Galician food review: did we eat like kings or peasants

Months before going to the North, a basque guy told us we would eat like kings. I told him we are vegetarians, so we will probably eat like peasants. Because of the apparently excellent seafood (oxymoron in my opinion, how can you even approach it with that stench?), Galicia especially really has the rep for good food. There are actually pulperias, which means octopuserias. The north ended up somewhere in between king and peasant for us silly stubborn vegetarians, as we still relied heavily on pizza (only good for about four days in a row…), but there were significant improvements in some areas.

1) Pan Gallego: FINALLY, we went to a place where people eat brown bread, and they hand it out like it’s air. You don’t buy a whole loaf, because they are baked into rounds of like a half meter in diameter. Graded on a worldwide basis, this bread gets a B. It’s not exactly German barley bread, or brown Irish soda bread, but it’s a solid effort. I have heard lots of Europeans disparage American bread, because they think we only eat airy wonder bread. But every grocery store in the states has good reasonably fresh brown bread sometimes with walnut, sunflower seeds or any of many other interesting ingredients. American bread is excellent if you buy the right kind, which is not hard to find (as I said…..every grocery store). In contrast, all I can say is that in general Spanish bread is basically something you keep around in case you run out of toilet paper. Most Spanish bread is bland white bread, which is kept uncovered all day so that if you don’t buy it in the morning you can etch glass with it. If you succeed in biting through it you find that it is full of powdery sawdust. For the first time in my life I do not routinely buy bread when I go to the store. Not so with pan Gallego, graded on a curve for Spain this bread gets an A.

2. Queso de Tetilla: This is the nun’s tit cheese, named so because it is often made in convents and has a characteristic breast shape, complete with a nipple. Recently we had a british visitor who was a cheese enthusiast, so my Spanish coworkers were trying to explain the tetilla. He thought they were saying that the cheese was made out of human breast milk. In general cheese is an area where Spain does pretty well, and In contrast to bread totally kicks the ass of the US. To this day I still don’t understand what “American cheese” is nor do I want to. All I know is that United Statesians simply prefer an English cheese, cheddar. In our defense, we are clever enough to add chilis into a cheese, so although our time honored traditions are weak, our innovations are strong. Our standard cheese we buy in Madrid is queso Manchego, which is a blend of sheep, cow and goat milk which runs along a gradient of aging. This one is good, especially the curado, considering its the cheapest thing in the market. I don’t know a lot about the somewhat more expensive tetilla, but we went to markets where old ladies were selling super fresh cheese alongside all manner of local produce. Contrast this with Madrid’s frankenfood imported from Almeria’s creepy white tent agricultural system. I have confidence in the quality of the Galician cheese. I bought one that seemed to be smoked a bit, although this was subtle. It was good and versatile and reminiscent of Gouda, and of a similar softness. Like gouda its a little bland, but if that’s what you are looking for the cheese gets a B+.

3. Galician white wine: You are served a teapot-like thing and then drink it out of bowls. I think we had one from the Rias Baixas region, but as I am a wine ignoramus I don’t really know. It was a white wine, which I normally don’t like. This one gets an A-, damned good but I’d still prefer a decent beer.

4. Galician beer: Estrella Galicia replaces the hegemony of Mahou and Cruzcampo in the north. All three of these are complete garbage, so its hard to notice the difference. Ocassionally, Galician bars will have a portugese beer on tap, Superbock. For a medium light lager, Superblock absolutely crushes all Spanish beers that are not made in Barcelona. So Galician beer gets a C+, only on the merits of the occasional presence of the neighboring country’s beer.

5. Pimientos de padron: When I first came to Spain I had no hot sauce, and nothing more exciting in the roomie’s spice cabinet than paprika and black pepper. I went to the produce section of the grocery store, and asked if they had pimientos picantes. I was directed to a bag of pimientos de pardon. I was so pissed, they were about as hot as an icicle down the front of your pants. I showed them to my roommates, who were afraid of them because apparently most are not hot, but occasionally there is a wild ass one in the bunch which melts your face like a laser. Knowing the Spanish take on chilis I was skeptical to say the least, as some Spanish people think their patatas bravas are spicy (only once did I experience spicy patatas bravas and those were not in a restaurant). I have seen pimientos de padron as a tapa before in Madrid, one of the few truly vegetarian ones. But tapas aren’t usually free in Madrid, so I was reluctant to shell out 4-6 euros for a small dish of food that wouldn’t come close to satisfying my nutritional requirements, and despite everyone’s recommendations would not even be hot…at all. I mean no detectable capsaicin, like an Anaheim chili.

So with some trepidation I finally tried the things in Ferrol, just down the road form Padron which is the source. As I predicted, I never encountered a hot one. But John did and Becky did. Basically all these are are whole fruits, stem and all, fried and salted so that the outer skin is a bit singed. You eat it whole except for the stem and the former sepals, like you wound a pepperocini. I had no idea what I was missing because these are truly awesome, at least in Galicia. The flavor is somewhere in between fried okra and New Mexican green chili, without the potential slime problem of okra. We had them like four times, I want some now. A.

6. Galician breakfast: I keep harping on this, and I am aware that different cultures do different things, but the Spanish breakfast is wholely inadequate. It’s not that the foods are bad, there just isn’t enough calories or volume. The toasted bread with crushed tomato and oil of the south is largely replaced by croissants in the north, both of which I totally enjoy, but even if I was a 5 year old girl I would still be hungry. This is not a matter of culture, it just doesn’t make biological sense. Bodies need fuel BEFORE making demands of them, even if the demands are only a normal workday. This becomes especially poignant when you are cycle touring. Riding a bike all day you can rip through 4000-10,000 calories. If you burn more than you have in the tank you go into a caloric deficit and begin eating yourself. Once you go down this path (called “bonking” for the “bonk” sound you make when you fall down and can’t get up), it takes hours to recover even if you then have a giant meal. People undertaking endurance activities know that you eat before you feel hungry, because if you feel hungry you can expect your day of activity to end shortly. The problem in Spain is that if you ask someone if they have something else available to eat (meaning more substance) they look at you as if you can’t possibly be asking that. Of course, the kitchen isn’t open yet…why would the kitchen be open? D+ (the croissants are tasty with jam and butter at least, make sure and eat the butter you will need the calories).

7. amount of food. with the generous giving away of bread for lunch and dinner, and the generally larger size of the food, I wasn't walking away hungry from meals not called breakfast. So this was a big upgrade. B.