Slowpix.org

Month: June 2016

  • Antonio Vence – vermouth producer

     Ingredients in vermouth

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    Having passed the village of Sopuerta, we went to the house of Antonio Vence, the first maker of vermouth in the Basque country. Having introduced ourselves, Mr Vence brought us to his two vineyards near his house, the first one consisting of rows which were too near each other such that diseases could easily spread between them and the second one, which was placed in such a steep terrain that all cultivation and harvesting had to be done manually. Originally, he worked as a distributor of liquors, then he bought a vineyard in 2002. At the time of purchase, he wanted to produce txakoli, a very dry wine, usually white, acid and with low alcohol content.. However, he noticed that vermouth was very popular in the Basque country and there were no Basque vermouths, so he decided to start making vermouth instead.

    Vermouth is an aromatized, fortified wine  flavoured with various botanicals (roots, barks, flowers, seeds, herbs and spices). The name vermouth is the French pronunciation of the German word Wermut for wormwood  that has been used as a medicinal drink for millennia.

    Mr Vence wanted to make a high quality vermouth, which didn’t resemble other ones. Thus, he mixed the local txakoli with apéritif and, in order to obtain a perfect blend, he got help from the winemaker Imanol Sarasola, while the distillery Destilerias Acha makes sure that the vermouth is blended correctly in addition to bottling.

    In addtion to wine, the main ingredients of vermouth is about 20 kinds of botanicals like wormwood, fennel, juniper, vanilla, thyme, walnut, chamomile, cherry, orange, chestnut, cinnamon, linden, cardamom and coriander, which are macerated. That is, to soften or separate into parts by steeping in a liquid for 60 days.

    Being a small-scale producer, it’s not difficult to imagine that the resulting vermouth is an artisan product. In fact, Mr Vence compares it to making your own beer.

    Three types of vermouth are made by this company: ‘Txurrut’, ‘Txurrut Vintage’ and ‘Txurrut Vintage Zuria’ and txurrut means small sip in Basque.

    The bottles are decorated with drawings of some of the botanicals, which are added to the vermouth together with an image of a robin. The sticker on the bottles has the following text: A careful combination of botanicals makes this red vermouth, curious, bold and sociable as the robin.” The image of the bird and the botanicals have been designed by Nuria Ortega.

    Actually, the vineyards of the company of Mr Vence are not sufficient for the production of vermouth. Thus, he gives the harvest from his vineyards to the Txabarri company located just a few minutes drive away and he receives the required amount of txakoli in return. This area is located near the Atlantic, making it humid, meaning that mildew easily occurs on the vines. In order to counteract this, herbicides are used, meaning that the vermouth is not organic.

    Mr Vence started alone and now he has one employee. He’s supported by both local writers and the local press, which write positively about his products. Besides, cooks at high-end restaurants in the Basque Country have also embraced his products.

    Being an enterprising man, Mr Vence has bought two properties in the Basque country where he has planted orange trees and chestnut trees. Both the oranges and the chestnuts are meant for production of vermouth, making the company more self-sufficient. However, the orange plantation is the first one in Bizkaia and he is not sure about how it will turn out because orange trees are just cultivated as ornamental trees in the Basque Country.

  • Gabriela Gorostiza – cook

    Home-made pastries

    Gabriela Gorostiza invited us to have dinner at her home during my visit to Bilbao. Originally, she studied business and worked for 24 years in a bank. Following her mother´s and grandmother´s tradition, she always loved cooking, such that she asked for a sabbatical year from her work in order to study at Cordon Bleu in Paris  as well as to travel to India, the country she is in love with.

    In 2013, she lost her job because of the big recession in Spain. Then, she decided to study cooking, food preparation and catering in the Basque Public School of Leioa. After two years of preparation, now she works as a cook, but as she loves cultural exchanges and she is a great friend of my guide, she invited us to have dinner at her home with her family.

    She prepared for us local “pimientos verdes”, green peppers, fried in olive oil, “croquetas” in different tastes, “pimientos rellenos” a kind of small red peppers from Navarra stuffed with meat in a Spanish sauce and for dessert some “profiteroles” and a delicious ice-cream. Everything was home-made with local products and she explained how she made each dish and we could see the final steps in her kitchen.

