Part 8 (1/2)

[Sidenote: SPANISH BREAD.]

The cook should take with him a stewing-pan, and a pot or kettle for boiling water; he need not lumber himself with much batterie de cuisine; it is not much needed in the imperfect gastronomy of the Peninsula, where men eat like the beasts which perish; all sort of artillery is rather rare in Spanish kitchen or fortress; an hidalgo would as soon think of having a voltaic battery in his sitting-room as a copper one in his cuisine; most cla.s.ses are equally satisfied with the Oriental earthenware _ollas_, _pucheros_, or pipkins, which are everywhere to be found, and have some peculiar sympathy with the Spanish cuisine, since a stew--be it even of a cat--never eats so well when made in a metal vessel; the great thing is to bring the raw materials,--first catch your hare. Those who have meat and money will always get a neighbour to lend them a pot. A _venta_ is a place where the rich are sent empty away, and where the poor hungry are not filled; the whole duty of the man-cook, therefore, is to be always thinking of his commissariat; he need not trouble himself about his master's appet.i.te, that will seldom fail,--nay, often be a misfortune; a good appet.i.te is not a good _per se_,[6] for it, even when the best, becomes a bore when there is nothing to eat; his _capucho_ or mule hamper must be his travelling larder, cellar, and store-room; he will victual himself according to the route, and the distances from one great town to another, and always take care to start with a good provision: indeed to attend to the commissariat is, it cannot be too often repeated, the whole duty of a man cook in hungry Spain, where food has ever been _the_ difficulty; a little foresight gives small trouble and ensures great comfort, while perils by sea and perils by land are doubled when the stomach is empty, whereas, as Sancho Panza wisely told his a.s.s, all sorrows are alleviated by eating bread: _todos los duelos, con pan son buenos_, and the shrewd squire, who seldom is wrong, was right both in the matter of bread and the moral: the former is admirable. The central table-lands of Spain are perhaps the finest wheat-growing districts in the world; however rude and imperfect the cultivation--for the peasant does but scratch the earth, and seldom manures--the life-conferring sun comes to his a.s.sistance; the returns are prodigious, and the quality superexcellent; yet the growers, miserable in the midst of plenty, vegetate in cabins composed of baked mud, or in holes burrowed among the friable hillocks, in an utter ignorance of furniture, and absolute necessaries. The want of roads, ca.n.a.ls, and means of transport prevents their exportation of produce, which from its bulk is difficult of carriage in a country where grain is removed for the most part on four-footed beasts of burden, after the oriental and patriarchal fas.h.i.+on of Jacob, when he sent to the granaries of Egypt. Accordingly, although there are neither sliding scales nor corn laws, and subsistence is cheap and abundant, the population decreases in number and increases in wretchedness; what boots it if corn be low-priced, if wages be still lower, as they then everywhere are and must be?

The finest bread in Spain is called _pan de candeal_, which is eaten by men in office and others in easy circ.u.mstances, as it was by the clergy.

The worst bread is the _pan de municion_, and forms the fare of the Spanish soldier, which, being sable as a hat, coa.r.s.e and hard as a brickbat, would just do to sop in the black broth of the Spartan military; indeed, the expression _de municion_ is synonymous in the Peninsula with badness of quality, and the secondary meaning is taken from the perfection of badness which is perceptible in every thing connected with Spanish ammunition, from the knapsack to the citadel.

Such bread and water, and both hardly earned, are the rations of the poor patient Spanish private; nor can he when before the enemy reckon always on even that, unless it be supplied from an ally's commissariat.

[Sidenote: THREs.h.i.+NG AND WINNOWING.]

[Sidenote: BREAD.]

