Puchero

On December 30th, the Tezcans, Rachel and Vicente were invited to our new friends, Alicia, Miguel and Michael, for a puchero lunch (comido). If you remember, I had met the Faus family at the Fords' dinner party. After that, we went to hiking together. Miguel is a building contractor, who was originally educated as a biochemist. He is a wealth of knowledge in pretty much everything, but definitely an expert on vegetation and building homes. Alicia is a clinical psychologist and takes English classes from Rachel. She must be very good at her work for she always listens and is very compassionate. Michael is their only child and his birthday is only one day before Dilara's on the same year! He also takes English lessons from Rachel and last summer, he spent some time in England; hence, his English is pretty good - ironically, one of the friends he kept in touch with from this England camp is from Turkey.

During our hike, we had talked about puchero because we spotted some Cardo (penca in Valencian) plants. Cardo is cardoon in English, artichoke thistle, and in Spain it is used for cooking. The flower buds can be eaten like the artichoke, but the stems are normally bitter in taste without processed, so they blanch the stems before using in recipes. Apparently, the plant possesses the same medicinal properties as artichoke, which is suggested to have liver detoxifying properties. After this scientific discussion about cardoon, I became very curious to taste it and decided to have a puchero meal one day. Anyway, that was the story about puchero arrangement but the real reason, of course, was just to get together.

Puchero is Valencian word for Cocido in Spanish. It is basically a stew cooked with incredible amount of good stuff. The clear part of the juice (caldo) is sold in stores and used as stock in cooking.

Los Fausos live in Rotova, about 10 km west of Gandia. Miguel renovated their house incredibly beautiful. The walls, floors, woodwork and staircase were exceptional craftsmanship. He swirling staircase was built from marble and obviously required some heavy duty fitting - amazing work.

You can see the staircase behind this Santa.

Don Quixote wall murals in the garden

Michael's Nativity Display (years of collecting)

Alicia's LLadro Nativity Display

Well, the meal! It was not only puchero, but the whole lunch was a fiesta. First, we had a variety of Spanish entries - salchichons, jamon iberico, manchego cheese and etc. Then came the puchero. First we had it like soup with the meatballs and rice. Then the vegetables and the meat cooked in it came separately. After main course, we had some naranjas from the Faus' orchards followed by a variety of Spanish Christmas goodies such as all sorts of turrons and fruit filled pastries. The meal ended with a dessert wine from the region.

The best part of the whole affair was being in the company of such wonderful people. I have recently found some blogs that talk about not very nice treatment of the foreigners by the Spaniards in Spain. We must be awfully lucky to have encountered such nice people so far. I have not, yet, met one nasty person during this visit - except some customer representatives on the phone (they are pretty useless, if you want to get anything done in Spain, you do it face to face).

Anyway, what a way to finish a year: great meal, friends, family and a beautiful weather....

Here is Alicia's recipe for Puchero:

Coges garbanzos secos y los pones en agua y sal el dia antes del puchero. En una olla a presion pones carne de ternera, de cordero, de cerdo y de pollo (cada persona elige los trozos que mas le gustan). Despues añades la verdura, que puedes poner carlotas, pencas, patatas, boniato, nabo, puerro, apio, chirivia (puedes poner cualquier verdura que te guste). Lo cubres todo con agua, sal y azafran. Cuando el agua esté caliente, y antes de cerrar la olla, pones los garbanzos remojados, cierras la olla y la pones a fuego lento.

Despues preparas las pelotas que necesitas carne de ternera y magro muy muy picada, un huevo o dos crudos, un poco de pan mojado y muy escurrido, piñones, pimienta y sal. Lo has de amasar todo con las manos y hacerlo muy bien mezclado y despues modelar tantas pelotas como quieras. Se añade al resto del puchero al cabo de 1,5 hora.

Cuando ya esté todo cocido, que suele ser al cabo de 2,5 o 3 horas, sacas caldo aparte y cueces el arroz. Se sirve como ya vistes, es decir, el arroz con las pelotas primero y despues la carne y la verdura.

You need a huge (believe me huge) cooking pot for this dish:

1. take garbanzo beans and put them into water and salt the day before making puchero.
2. in a pressure cooker, put the beef, lamb, pig or chicken (you choose the kind you like but typical meat used are lamb and beef).
3. then add vegetables such as carrots, pencas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnip, leak, celery, parsnip (and any kind you like)
4. cover everything with water, add salt and safran.
5. heat it before covering the lid.
6. when the water is hot, add the soaked garbanzo beans, close the lid and reduce the heat.
7. prepare meatballs while the stew is cooking.
8. take finely ground beef and lean pork, 1-2 eggs, a little bit wet bread crumbs, pine nuts, pepper and salt, knead them by hand until mixed well and shape them into the size you like (ours were about 1/2 size of my palm).
9. add these meatballs into the stew about 1.5 h after they have been cooking.
10. total cooking time for the stew is about 2.5 to 3 hours with pressure cooker and almost the whole day under very low heat with a regular pot.
11. after the stew is cooked, take the juice into another cooking pot and cook with some rice into a soup.
12. serve the soup with meatballs first, then the vegetables and meat as second.

Yum, yum...

Haluk and Vicente with Spike and Lara in the garden

An avocado tree (I remember our attempts trying to grow the plant from the seed!)

One unripe avocado on the tree

The Faus' Christmas Tree in Spanish style