    Gabriela is very thoughtful and the table was prepared with attention to detail. We spent a great time with her and her family.

    In addition, she does catering and she has given courses to acquaintances on how to cook Spanish food. My guide is trying to persuade her to do arrange meals for foreigners, but as of yet, she hasn’t decided to do it.

  • Chocolates de Mendaro – chocolate producer

    Mixing chocolate

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    Chocolates de Mendaro is a small company, which was founded and has been owned by the Saint-Gerons family for generations. The story starts during the First Carlist War, a civil war in Spain from 1833 to 1839, when the Frenchman Bernardo Saint-Gerons, who was married to a local woman, founded a company for importing and selling colonial products like cacao, vanilla, coffee  and sugar in the Basque country. Later his son, Juan Maria, went to Bilbao in order to learn how to produce chocolate. Then, he set up a mill in Mendaro in 1850 where his descendants still produce chocolate manually following traditional recipes.

    Initially, whole cocoa beans were imported and a donkey was used to rotate a mill for grinding the beans into cocoa mass, then an electric motor substituted horse power, while nowadays they aren’t allowed to grind cocoa beans any more. Instead, they buy raw chocolate  from a company in Valencia. The cocoa beans come from Venezuela, Ivory Coast and Ecuador, while sugar comes from the area of Alava in the South of the Basque Country and the adjacent province of Burgos. They are also using honey, which they buy from a beekeeper in Getaria located near Mendaro, as a sweetener.

    Cacao beans were brought to Spain by Christopher Columbus in 1502, but it didn’t have any impact. Shipments of cocoa seeds to Spain started in the 1520s. The first documentary evidence of chocolate in Spain comes from a delegation of Dominican monks led by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, who travelled to the Iberian Peninsula in 1544 to visit Prince Philip, future Emperor Philip II.

    The story of chocolate apparently goes back millennia, bu the earliest written document is the Dresden Codex made by Maya Indians dating to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. As described here and here, the Mayans drank a liquid made from crushed cocoa beans, chili peppers and water. When the Aztecs conquered a large part of Mesoamerica in the 1300s, they imposed a tax, consisting of cocoa beans, on the Mayans.

    As regards the meaning of chocolate: The English word ‘chocolate’ comes ultimately from the Nahuatl word chocolatl, an edible substance made from, amongst other ingredients, the seeds of the cacao tree. When the first Spanish explorers encountered chocolatl in Central America, they apparently mixed it up with the word cacahuatl, the name of a drink made from cacao.  However, as suggested here, the Spanish conquistadors didn’t want to use the word cacahuatl because “caca” is a vulgar Spanish word for feces. Certainly, the conquistadors encountered Indians, like the Aztecs, who were  drinking cold chocolate liquor and using cocoa beans as a form of currency in the early 1500s.

    From the outside, the chocolate mill looks like any brick house in this area apart from a large sign with the text Chocolates 1850 Mendora, but having entered, the owner Maria Saint-Gerons led us first to their small shop, which was full of their exquisite products, then we entered the workshop where Ana Mari, who had worked for the same company for 25 years, and a woman colleague were dipping small pieces of chocolate in hot chocolate, then rolling them in cocoa powder. Last but not least, the the whole workshop was immersed in a pleasant flavour of chocolate. Besides, it was quiet and it seemed like nothing was rushed, making it a wonderful place to work

    As noted on the web site of this company, chocolate is a mixture of sugar and cocoa. Two products are derived from cocoa beans: cocoa paste, which is dark brown and bitter, and cocoa fat which is yellow. According to the proportion of paste and fat mixed with sugar and ingredients such as milk, or dried fruits, different types of chocolate are produced such as auburn, milk or white chocolate.

    Interestingly, there were three machines in the workshop, each of them mixing either hot white, milk or dark chocolate by letting a wheel somehow lift the hot chocolate upwards, then letting it fall down through a chute back to the vessel from which the wheel had lifted the hot chocolate, forming an infinite loop.