Perhaps the best bread in Spain is made at Alcala de Guadaira, near Seville, of which it is the oven, and hence the town is called the Alcala of bakers. There bread may truly be said to be the soul of its existence, and samples abound everywhere: _roscas_, or circular-formed _rusks_, are hung up like garlands, and _hogazas_, loaves, placed on tables outside the houses. It is, indeed, as Spaniards say, _Pan de Dios_--the ”angels' bread of Esdras.” All cla.s.ses here gain their bread by making it, and the water-mills and mule-mills are never still; women and children are busy picking out earthy particles from the grain, which get mixed from the common mode of thres.h.i.+ng on a floor in the open air, which is at once Biblical and Homeric. At the outside of the villages, in corn-growing districts, a smooth open ”thres.h.i.+ng-floor” is prepared, with a hard surface, like a fives court: it is called the _era_, and is the precise Roman _area_. The sheaves of corn are spread out on it, and four horses yoked most cla.s.sically to a low crate or harrow, composed of planks armed with flints, &c., which is called a _trillo_: on this the driver is seated, who urges the beasts round and round over the crushed heap. Thus the grain is shaken out of the ears and the straw triturated; the latter becomes food for horses, as the former does for men. When the heap is sufficiently bruised, it is removed and winnowed by being thrown up into the air; the light winds carry off the chaff, while the heavy corn falls to the ground. The whole operation is truly picturesque and singular. The scene is a crowded one, as many cultivators contribute to the ma.s.s and share in the labour; their wives and children cl.u.s.ter around, clad in strange dresses of varied colours. They are sometimes sheltered from the G.o.d of fire under boughs, reeds, and awnings, run up as if for the painter, and falling of themselves into pictures, as the lower cla.s.ses of Spaniards and Italians always do. They are either eating and drinking, singing or dancing, for a guitar is never wanting.

Meanwhile the fierce horses dash over the prostrate sheaves, and realise the splendid simile of Homer, who likens to them the fiery steeds of Achilles when driven over Trojan bodies. These out-of-door thres.h.i.+ngs take place of course when the weather is dry, and generally under a most terrific heat. The work is often continued at nightfall by torch-light.

During the day the half-clad dusky reapers defy the sun and his rage, rejoicing rather in the heat like salamanders; it is true that their devotions to the porous water-jar are unremitting, nor is a swill at a good pa.s.senger's _bota_ ever rejected; all is life and action; busy hands and feet, flas.h.i.+ng eyes, and eager screams; the light yellow chaff, which in the sun's rays glitters like gold dust, envelopes them in a halo, which by night, when partially revealed by the fires and mingled with the torch glare, is almost supernatural, as the phantom figures, now dark in shadows, now crimsoned by the fire flash, flit to and fro in the vaporous mist. The scene never fails to rivet and enchant the stranger, who, coming from the pale north and the commonplace in-door flail, seizes at once all the novelty of such doings. Eye and ear, open and awake, become inlets of new sensations of attention and admiration, and convey to heart and mind the poetry, local colour, movement, grouping, action, and att.i.tude. But while the cold-blooded native of leaden skies is full of fire and enthusiasm, his Spanish companion, bred and born under unshorn beams, is chilly as an icicle, indifferent as an Arab: he pa.s.ses on the other side, not only not admiring, but positively ashamed; he only sees the barbarity, antiquity, and imperfect process; he is sighing for some patent machine made in Birmingham, to be put up in a closed barn after the models approved of by the Royal Agricultural Society in Cavendish Square; his bowels yearn for the appliances of civilization by which ”bread stuffs” are more scientifically manipulated and manufactured, minus the poetry.

To return, however, to dry bread, after this new digression, and all those who have ever been in Spain, or have ever written on Spanish things, must feel how difficult it is to keep regularly on the road without turning aside at every moment, now to cull a wild flower, now to pick up a sparkling spar. This corn, so beaten, is very carefully ground, and in La Mancha in those charming windmills, which, perched on eminences to catch the air, look to this day, with their outstretched arms, like Quixotic giants; the flour is pa.s.sed through several hoppers, in order to secure its fineness. The dough is most carefully kneaded, worked, and re-worked, as is done by our biscuit-makers; hence the close-grained, caky, somewhat heavy consistency of the crumb, whereas, according to Pliny, the Romans esteemed Spanish bread on account of its lightness.

[Sidenote: LUNCHEON.]

