Coliflor refrito with olive olive and garlic
and talk of artichokes and the gardens of Granada
It’s been a good few years now - around half a century - since I lived with my young family in a house in a remote valley in a cork-oak forest within sight of the hills of Africa. At the time, the cooking of Andalucia came with the territory, and I’ve never lost the habit.
In those days - early sixties until the end of the seventies - the tourist beaches of the Costas were not yet crammed with sunstarved northerners, and life in the mountain pueblos of the Andalucian hinterland was more or less as it had been, give or take fall-out from a ferocious Civil War, from the time when Granada, last stronghold of the Moors in Spain, fell to the starving armies of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile.
Records from the time show that the king and queen, encamped beneath the walls of the Moorish capital, went hungry to bed on the night of battle, so that the cool courtyards and airy salons of the Alhambra must have seemed like paradise on earth.
Close inspection of the construction of the Alhambra, while it seems as solid and immoveable as any cathedral, reveals a structure as ingenious as it’s practical. The carved wooden panels of the doors cn be broken up and reassembled like a jigsaw-puzzle; the intricate tiling on floors and walls can be dismantled and reassembled by skilled tilers, while the work of master-plasterers on the elegant curved arches can be repeated at will. The result, miraculously, is a seemingly-solid building that can be taken to pieces like an elaborate tent, loaded on donkey-panniers, and rebuilt elsewhere.
The gardens, dependent as they are on an uninterrupted supply of spring-water, would need careful re-siting if moved, along with an army of gardeners and the labour of skilled stonemasons such as those who built the conduits that channel the ice-melt from the Sierra Nevada. Still in use today, the conduits contine onwards to water the Vega, Granada’s market garden, famous for fava beans, artichokes and - more recently, result of botanical imports from the Spanish main - tobacco.
The year that Granada fell was 1492. Al-Andaluz - the land the Moors called the gateway to Paradise - was and always has been the most fertile of Spain’s regions. Watered by two great rivers, blessed with wheatfields, olive-groves, orchards, market-gardens, rice-paddies, vineyards (the wines of Jerez did not vanish under the Moors) with easy access to the spice-routes from the East.
Spices remain as essential to the cooking of Andalucia as - well - garlic and olive oil. It was no accident that later in the same year that the usual route to the spices of the East was closed, the Queen pawned her jewels to provision the ships that carried Columbus in search of a new way to the Indies from the west.
Alcachofas granadinas
Prepared at the beginning of summer, when both artichokes and fava-beans are still young and tender, the inclusion of mint, a culinary herb used nowhere else in Spain, marks the dish as distinctively Moorish, a survival from the days of the Caliphs. While both artichokes and fava have flourished in the sandy soil of the vega, Granada’s fertile floodplain, since Roman times, it was the architects of the beautiful gardens of the Alhambra who installed the irrigation channels. If you can find very young broad beans in pod, use them whole, chopped into short lengths.
Serves 4-5
8-10 small artichokes (preferably with stalks)
1 half lemon
500g broad beans
6 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 large onion, diced small
pinch saffron
1-2 bayleaves
Handful fresh mint-leaves
To finish
2 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon chopped almonds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
First prepare the artichokes. Trim, removing the hard tips of the outer leaves and leaving a generous length of stalk. Slice into quarters and nick out the hairy little choke. Check over the beans, if podded, and if they look a little on the leathery side, slip them out of their skins.
Warm 4 tablespoons of the oil in a roomy pan or casserole, and add the the onion, garlic and quartered artichokes. Season with a little salt and fry gently for about 10 minutes, stirring regularly, till the vegetables soften and gild a little. Add the prepared beans and a generous glass of water and bubble up. Add the saffron, bayleaf and half the mint, roughly chopped. Bubble up again, turn down the heat, lid loosely and leave to simmer for 30-40 minutes till the vegetables are perfectly tender and most of the juices have been absorbed - you may need to add a little more water. Or bake in a moderate oven at 325F/170C/Gas3 for 40-50 minutes.
When you’re ready to serve, fry the breadcrumbs and almonds with the cumin in the remaining oil till lightly gilded, and sprinkle over the artichokes and beans. Finish with the remaining mint-leaves.
p.s. Loads more recipes, stories and watercolours from my sketchbooks in the all-singing all-dancing new Grub Street edition of Flavours of Andalucia (2017).
p.p.s. Exciting biting! I’ll be switching on my pay-button next week in the hope that my hitherto-free subscribers will consider supporting my work with a sub (five dollars monthly - a bargain!). Meanwhile, all content will remain free, apart from - below the line - an extra recipe and maybe an additional sketch. And I absolutely promise to post regularly every Friday (something regular readers may have noticed I find a bit of a challenge!).
Magical writing and beautiful illustrations! This transported me to a part of the world that I do not know very well. Thank you for the introduction to the gateway to heaven!
Hadn't realised the Alhambra was a flat pack. That is wondrous.