Tales from festival Embutido Artesano y de Calidad
This morning I traveled to an old Spanish town called Requena for a food and wine festival. In my head were visions of me chomping suckling pork, huge plates of paella and succulent seafoods. I was totally wrong. I soon found out that Spanish food revolves around one thing—the almighty pig sausage. Now don’t think I dislike pork products, I would be the last person to pass up on a tasty salchicha offered at the dinner table. However, this particular festival featured only two things: sausage and wine.
At fist I was bummed. I paid for a ticket that basically got me only two glasses of wine and a whole lot of the same thing. The main tent had a large wine table in the middle filled with large samples of very good wine. The perimeter was lined with nothing but sausage stands, all giving samples of the same stuff. The lines were long, there was no diversity and I was annoyed. The only change to the monotony was a booth run by grandmother who gave out codfish tapas. Although these were all right, I was still discouraged.
Salvation came at the last minute.
Fifteen minutes before I was supposed to meet back at the bus I forgot I had to bring home some longaniza—pink, hotdog looking links—for my senora. I decided to get the most of my money and redeem my unused sampling tickets. I hit up three more sausage stands and piled a napkin full of cured delights. Tasting them side-by-side, I realized that these little pig rolls are really delicate little creations. One butcher’s chorizo wasn’t anything to write home about while a different chorizo made me cry out for more pig. The first morcilla, or blood sausage, I ate made me wish I didn’t, but the second sampling almost made me buy a kilo of the stuff. Each bite made me a little happier, a little wiser, and quite a bit more full.
Some pictures from the day:
Spanish Grandmas shelling out the fish paste.
Local winery or bodega. 
Olives from the Medieval fest near my apartment the same night.
That’s right…even more sausage.
1 comment:
well you almost knew how i felt at the rib festival
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