San Martin continued…….blackout

I am appalled to say that all the rest of the day is a bit of a blur. What I can remember is a lot of sausage making.

Sausage making is odd. The sausage machine is like an enormous syringe. The meat goes into a long cylinder and is then pushed into a long nozzle. The intestine’s length has been rolled onto the nozzle and as the meat is pushed through the nozzle it goes directly into the sausage skin. So far all well and good BUT getting the skin onto the nozzle is like putting on an very lengthy condom. That is still fairly ok but when the plunger forces the meat through the nozzle and into the skin you have to help feed it with your hand and THAT feels like you are helping someone take a crap into a 12ft condom.

In Ibiza 12 inch lengths of intestine are cut and fed onto the nozzle and each one is filled and then tied individually. To my mind it is an excruciatingly painstaking method. If they were to sit down and ponder the most time consuming method of sausage stuffing, then this is what they would have come up with. But that is my northern European hurry-hurry-hurrry-lets-have-sandwiches-for-lunch-instead-of-sitting-down-and-breaking-bread-with-our-companions-and-drinking-some-wine-whilst-we-are-at-it mentality and I realise as I think of how it could be done quicker that it aint about doing it quicker. Its about sharing time together, doing something together.

As I think of this I take yet another long messy gurgle from the porron and pass out on the floor.

I am awoken later to find the job complete – 20 kilos of black pudding and 160 foot long sobrasadas and everyone sitting down to eat the Arroz de Matanzas. It is now dark, especially inside my head.

San Martin continued.…Blowing and Shaving with the Russian Mafia

So here is this dead pig. What next? One of the guys ambles up with a butane bottle and a blow torch. Another comes up with two very old rusty knives. I go get mine and they tell me no, it cant be a sharp blade or it with cut through the skin. The guy lights the blow torch and starts to scorch the hair off the pig. This is frightful. The skin bubbles and bursts and the smell aint pleasant. We get to work scraping all the hair off the pig. The hair seems to only be part of a top layer and left underneath is the skin we are all familiar with. The skin that becomes crackling. This preliminary scraping gets rid of most of the hair but a more thorough cleansing is necessary. A hose is turned on and we are all handed pumice stones with which we scour the skin. It takes off any final hairs and leaves our departed friend smooth.

One of the guys is in charge of the ears and the hoofs. The ears are doused with water and fairly liquid and then wiped and brushed clean. The hoofs are more gruesome. The big black cloven hoof is yanked off revealing a second pinkish hoof beneath. The removed black outer hoofs look like some kind of weird discarded lids lying in the mud. There is something scary about this bit.



The pig is now ready for butchering. We lift the pig onto another table (the third – I am not sure why we keep changing tables) and carry it into the shed where she will be cut up; her bones, flesh, fat and innards all being consigned to one use or another. The first process is the removal of its trotters. I cant help but think of the Russian mafia. Bizarrely this is followed by another their trademark calling cards – the removal of the face. The legs are tucked under its body and it is pushed into an upright prone position a la sphinx. Jesus then cuts the creatures face away in one piece. Very, very full on.

We now set about cutting away its back fat. This is done by sending a knife down to its spine and then along the entire length of its backbone finishing on either side of its tail. The pig, well known for having a lot of fat, does not dispel the notion. Including the skin, the fat is 3 inches deep. When removed we have two pieces about 4 foot long and 1 foot wide.

Next the legs and shoulders are loosened and pushed flat against the table. So far this is going completely opposite to how I expected it to go. The animals intestines are still inside and it is lying down on all fours. I expected it to be hanging and the intestines the first thing to be removed. I also expected boning knives to be used. Not one is present. Jesus comes forward with his tools – a mallet and a hatchet. He places the hatchet on the rib furthest down its back and with one deft blow, chops through it. He does this all up one side and then repeats it with the other side. This now leaves the entire spine separate from the carcasse except for its tail. He very carefully cuts between the anus and the tail and the spine comes away. It is removed and salted to be later served as boiled bones with cabbage. This is what will happen with all the bones.




