I love your descriptions Elisabeth, so vividly brought to life. If only that bakery were here, now. I've had what was called migas in the North of Portugal, made with maize bread, garlic and little black and white beans. It was one of the most delicious things I ate there, so much so I brought home maize bread, chunks of which are in my freezer.
Thanks, Cheryl, for appreciation - and also for Portuguese migas info wi beans. Were the migas and beans all cooked together in the same pan in a little oil, or were the migas crisp (as a topping) or soft (mixed with the beans)? By black and white beans, do you mean haricots or black-eyed peas (popular in Brazil).
What a vivid picture you paint, with words and watercolours, of a simpler life not so very long ago. Still not sure I'd now swap my running water and creature comforts for the picturesque and rustic .. And certainly too old now!
Story triggered by purchase of a supermarket loaf - wholemeal wi grains, top of range - that tasted like gummy sawdust. Chucked it away, than felt bad about it, so hauled it out of bin. dried it in oven and made breadcrumbs. I now have a couple of handfuls of slightly gritty brown dust. Suggestings welcome.
With chopped walnuts and grated cheese it could make a topping for some dish ? Pop the mix in the freezer, puzzle over it next year and probably bin it then 🤣😂
Excellent advice, Jacky. I'd already done just that - bagged it up and popped it in the freezer. But quite like the idea of cheese and walnuts as topping for cauliflower gratin. There's no such thing as a one-person cauli - you've just gotta keep going till it's done.
Lovely memories and weren't you lucky to have such good bread in Spain. In Madrid it was otherwise. My poor ex-husband, diagnosed with kidney stones, was warned away from, among other treats, fresh bread. "Fortunately," noted his Spanish physician, "this is not a problem in Madrid." Those were the Franco years when the olive oil was also almost uniformly rancid. How Spain has changed!
Madrid bread, as I remember from my teenage years, was bolillo - small, dense-textured white bread roll with a slab of serrano ham inside sold in tissue paper wrapper. Pan Bimbo arrived to great excitement in Algeciras’ supermarket circa 1975. But it wasn’t considered bread - that was pan candeal, wood-oven bread. Pelayo bread was sold in Algeciras market on Saturday from the back of a van.
I actually remember it as being larger but dense and tasteless, made with awful over-processed flour. We seldom bought it, seldom in fact ate bread when we lived in Madrid. And it never came with a slab of Serrano inside—that might have lent some flavor to the thing. We could have a very interesting conversation about rural and urban food in Spain in the 1960s-70s. The olive oil may have been rancid and the cheese was uniformly manchego, but there was a man who wheeled his cart through our barrio every Sunday morning and sold the most magnificent aged manchego and honey from a wooden barrel to top off the cheese. Life was not uniformly bad. And there was chilled fino with salty almonds to make up for all the rest. Plus percebes and angulas and a few other delights.
Large and dense and tastless loafs in Madrid, yr right. Good with serrano ham, though, or machego. Was your manchego matured under olive oil? used to be a thing in Seville. Was the honey also aged? My local honey-man in the valley jarred it up in those fruit-juice bottles with narrow tops and wouldn't sell it to me till it was a year old, when the honey had crystallised and you had to melt it down again till you could get it out. He transhumanced his hives in hollowed-out stripped-off cork-sleeves, carrying them up the hill on donkey-back in paniers to catch early to late flowerings - there was always a bunch of cross bees following on behind. Memories, eh?
I love your descriptions Elisabeth, so vividly brought to life. If only that bakery were here, now. I've had what was called migas in the North of Portugal, made with maize bread, garlic and little black and white beans. It was one of the most delicious things I ate there, so much so I brought home maize bread, chunks of which are in my freezer.
Thanks, Cheryl, for appreciation - and also for Portuguese migas info wi beans. Were the migas and beans all cooked together in the same pan in a little oil, or were the migas crisp (as a topping) or soft (mixed with the beans)? By black and white beans, do you mean haricots or black-eyed peas (popular in Brazil).
I think both, I'll have to look out the recipe. I remember them being cooked together, ending with a dry crispy top and yes, black eye beans.
If only that bakery were still there! Thank you, again, for painting such glorious pictures in words to go with your glorious pictures
What a vivid picture you paint, with words and watercolours, of a simpler life not so very long ago. Still not sure I'd now swap my running water and creature comforts for the picturesque and rustic .. And certainly too old now!
Story triggered by purchase of a supermarket loaf - wholemeal wi grains, top of range - that tasted like gummy sawdust. Chucked it away, than felt bad about it, so hauled it out of bin. dried it in oven and made breadcrumbs. I now have a couple of handfuls of slightly gritty brown dust. Suggestings welcome.
With chopped walnuts and grated cheese it could make a topping for some dish ? Pop the mix in the freezer, puzzle over it next year and probably bin it then 🤣😂
Excellent advice, Jacky. I'd already done just that - bagged it up and popped it in the freezer. But quite like the idea of cheese and walnuts as topping for cauliflower gratin. There's no such thing as a one-person cauli - you've just gotta keep going till it's done.
Lovely memories and weren't you lucky to have such good bread in Spain. In Madrid it was otherwise. My poor ex-husband, diagnosed with kidney stones, was warned away from, among other treats, fresh bread. "Fortunately," noted his Spanish physician, "this is not a problem in Madrid." Those were the Franco years when the olive oil was also almost uniformly rancid. How Spain has changed!
Madrid bread, as I remember from my teenage years, was bolillo - small, dense-textured white bread roll with a slab of serrano ham inside sold in tissue paper wrapper. Pan Bimbo arrived to great excitement in Algeciras’ supermarket circa 1975. But it wasn’t considered bread - that was pan candeal, wood-oven bread. Pelayo bread was sold in Algeciras market on Saturday from the back of a van.
I actually remember it as being larger but dense and tasteless, made with awful over-processed flour. We seldom bought it, seldom in fact ate bread when we lived in Madrid. And it never came with a slab of Serrano inside—that might have lent some flavor to the thing. We could have a very interesting conversation about rural and urban food in Spain in the 1960s-70s. The olive oil may have been rancid and the cheese was uniformly manchego, but there was a man who wheeled his cart through our barrio every Sunday morning and sold the most magnificent aged manchego and honey from a wooden barrel to top off the cheese. Life was not uniformly bad. And there was chilled fino with salty almonds to make up for all the rest. Plus percebes and angulas and a few other delights.
Large and dense and tastless loafs in Madrid, yr right. Good with serrano ham, though, or machego. Was your manchego matured under olive oil? used to be a thing in Seville. Was the honey also aged? My local honey-man in the valley jarred it up in those fruit-juice bottles with narrow tops and wouldn't sell it to me till it was a year old, when the honey had crystallised and you had to melt it down again till you could get it out. He transhumanced his hives in hollowed-out stripped-off cork-sleeves, carrying them up the hill on donkey-back in paniers to catch early to late flowerings - there was always a bunch of cross bees following on behind. Memories, eh?