    Changing tasks, Ana Mari mounted three moulds on a plate, then she held each mould under the chute which let the hot chocolate fall down continuously. After having filled all the moulds and scraped away superfluous hot chocolate, she put nuts in the hot chocolate, then stored them in a cool place such that the hot chocolate would turn solid.

    Next, she put a bowl under one of the chutes at a time, filling one bowl with hot white chocolate, one with hot milk chocolate and one with hot dark chocolate. Then, she poured the contents of all of them onto a stone table and mixed them with a spatula. Having mixed the hot chocolates, she held another bowl under the table and scraped hot chocolate such that it flowed down into the bowl. Having stirred the mixture thoroughly, she poured the hot chocolate into a mould and scraped away excess chocolate. Finally, she stored the mould in a cool place.

    Ana Mari also showed us how to make chocolate bars for «chocolate a la taza», the Spanish hot chocolate, when she put a dark and very dense chocolate mass in the mill, which had been used from the 1850 to grind cocoa beans. Below the upper millstone, there were a set of wooden rollers and , according to a newspaper clipping on the wall, the millstones had never been replaced, while the rollers had been replaced because they add flavour to the chocolate . When she turned on the electric motor, the upper millstone was rotated, forcing the rollers to rotate at the same time, compressing the chocolate. After having compressed the chocolate mass, she picked up pieces of chocolate mass with a spatula and put them one by one into moulds. Next, she put the moulds on a shaker table to shake them as well. Until recently, she had to do it manually instead. A film showing this process can be watched here.

    This company produces a wide variety of chocolates, as can be seen here.

    The products include

    Their products are sold in specialty shops in Donostia, Bilbao and Mendaro.

  • Salanort – seafood producer

    Preparing seafood

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    On the way to Getaria, we drove along the coast where pilgrims were walking on the way to Santiago de Compostela. Getaria is a fishing town where fishing vessels are unloading their catch, which is brought to nearby fish processing plants. We went to the small, family-owned factory Salanort, which receive freshly fished anchovies from the Bay of Biscay and frozen octopus from Marocco.

    Having found the correct place, we were met by Mr Koldo who willingly showed us around the factory. Since it was very small, our visit was rather short.

    Salanort work mainly with anchovies, tuna and octopus, and they prepare the anchovies in two ways: salted fish, «en salazón», and cooked in vinegar, «boquerones». Upon arrival at Salanort, anchovies are put in brine for cleaning and killing harmful bacterica.

    During our visit, some workers were preparing «Boquerón de anchoa del Cantábrico», in which they were cleaning and de-boning anchovies. After they have been cleaned three times in order to remove all residues of blood, they are put in a mixture of vinegar and salt for 24 hours, then they are cleaned again and put in trays, covering them either in vinegar, olive oil or a mix of both, next the trays are closed and labelled.

    The octopuses are caught and frozen in the Mediterranean by Maroccan fishermen. At Salanort they are first thawed, sorted by size, next they are cleaned by a brush and put in brine for 24 hours in order to make the meat softer and more tasty. Afterwards, it’s cooked at 80°C before being transferred quickly to water at 4°C in order to kill harmful bacteria. Lastly, they are cut up and pasteurised again. Finally, they are packaged and sold as «Pulpo cocido».

  • Sandra Lejarza – cattle farmer

    Feeding the cattle

    Web site

    Photo gallery

    We met Sandra Lejarza at the entrance of her farm, which she has been renting for the last seven years. Letting the car of my guide stay, we drove up the steep hill in Sandra’s car until we arrived at a barn which only had walls on three sides. Being situated on the top of a hill, we had a nice view in all directions. Her cattle were staying on a pasture just below the barn and, in order to make them enter the barn, she tried to tempt them inside by hitting a bucket, in which she usually had feed for the cows, and calling to them. This, together with the help of a shepherd dog, it seemed like all the cattle would enter the barn until one cow changed her mind and started wandering to another pasture, being followed by some calves. However much Sandra tried to tempt them to go inside, they didn’t obey her, but they entered the barn on their own volition later.

    Inside the barn, she filled the bucket with cereals and poured it into a trough from which the cows were eating. Besides, there were lots of adjacent places where the cows could reach the trough, but it was also intended that a metal bar should be locked as soon as their heads approached the trough. Then, the farmer could ensure that the cows stay till they had finished. However, the ox, which was of the Aubrac race, had so large neck that it wasn’t possible to close the metal bar. Having eaten, some of the cows chose to stay inside, while others went outside.