Jesus carries on with the butchery. It appears to be all him. I am told that the matador, ie the killer, ie Jesus, is in charge of the kill, the butchery, the seasoning of the sobrasada and black pudding and the cooking of lunch and dinner. He is most veritably The Man.

The ribs are pulled open revealing the liver and a hell of a lot of fat. The liver is removed and placed on the table where all the innards will go. The innards and anything that has blood or has come into contact with blood, will all go into black pudding or either of the 2 meals that will be cooked that day – the Frito de Matanzas and the Arroz de Matanza. The Frito is a fry up with potatoes and the Arroz is a stew with rice.

Jesus is a very skilled man and he knows his way around the inside of a pig. He pinpoints exactly the various pieces to be removed, all invisible under a mass of still warm and wobbling fat. He makes a little nick in what looks to me like nothing but blubber and out pops a kidney. He does this again and again.



Eventually everything has been removed except for the bowels and intestines. This he removes, deftly again and gives them to me in a bowl. “Where?” I look. “To the women” he replies. With a smile.

I go out of the shed and walk over to the 3 old women who are washing intestines from another pig (the ibicencos make SO MUCH sobrasada that more that one pig’s miles of intestines is required). There is a blackened, steaming cauldron for cooking the black pudding (morcilla) near them and they are all elbow deep in intestines. Macbeth, I think. I give them the bucket and retreat.

San Martin continued…..The Knife

8 am and it is already warm. It shouldnt really be so warm but today is the day and that is that. We will just have to work quickly. I arrive and am greeted warmly by some and with open mistrust by others. “What the hell is he doing here? And why the hell has he got a camera?” They got a point but hey….

The shed has been cleared and the preparation tables set out. I was wrong about the chocolate and bunuelos coming as the blood drained. They are first. Nobody does nothing till they full of chocolate and aniseed doughnuts. There is wine circulating but to my surprise it is taken up only moderately. There is a subdued feel to everything perhaps because of what is about to take place. Perhaps, but I doubt it.

We finish our stuff and go out. Jesus, the main man, has got his crook/garrotte to put over the pigs head so he can be pulled. The thing is a stainless steel tube with a handle at one end and a heavy wire snare at the other. Another of the guys takes a grapple. They go round to the pen accompanied by the farmer and his wife. Next thing I know they are coming back round the corner pushing and dragging an enormous and screaming pig. “Quick, hide” says Toni, my friend who invited me and son of the farmer. Everybody retreats into the shed. “It makes him nervous if he sees lots of people.” So everyone is in the shed but we’re all peering round the corner to get a glimpse. I don’t reckon that 14 people stealing glimses calms the pig down in any way. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if it made it worse. You could hear the other one flipping out in the pen round the corner. It too knew exactly what was going on. Both are fully aware that San Martin is in the house. Toni reads my thoughts and says that the pig that is left alive is so traumatised that it wont eat for days. I cant help thinking that perhaps it might have been nicer to send Survivor Pig on a little holiday that day.

Anyway. I can confirm that pigs scream loudly as they are about to die. I don’t think they sound in anyway human but maybe it was just me that made that bit up anyway.

Animal husbandry by its nature has its brutal moments and seeing the pig dragged to its slaughter table is one of them. The guy with the grapple stepped forward and shoved the hook through the pig’s nose increasing its discomfort and distress. He then started pulling with all his might.

Now there was all commotion with the men getting the pig first alongside its death bed and then onto it. To do this the table is lifted up sideways, the pig brought alongside then pushed and pulled onto the table. The table is then righted again. The pig is then tied down, screaming all the while. It is loud and not madly pleasant.

Jesus offers me the knife to kill it but not knowing really how to do it effectively nor wanting to step on anyones tows, I decline. He smiles. If it was right, I would do it. I am a believer in ‘if you gonna eat it, you gotta be able to kill it.’

