ancient tradition to be able to preserve vegetables for use in the winter. This simple process involves washing and cutting the cauliflower into manageable chunks and stuffing them into a large glass jar to which 1 cup of wine vinegar (white or red) and 2 cups of water is added proportionately along with plenty of sea salt until the jar is full. It's that simple, screw the lid on and put in a dark place for two weeks and voila!
While we were pickling Sion took four onions and buried them in the coals of the fire whole and without doing anything to them. Now it was back to the rest of the food which was a selection of sausages from a local butcher. Until maybe 10 years ago every village had a festival in january/february where a large pig would be killed and parts of the pig were butchered and divided amongst the villagers each of whom had their own special recipe for making sausages.These would frequently include mushrooms, garlic, and other local spices. Health and safety regulations gradually did away with this tradition but older people still have vivid memories of this winter festival and the feast that was had by all.
To be continued…

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Camprodon- foodie town

Camprodon is about an hour's drive from Girona up into the Pyrenees and only some 20 kms from the French border. It is also close to Vallter 2000 the nearest ski resort so at weekends in winter lots of skiers are wandering around shopping and looking for places to eat.
We are here to shop for local specialities too- on offer there are some mouth watering displays and quaint old shops which seem to be from several centuries back and still going strong.
One of the so called advances of our age is that we can get everything anytime and we take for granted being able to consume food items which are linked to an area or region at any time without really putting them in context. Camprodon is a market town in a mountainous region where the local foods reflect what they produce, and they have made sure to promote and preserve their local products which is fantastic.
So what are they? Well, you can find all types of pork sausages, a variety of cheeses made from goat, cow and sheep milk, pastries made with walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds and honey from the high mountains. The animals are left to roam free eating what is available in the different seasons and consequently are leaner and more flavourful than the bland intensively farmed alternatives we are so used to.
Shopping becomes a pleasurable, exciting event as each shop you enter has their own way of making sausages or pastries that have passed down through the generations and which they insist you try and will explain in detail if you show the slightest interest and language is not an insurmountable barrier.
Once you have loaded up these foods lend themselves to picnics along some of the walking paths or next to some of the clear streams marked all around the area so head for the hills!

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