    Having fed the cattle, Sandra turned to making a meal for us, that is me, my guide, herself and Eduardo from the Bizkarra bakery and confectionery, which we had visited earlier in the day. During the cooking, Sandra told us that she had chosen Asturian cattle  because they can take care of themselves and they can bear calves on their own. They are beef cattle and they only give milk to their cows. She’s renting the place where she has the cattle and soon she either has to renew the contract or look for somewhere else.

    She grew up in a town, married a man from the countryside, and he knew how to breed cows. However, she’s running the farm on her own, while he works in another place. Since the ox is incredibly strong, he helps her when the ox needs to be mated with a cow.

    Although the local farmers are very conservative, she’s always open to new ways to improve the running of the farm.

    Sandra goes to markets often and she enjoys meeting people. She has teamed up with Eduardo, the owner of the Bizkarra bakery, in order to create a combined product, consisting of four hamburgers with meat from her own cattle and four sourdough breads slowly fermented and not fully baked. In fact, the bread should be baked just before it is eaten.

    Both Sandra and Eduardo are persons who are never satisfied with their business, they always feel the need to improve, to introduce new products, to sell their products in different ways and so on. Since both of them also want to use organic and local products as far as possible and using traditional recipes, they work well together.

    Sandra also sells meat on Whatsapp. When a calf is getting ready, she sends a message to her customers that they can buy veal and when all the meat of the calf has been sold, the calf is slaughtered. Afterwards, Sandra brings the meat personally to her customers.

    Near Sandras´s farm a friend of her, Done, was training for a local rural sport called «Aizkolaritza», and we went to see how he was doing. His wife was measuring the time he used to chop each thick log with an axe and we could realize how hard and intensive this sport must be. Aizkolaritza [ais̻koˈlaɾits̻a] is the Basque name for a type of wood-chopping competition. They are a popular form ofherri kirol (rural sport) in the Basque Country. Competitions are commonly held at most festivals, especially town festivals and usually involve at least two individuals or teams competing against each other.

  • Bizkarra bakery and confectionery

    Embellishing a cake

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    Pinterest

    Twitter

    Youtube

    Having entered the Bizkarra bakery, which is housed in a nondescript brick building, I first thought I had arrived at a factory and that we had come to the wrong place. Instead, my first impression was, if not wrong, very far from the truth. This bakery was founded in 1957 by Esteban Bizkarra and we were shown around the bakery by Eduardo Bizkarra, one of his grandsons. At first sight, it seemed like the workers were just operating machines, but after some time, which lasted up to 4(!) hours, I could see first-hand that the machines did all the heavy and repetitive work, while the workers, who were trained bakers, were doing manual work occasionally, like shaping each bread manually by deft hands. Since demand for breads from this bakery is very high, the breads have to be made fast.

    The breads made at this bakery are either sourdough breads, where a starter is used to start fermentation or yeast, which is expected to ferment for 16 hours, is used. The philosophy of this company is to not rush thing and let nature take its time. This has the added advantage that the workers can prepare dough in the afternoon and let it ferment overnight.

    Parts of the flour, which is used at this company, has been certified and the cereals have been grown in Álava, located in the south of the Basque Country, where they have been turned into flour. 

    Sourdough starters contain yeasts and lactic acid bacteria. While the yeasts expand bread by leaving air pockets after baking, the lactic acid bacteria improve taste, sight, smell and touch of bread as well as their shelf life, nutritional value and wholesomeness. A sourdough starter contains thousands of different microorganisms, which will leaven bread slowly.

    The sourdough starter has to be renewed regularly and each time it is used for making bread, a part of it is kept for the next bread-making. The microorganisms in the sourdough starter are kept alive by giving them nutrients like flour for food and water for drinking. It is also necessary to stir it such that the microorganisms can breathe.