Jesus slaps the pig’s neck a few times to be sure of his mark and inserts the knife into its neck. He does not slice, cut nor go from ear to ear. He simply sticks the knife into its jugular at a 45º angle and then removes it leaving a neat 3 inch wound. The blood starts to gush forth into the wide plastic washing tubs the women are sticking under the crimson spurt. Crimson? No, burgundy more like. The women immediately start stirring and squeezing the blood in the bucket. There appears to be some sort of fibrous stuff in their hands. I ask what this is and am told it is the nerves within the blood. I had no idea that one could squeeze blood and get fibres out of it. Maybe I just misheard.

The pig is now dead, its huge head hanging off the edge of the table, its huge tongue hanging out of its mouth. These days I can go for weeks, months without anything happening but now as I am stand looking at the dead pig I am in no doubt that something has just happened. Something I have been the benefactor of many times but never witnessed.

Smoking Dutch

Edam is the perfect smoking cheese because it is so bland that it takes on the smoke completely.

My father used to smoke edam when I was young. I have very fond memories of it and now I have smoked some myself. It took me straight back to the hotel where I grew up: The Kings Head, circa 1977 - punk, jubilee, the Yorkishire Ripper.

Todos Los Cerdos Tienen Su San Martin

Transliterated it means all pigs have their San Martin. I heard this expession years ago and it has tweeked my imagination ever since me. It means that your misdeeds will be revisited on you and it refers to pig slaughter.

In Spain San Martin is traditionally the day the family pig is slaughtered, butchered and turned into hams and other forms of charcuterie. Falling on 11 November it marks the coming of winter and the need to hoard - squirrel style. An Ibicenco told me that when he was growing up (Franco era), it was also the only day of the year when you KNEW you were gonna get enough to eat.

In 2 days time I am going to a Matanza – a Pig Killing. I made a preliminary visit to the farmer this week and there was a lot of winking and nudging going on. He was getting visibly excited at the prospect of a day’s sausage making and more importantly, I get the impression, drinking and eating. He introduced me to the pig. Man, that pig is big. 180 kilos.

The actual killing is to take place at 8am on Saturday morning followed by chocolate and buñuelos (aniseed doughnuts) whilst the blood drains. Then it is a day of butchery and sausage making with unending porrones* of local wine and culminating in a massive Arroz de Matanzas – huge rice dish using some of the best cuts from the departed beast.

A friend of mine used to have nightmares cos of all the screaming of pigs she would hear at this time of year. Apparently their screams are chilling. Once again the comparison between pigs and humans is drawn. Lindsey Anderson got it so right


So anyway, 8am sharp Saturday. With camara and knife.

*A porron is that mad glass jug with a pointy spout that the spanish drink out of. They take great pride pulling it further and further away from their lips without spilling a drop. I am useless at this so will enjoy being the laughing stock again.

I’ve started smoking again

And what a joy it is, though it has been trickier than before. Having only used Sabina (very hardwood coniferous, something to do with Juniper) up to this point I have had no problems with keeping the sawdust alight as it has such high oil content. But I have kind of given up on trying to find sabina dust as the wood yards keeps telling me they never have a pure supply, that it is always cut with pine or other unsuitable woods. Annoying, when they had sold me stuff before, but there you go.

So I had to find a supply of hardwood chipping/sawdust unmixed with any resinous woods. A carpinter friend of mine (not Jesus) made a deal with me. If he supplied me with the right stuff I would supply him with my finished product. Wicked. I go round to his workshop and there are 6 big black bin bags bulging bonza bonus beech. Nice.

I take the bags home and excitedly drag the smoker out of the bushes and set it up. I get some 400g salmon trout fillets and salt them for 45 mins by rubbing rock salt into them. Then I wash them and dry them. I pour the beech shavings into my paella smoke pan and light it. Goddam it if it don’t just flare up and burn. Entirely hopeless. I soak the salmon fillets an hour, fry them and eat them.

