Food, food and more food

 III JORNADA GASTRONÓMICA OTOÑAL en YEGEN Gastronomic autumnal III YEGEN

11:00 horas. Excursión etnobotánica por el sendero de la Fuente de la Salud.
11:00. Ethnobotany tour along the path of the Fountain of Health.
 
14:30 horas. La Gastronomía  tradicional en el otoño de Yegen. Degustación de productos de la tierra en el Salón Cultural 
14:30. The traditional cuisine of the autumn in Yegen.  Tasting of local produce in the Cultural Hall.
  
22:00 horas. Velada Musical en el Salón Cultural.
22:00. Musical Evening in the Cultural Hall.

This is what was advertised for yesterday in Yegen, and as we had agreed to meet some friends who are over on a walking holiday  we thought we'd walk up and enjoy some of the day's events.  They are staying up in Berchules and followed the footpath across country via Mecina Bombaron, down through El Golco towards Montenegro where we met up and walked to Yegen together.  They'd done 3 hours by then and were in need of a cold drink so we stopped at the first bar we came to for a beer and tapas - costillas in a picante sauce plus slice of bread.

Onto the next plaza, another bar, another drink or two, this time with bacon on a slice of bread followed by a slice of garlicky lomo on bread.  And olives.   Despite the lack of crowds flocking to the salon, we wandered round and popped our heads in the door for a look.  People? Yes.    Lots? No.  Probably about a couple of dozen at most.  Lots of food to eat?  Not really, not what we'd expected anyway.  We'd  thought there would be different foods to taste and possibly buy, local cheeses, honey etc but in reality they'd opened a bar and were cooking local meats for tapas.  So more costillas, morcilla (black pudding)  panceta, longaniza (a sausage)  bread of course - can't have tapas without bread - crisps and olives.

Enjoyable but not any different to being in one of the bars except the bars have chairs and tables so are more comfy!   So onward and upward we went - Yegen is quite a steep village and we started at the bottom.   Next two bars were shut, probably just as well as afternoon drinking can be tiring.  Stopped at the last one - Cecy's - where we sat outside to keep an eye out for Omar who was coming from the hotel to pick up our friends.   Another couple of drinks and more tapas,  cheese with slices of bread,  then lovely crispy fried fresh anchovies (nothing like the strong things they put on pizzas) and more bread.

I think the bread is to soak up the alcohol although they do say it was a lid - tapa - to keep flies out of your wine.  Then things were added to the bread like cheese or jamón hence tapas.  

John and I set off back home and were about half way down the pista when Antonio came back from a days hunting up in the Sierras and offered us a lift.  A big group of them had been for jabalí,  2 cars were towing double-decker dog trailers, couldn't count how many dogs in each, but John reckons more than a dozen.  And in the back of Antonio's pickup was a large 30 kilo jabalí.  I'd seen Antonio earlier in the morning when I took Monty and Pip out and he'd said we could have some meat if they were lucky with the hunt, so we stopped at his house and waited while they skinned and jointed it.  Not something I'd seen before, being a bit on the squeamish side, I like my meat to be a bit less animal like.  But it wasn't that bad although I didn't watch them cutting off the head......last seen with the skin in a wheelbarrow.  No idea where that ended up.

A quick wash down with the hose pipe,  meat in a very large bowl, (basically they cut it up - 4 legs and a full sized rib cage)  quick discussion amongst the 4 hunters who were there.....'would we like all the meat?'  They had shot 3 and the others had enough so home we came with it all.

This morning we've been trimming, jointing, dicing and slicing,  freezing and making stock.  The end result is 8 joints (we halved the legs)  totalling  13.5 kilos,  8 bags of diced steak for casseroles etc totalling 4 kilos, 2 solomillos (fillets)  and more still to come.  Both slow cookers are full of ribs and bones, with garlic, red wine and water to make stock and soup.  Going to leave them for a while longer till the meat has all come off.  The big slow cooker holds 6.5 litres and it's full to the brim.  Plus there are 2 large saucepans full of scrappy stuff that is going to be frozen for the dogs.  I did wonder where the kidneys and liver were - John said I'd have to go and delve in the wheelbarrow leftovers for those - yuk!

All in all a good weekend.  Oh, and our friends know that we have a collection of geckos outside on the terrace walls and bought us a lovely one to join the others.  We also have lots of real geckos, I wonder what they make of these static ones!