    Actually, the Bizkarra company consists of both a bakery and a confectionery and Eduardo willingly showed us both, sometimes showing us some type of cake being made in the confectionery before going back to the bakery where we could, e.g. watch freshly shaped pieces of dough enter an oven by means of a machine or using the same machine to take them out again, creating a pleasant fragrance. He also picked small pieces of freshly made dough and pulled it almost apart, showing us some of its characteristics. Likewise, he described the characteristics of a freshly made bread on which the bakers had made a pattern in the dough before baking by means of a knife. Being an expert, he could perceive imperfections, which would have been more or less invisible to anyone else.

    Eduardo likes to research old recipes as well as bakery history and ancient cereals always looking for new ways to improve his company.

    In the confectionery, lots of different types of sweets were being made. We were shown sweets typical of the province of Bizkaia, like «pastel de Arroz» , «bollo de mantequilla»  «carolina»  and «pastel vasco»  were made manually, but as usual, with the help of machines. A machine, which seems to be ubiquitous in confectioneries are rollers, which flatten the dough. First, the confectioner makes the dough relatively flat by means of a rolling pin, then the dough is put in the roller where it is compressed several times until it is as thin as required.

    One of the cakes called «pastel vasco», meaning Basque cake, was made by pressing a stencil on the flat dough, making lots of equal pieces. Then, each piece was covered by filling by means of a pastry bag, then another piece of dough was put on top. Finally, an elaborate pattern called «Lauburu» was drawn on top of each piece before baking them. Later, fragrant and pleasant-looking cakes were taken out of the oven. The «lauburu» is an old symbol of the Basque Country and the unity of the Basque people. 

    We could also watch various other types of sweets being made where ingredients like flour, sugar, butter, milk and eggs were mixed together and turned into delicious miracles. For instance, one of the confectioners, having made a filling, applied it to small containers of pastry dough casing, looking like a filled pie. After having leavened and baked them, they were left for cooling, then a confectioner would apply another type of filling on top of the filled pie, forming a sort of spiral on top of it. Finally, it was dipped in chocolate liquor.

    Lots of other delicious and fragrant sweets were made, almost drowning our senses in good feelings.

    To finish, Eduardo has also teamed up with a cattle farmer, Sandra Lejarza, who sells high quality veal burgers, in order to create a combined product, consisting of four hamburgers with meat from her own cattle and four sourdough breads slowly fermented and not fully baked. In fact, the bread should be baked just before it is eaten.

    Later, the same day, we would go to visit Sandra Lejarza who would cook a meal for us and Eduardo would bring some of his delicious breads and cakes.

  • Txakoli Txabarri winery

    Pruning superfluous leaves

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    We met José Txabarri after having ascended a steep road from the Casa de Juntas de Avellaneda the most iconic building in Encartaciones, originally an Assembly Hall,the seat of the chartered political government for centuries, now transformed into a museum. Having crossed a big room in a large brick building full of machines, we followed Mr Txabarri to his reception room where all his wines were displayed and customers could savor the taste of his wines together with an accompanying meal.

    Originally, he worked at a paper factory and he started growing vines as a hobby in 1990 and his wife started the winery in 1995. All the time, he has been growing vines like Hondarrabi-zuri, Petit courbu or Xarratia or Zuri Zerratu, Petit manseng or Izkiriot Ttipi and gros manseng or Izkiriot Haundi in order to make txakoli wine, a very dry wine, usually white, acid and low alcohol content.

    This winery has won many prizes, the most recent being the Bacchus de Plata 2015 and they produce the following wines:

    • Txabarri White Extra
    • Txabarri White
    • Txabarri Red
    • Txabarri Rose

    After having tasted some of the wines,we joined Mr Txabarri in his car, in which we drove up to a vineyard where we also met his son Iker. As a demonstration, they showed us how they removed superfluous leaves such that lots of sunlight could reach the grapes. All the vines were growing very tidily, being supported by 8 wires in two rows, 40 cm apart with a maximum height of the vines amounting to 2.5 meters. Just above the vineyard, there was a grove of eucalyptus and Mr Txabarri told us that the vineyard we were watching had recently replaced another grove of eucalyptus. In fact. the Txabarri family sells a lot of txakoli and they want to expand further. Coming back in some years, maybe there won’t be any eucalyptus trees left in this area.