I tell the carpinter. The carpinter tells me he got some oak sawdust so I go over and pick it up. I try again, this time without any fillets or anything, just to see what will happen with the sawdust. I torch it and it smoulders. Excellent. Then it goes out. Crap.

Both the beech and the oak have low oil content so cannot keep themselves alight without help. I know now that if I am gonna have any luck then I am going to have to get some sort of heat under the chippings and this will have to be in a separate chamber to the item to be smoked or it will cook said item. Annoying cos before I just lit the sabina, stuck it in the bottom of the smoker and that was that

I got a 25 litre paint tin, cut a hole in the top and shoved a pipe in the hole feeding it then into the smoker several feet away. The tin fitted exactly over the paella pan. I put a gas ring under the pan and lit it. A minute or two later the the dust began to smoulder. Dig it. I put in a piece of Edam cheese. Smoked Edam c’est bon.

It worked well except it melted the pipe. Next move - chimney flue pipe. I found it easily enough but they only had stuff that was twice the diametre. What the fuck. It’ll be fine. This time I bought 7 pieces of Edam (the first was excellent). I fuelled up and lit it and then, as is my wont on experiements, left the house to do something else. I came back a while later to find a yellow red gooey mess where the cheese had once been. The dust had caught fire the same as the shaving because of the increased air flow.

By this point I was getting irritated but managed to remain cool and not break my tow by kicking the oil drum smoker. I crimped the end of the flue and tried again. This time with one piece of cheese and by remaining close by to see what happened. I smoked it for 2 hours and it worked tip top. Now I just gotta figure out how to slow it down even more so I can smoke overnight leaving it unmanned

Paella?

Shit, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why the Spanish call paellas just “rice” sometimes cos it is so impossible to define what it is. One thing Paella does not mean though is “for her” (para ella). Anyone that tells you it does should be mistrusted. Paella refers to the pan it is cooked in, and the variations are INFINITE, no two cooks ever doing it the same way.

They say the first paellas were of snails and rabbit and cooked on olive tree cuttings. I have yet to do this but one day I will and it will make me happy. It will be a good day.

Paellas are supreme if done right. Unfortunately it is difficult to find good ones. I went to a food show here in Ibiza when I first arrived and thought “aha, now I can ask a chef if they use saffron in paellas here” Until that point I had been unable to detect either saffron or quality in any of the ones I had tried. You know what the fucker replied? He said “No. People don’t like saffron.” What a bastard. No, people have now gotten used to food colouring and artifical flavourings thanks to you, you fat lazy bastard. Jesus.

Not all paellas take saffron by any means but none should have this enhancer so many use. It is sort of like the stuff in the sachets in those really high quality chinese noodle packets. Like all good flavour enhancers you actually think it tastes good. It is only after you realise that everything you eat tastes the same that their novelty wears off. The lowest common demoninator shouldn’t ever really be embraced in a kitchen and particularly when in it involves ones national dish.

Anyway, all that is rather by the by. For lunch today I made a discovery. Nothing major but sure was a nice change for using up leftover stew. I had made a jolly nice chicken, chorizo and roast pepper stew a couple of days before. Everyone had eaten their fill a few times and it was now time to use up the last of it. I put it into a paella pan with some extra water and a couple of handfuls of la bomba rice (about 3 times the liquid to rice volume). I cooked it fast until the liquid evaporated and man oh man, did I have me a nice lunch. 12 minutes start to finish + 4 for resting. The socarrat was amazing. Socarrat? Socarrat? What the hell is socarrat? Well, socarrat is the defining factor of a perfect paella. Of which more another time.

Dream Terrine

One of the great things about terrines has got to be their seeming impossibility to the non initiated. This is useful cos when lay folk start to think that you are not only a good cook but some sort of magician then it can only really work in your favour. People start to fear you. Then they start to do your will. Think of the advantages.