The Spanish loaf has not that mysterious sympathy with b.u.t.ter and cheese as it has in our verdurous Old England, probably because in these torrid regions pasture is rare, b.u.t.ter bad, and cheese worse, albeit they suited the iron digestion of Sancho, who knew of nothing better: none, however, who have ever tasted Stilton or Parmesan will join in his eulogies of Castilian _queso_, the poorness of which will be estimated by the distinguished consideration in which a round cannon-ball Dutch cheese is held throughout the Peninsula. The traveller, nevertheless, should take one of them, for bad is here the best, in many other things besides these: he will always carry some good loaves with it, for in the damper mountain districts the daily bread of the natives is made of rye, Indian corn, and the inferior cerealia. Bread is the staff of the Spanish traveller's life, who, having added raw garlic, not salt, to it, then journeys on with security, _con pan y ajo crudo se anda seguro_.

Again, a loaf never weighs one down, nor is ever in the way; as aesop, the prototype of Sancho, well knew. _La hogaza no embaraza._

[Sidenote: THE OLLA.]

Having secured his bread, the cook in preparing supper should make enough for the next day's lunch, _las once_, the eleven o'clock meal, as the Spaniards translate _meridie_, twelve or mid-day, whence the correct word for luncheon is derived, _merienda merendar_. Wherever good dishes are cut up there are good leavings, ”_donde buenas ollas quebran, buenos cascos quedan_;” and nothing can be more Cervantic than the occasional al fresco halt, when no better place of accommodation is to be met with.

As the sun gets high, and man and beast hungry and weary, wherever a tempting shady spot with running water occurs, the party draws aside from the high road, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; a retired and concealed place is chosen, the luggage is removed from the animals, the hampers which lard the lean soil are unpacked, the table-cloth is spread on the gra.s.s, the _botas_ are laid in the water to cool their contents; then out with the provision, cold partridge or turkey, sliced ham or _chorizo_--simple cates, but which are eaten with an appet.i.te and relish for which aldermen would pay hundreds. They are followed, should grapes be wanting, with a soothing cigar, and a sweet slumber on earth's freshest, softest lap. In such wild banquets Spain surpa.s.ses the Boulevards. Alas! that such hours should be bright and winged as sunbeams! Such is Peninsular country fare. The _olla_, on which the rider may restore exhausted nature, is only to be studied in larger towns; and dining, of which this is the foundation in Spain, is such a great resource to travellers, and Spanish cookery, again, is so Oriental, cla.s.sical, and singular, let alone its vital importance, that the subject will properly demand a chapter to itself.

[Sidenote: A SPANISH COOK.]

CHAPTER XI.

A Spanish Cook--Philosophy of Spanish Cuisine--Sauce--Difficulty of Commissariat--The Provend--Spanish Hares and Rabbits--The Olla--Garbanzo--Spanish Pigs--Bacon and Hams--Omelette--Salad and Gazpacho.

It would exhaust a couple of Colonial numbers at least to discuss properly the merits and digest Spanish cookery. All that can be now done is to skim the subject, which is indeed fat and unctuous. Those meats and drinks will be briefly noticed which are daily occurrence, and those dishes described which we have often helped to make, and oftener helped to eat, in the most larderless _ventas_ and hungriest districts of the Peninsula, and which provident wayfarers may make and eat again, and, as we pray, with no worse appet.i.te.

[Sidenote: THE NATIONAL COOKERY.]