Another really groovy thing about making terrines is it is awful satisfying. There is something good, something right, about being able to hold in your hands the fruit of your labours. Making soups is great. Grilling steak is great. But this goes further. Perhaps it is the feeling of having made something artesian that it gives you. Bread is the same. So are pork pies.

You can put all sorts of things in terrines just so long as there is enough fat in the general mix to hold it all together. Forget Fear is the Key - Fat is the key.

When I first arrived in Ibiza I went to Clodenis in San Rafael. I didn’t know anything about Ibiza and was completely blown away by this restaurant. The restaurant was the owners home, inside in the winter and in the garden in the summer. Outdoors and under the stars, it was truly magical. The food was superb – roast duck, suckling pig, the trademark lentil salad, everything everything. But above all was a rabbit terrine that I will remember till my dying day.
The terrine was multi-layered and had not been pressed hard so was more crumbly than expected. It was wrapped in smoked bacon and served with its jelly. And what jelly. Oh my god. So clear, so clean, so concentrated. The rabbit gave the impression it had been confited so flaky AND moist was it. I find rabbit difficult to discern if it is mixed with other things but this was clearly rabbit even when spread on toast along with way too much butter and some sharp cornichons.

Tis a goddam shame that Denis, the owner and consummate restaurateur, died. I still have yet to have a meal as good on Ibiza.

Rabbit Terrine

1 rabbit, boned – get your butcher to do this or DIY if you enjoy the knife work
250g minced pork belly
250g diced pork shoulder
250g poultry liver (plus the liver, heart, kidneys from rabbit) blitzed to a puree
250g rindless smoked steaky bacon

4 cloves of crushed garlic
zest from ½ orange zest
6 juniper berries
1/8 nutmeg grated fine
4 cloves
2 tsp of fresh thyme leaves
1 glass of wine
1 nice glug of brandy or port or both
salt
pepper

Cut the rabbit into strips. This will be layered throughout the terrine. Chop up any bits that wont come under the strip definition. Set aside the strips and add the bits to a big mixing bowl that will hold all the ingredients. Add the porks and blitzed livers.

Whizz the juniper, nutmeg and cloves together and add to the big bowl along with the garlic, zest, thyme, alcohol, salt and pepper. The most important thing here is the salt. You could leave out all the rest and still end up with a reasonably good terrine. Under season it and you might as well take it out the oven and throw it straight in the bin. Fry a bit in a pan and try it. The cooking will dampen down the spice and salt effect so make sure they have good presence in your palate. If under seasoned add more, if over, don’t worry about it.

Now comes the getting together - 

Get some baking parchment and fold it in two. Place a couple of bits of bacon between the sheets (thank you Homer) and roll out with a rolling pin. The bacon will flatten out to about half its length and width again. Perhaps more.

Place a bay leaf in the middle of the chosen receptacle i.e. terrine (this could be a bread tin, terracotta dish – anything that will hold the ingredients and is able to be baked) and then start laying out the bacon strips from one side fo the dish to the other. Repeat this until the terrine is lined. Add the mix, layering the rabbit strips throughout and then pull bacon over the top until you have what looks like a bacon parcel. If this is a bit messy then don’t worry as the finished terrine will be turned out upside down anyway showing off the bayleaf.

Wrap it in baking parchment, cover it with tin foil and put it in a pan with hot water. Do not overfill the pan, halfway up will do. Bake it in the oven at 180ºC + fan (210ºC without) for 2 hours. Remove and test with a skewer. If juices run clear then it is ready. Chuck out liquid (or do something with it if you like) and place terrine, still wrapped, in the fridge with something on top to weigh it down. Let it cool overnight.

Next day, remove, unwrap, slice, marvel.

One Man’s Meat

I had a really good ‘living here is wicked’ moment the other day. I was shopping for a dinner I was having in order to get two people who make wine here on the island to meet each other. I wanted lamb shoulder cos I was too tired to do anything but stick something in the oven and let time and low heat do the work.

All the shops were closed cos it was the afternoon. Siesta time. Jesus dies every afternoon round about 3.30. The only shops open are the appalling Eroski (what a name – love, winter sports and supermarket hell all in one word) and the ever excellent Spar. The meat counter in Notso Eroski is generally full of prepacked cuts of nearly off meat. The Spar has a proper butcher counter so I went there. When all the shops are open Jesus boasts five butchery outlets and 2 more with meat counters. That is a lot meat for a town no longer than 250 metres from start to finish.

Anyway I went up to the counter in the spar and asked for a shoulder of lamb. The ladybutcher pointed at a leg. All we got, she says. She’s lying. I know she is. I tell her to open up the meat locker and see if there are any inside. She opens and there hanging is a lovely whole lamb.” Aha,” I say. “So you do have lamb.”” Yes we do but I don’t know how to cut it up.” “Then let me assist you gentle butcherladywoman." She says yes, so round the counter I go and pick out the least blunt knife I can find. I flash my finest smile at her and she, as they always do, weakens at the knee. The lamb is still hanging in the cold room - long, dry and bloodless. I cut in to it around the scapula and then up and then down and then off. Bizarre. Lamb, along with rabbits do not have their shoulders attached to their bodies by ball and socket joints. The are simply attached. Not that unlikely in a rabbit given that all it has to do with its cuddly paws is eat lettuce and be lucky. But a lamb? Man that thing gotta stand on them legs. How do they do it?

So any way, le recipe:

If shoulder is frozen, remove it from freezer, kill someone you don’t like or who is causing you trouble by beating them repeatedly over the head, defrost it, then:

Rub shoulder of lamb with garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil and rosemary. Splash that mother with wine. Lay it in a tray on a pile of sliced potatoes with a finger’s depth of water and bake it at 100ºC without fan for 6 hours.

Little Red Courvette

It does all seem to be about vegetables these days. Each time I think I am going to write about flesh some vegetable comes along and demands my attention. This time its courgettes. Little yellow courgettes.

Over the last few years the courgettes available here have improved. They are now closer to courgettes than marrows. I have a hatred of marrows. They are entirely worthless unless a necesssity through starvation. I have an image locked in my brain from childhood of some cook in my parents’ hotel endlessly peeling and coring marrows that he could then stuff them with mince and bechamel. Mince and bechamel works, that is understood – lasagne, moussaka. But mince and watery, pulpy marrow? No thanks.

Anyway the courgettes on the island generally seem to be coming down in size rather than increasing which is a good thing. But now the vegetables at Can Riera have come into season and there are perfect courgettes. Small and firm, tasty and crisp. And yellow. Anne from Can Riera specialises in unusual strains of common vegetables and herbs – purple basil, heirloom tomatoes and yellow courgettes being a few. These courgettes can be eaten raw which is nicish but grilling them or frying them is the way to kill with excellence.

I sliced a yellow courgette thin and fried the little discs in a bit olive oil. I tossed them with mint and goats cheese and let them sit. I grilled a slice of white bread from Juanto’s bakery and rubbed that mother with garlic. I oiled the toast with Estornell olive oil and salted it with Maldon. I sliced a big phat heirloom tomato and laid a couple of the slices on the toast. I put a handful of Anne’s baby salad leaves on the toast and oiled them too. Dripped some sherry vinegar over them to sharpen them up. I put the courgette mix on top and I sat down.

Recently I have had the good fortune to go to several ibiza restaurants to review them. These experiences have made me re-evaluate the food available in restaurants here. There is truly good food out there now. Be that as it may this courgette toasty thingy was the best thing I have eaten this year. It completely blew me away. I aint cos I cooked it. Its cos of what I had available to use. Food on Ibiza is on an upward march.