To be a good cook, which few Spaniards are, a man must not only understand his master's taste, but be able to make something out of nothing; just as a clever French _artiste_ converts an old shoe into an epigramme d'agneau, or a Parisian milliner dresses up two deal boards into a fine live _Madame_, whose only fault is the appearance of too much embonpoint. Genuine and legitimate Spanish dishes are excellent in their way, for no man nor man-cook ever is ridiculous when he does not attempt to be what he is not. The _au naturel_ may occasionally be somewhat plain, but seldom makes one sick; at all events it would be as hopeless to make a Spaniard understand real French cookery as to endeavour to explain to a depute the meaning of our const.i.tution or parliament. The ruin of Spanish cooks is their futile attempts to imitate foreign ones: just as their silly grandees murder the glorious Castilian tongue, by subst.i.tuting what they fancy is pure Parisian, which they speak _comme des vaches Espagnoles_. _Dis moi ce que tu manges et je te dirai ce que tu es_ is ”un mot profond” of the great equity judge, Brillat Savarin, who also discovered that ”_Les destinees des nations dependent de la maniere dont elles se nourrissent_;” since which General Foy has attributed all the _accidental_ victories of the British to rum and beef. And this great fact much enhances our serious respect for punch, and our true love for the _ros-bif_ of old England, of which, by the way, very little will be got in the Peninsula, where bulls are bred for baiting, and oxen for the plough, not the spit.

[Sidenote: SCARCITY OF PROVISIONS.]

The national cookery of Spain is for the most part Oriental; and the ruling principle of its preparation is _stewing_; for, from a scarcity of fuel, roasting is almost unknown; their notion of which is putting meat into a pan, setting it in hot ashes, and then covering the lid with burning embers. The pot, or _olla_, has accordingly become a synonyme for the dinner of Spaniards, just as beefsteaks or frogs are vulgarly supposed to const.i.tute the whole bill of fare of two other mighty nations. Wherever meats are bad and thin, the sauce is very important; it is based in Spain on oil, garlic, saffron, and red peppers. In hot countries, where beasts are lean, oil supplies the place of fat, as garlic does the want of flavour, while a stimulating condiment excites or curries up the coats of a languid stomach. It has been said of our heretical countrymen that we have but one form of sauce--melted b.u.t.ter--and a hundred different forms of religion, whereas in orthodox Spain there is but one of each, and, as with religion, so to change this sauce would be little short of heresy. As to colour, it carries that rich burnt umber, raw sienna tint, which Murillo imitated so well; and no wonder, since he made his particular brown from baked olla bones, whence it was extracted, as is done to this day by those Spanish painters who indulge in meat. This brown _negro de hueso_ colour is the livery of tawny Spain, where all is brown from the _Sierra Morena_ to duskier man. Of such hue is his cloak, his terra-cotta house, his wife, his ox, his a.s.s, and everything that is his. This sauce has not only the same colour, but the same flavour everywhere; hence the difficulty of making out the material of which any dish is composed. Not Mrs. Gla.s.s herself could tell, by taste at least, whether the ingredients of the cauldron be hare or cat, cow or calf, the aforesaid ox or a.s.s. It puzzles even the ac.u.men of a Frenchman; for it is still the great boast of the town of Olvera that they served up some donkeys as rations to a Buonapartist detachment. All this is very Oriental. Isaac could not distinguish tame kid from wild venison, so perplexing was the disguise of the savoury sauce; and yet his senses of smell and touch were keen, and his suspicions of unfair cooking were awakened. A prudent diner, therefore, except when forced to become his own cook, will never look too closely into the things of the kitchen if he wishes to live a quiet life; for _quien las cosas mucho apura, no vive vida segura_.

All who ride or run through the Peninsula, will read thirst in the arid plains, and hunger in the soil-denuded hills, where those who ask for bread will receive stones. The knife and fork question has troubled every warrior in Spain, from Henri IV. down to Wellington; ”subsistence is the great difficulty always found” is the text of a third of the Duke's wonderful despatches. This scarcity of food is implied in the very name of Spain, Spa??a, which means poverty and dest.i.tution, as well as in the term _Bisonos_, wanters, which long has been a synonyme for Spanish soldiers, who are always, as the Duke described them, ”hors de combat,” ”always _wanting_ in every thing at the critical moment.” Hunger and thirst have ever been, and are, the best defenders of the Peninsula against the invader. On sierra and steppe these gaunt sentinels keep watch and ward, and, on the scarecrow principle, protect this paradise, as they do the infernal regions of Virgil--

”Malesuada fames et turpis egestas Horribiles visu.”