    Cultivation of the vines is not organic, but they try to use as little pesticides as possible. However, winds from the sea pass the vineyards, bringing humid air and causing mildew. Anyway, they’re trying to work with nature by letting bats, which live above the reception room, go hunting moths, which are eating the vines.

  • Ana Mari Llaguno – vegetable producer

    Opening a peapod

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    In the countryside of Las Encartaciones, we went to visit Ana Mari Llaguno, a woman who has been growing vegetables in open air for 38 years. Actually, she moved into the house of her parents-in-law when she got married and her mother-in-law had already been growing vegetables next to their house for many years. In the Basque Country, it’s common that women are growing vegetables next to their houses, while men are working e.g. at factories or go to sea . However, while they are supposedly cultivating a small piece of land and cultivate only for domestic consumption, the fields of Mrs Llaguno amount to 3500 square metres, making her a small-scale producer who can sell her products e.g. at farmers’ markets.

    All the cultivation is organic and she’s only irrigating young plants, while mature ones will have to fend for themselves. In addition, she sets aside fields for 4 years a time, letting them rest and the soil to recover as fallow land. Besides, she’s growing different vegetables on the other fields each year. That is, she practises crop rotation, which helps in reducing soil erosion  and increases soil fertility and crop yield.

    One of the most important vegetable she’s cutivating is a bean called «Alubia encartada» in Spanish and it’s included in the Ark of Taste of Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. The wild form of this plant is commonly found in undisturbed places such as bushes on roadsides, edges of forests or fields in the district of Las Encartaciones.

    Beans were imported from North America, where Native Americans were growing mixed fields of maize, squash and beans, by European colonists.

    To put it quite simply, growing maize (a tall grass), beans (a nitrogen-fixing legume) and squash (a low-lying creeper plant) together was a stroke of environmental genius. Maize maximizes photosynthesis, and grows straight and tall. Beans use the stalks for structural support and to gain greater access to sunlight; at the same time they bring atmospheric nitrogen into the system, making the nitrogen available to maize. Squash performs best in shady, humid places, and that is the type of microclimate provided by the corn and beans together. Further, squash decreases erosion. Source.

    Another edible plant, which is grown at this farm is «Pimiento choricero», a special kind of pepper that is used for instance to make «chorizo» but also for cooking many others dishes. «Chorizo» is a pork sausage, which is flavoured with this kind of pepper, giving it an orange-red colour. For cooking, it’s widely used in the Basque Country where cooks let the peppers stay in water for a few hours or boil them with the stock , then the skin and seeds are discarded, while the pulp is kept. The kind of Pimiento choricero cultivated in this farm is a local one, known as «Pimiento choricero de las Encartaciones», and it is very well known among the great chefs because it has plenty of pulp and it´s really tasty.

    Zalla Violet onion,  a kind of local red onion, is also grown at this farm, besides broad beans, both of which originated in the Middle East, then after some thousand years, they spread to Europe.

    After having walked around the fields of the farm, we were shown two long beds, which were surrounded by small brick walls and partly covered by plastic. Inside the walls, the beds were almost covered by green salads. Most of the beds are used as seedbeds and the seedlings are sold to other vegetable growers. Ana Mari makes a big effort to maintain the old local seeds year after year and one can sense her pride when somebody recognises her work.

    After having visited the fields and the beds, Mrs Llaguno and her husband showed us their cows and calves which lived inside an enclosure nearby. Mr Llaguno gave them whole breads, which turned out to be very popular. In fact, the breads were leftovers from a local bakery and since the customers prefer freshly made bread, the Llaguno couple get them for free.While we cut bread into slices before we can eat it, the cows ate them whole, looking very content at the same time.

    A taco soup using vegetables similar to those grown by Mrs  Llaguno is presented here.

  • Magora bakery

    Putting the finishing touches to a carolina

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    We went to the house of Izaskun García in the countryside of Carranza where we were met by a rather persistent dog. Interestingly, my guide told me that when a man from the local electrical power provider had been visiting their house, the dog had entered his car, but it didn’t want to leave!

    Anyway, having entered the kitchen of Mrs García, the dog was left outside and we could watch her and her mother busily making pastries.

    The story of this family-owned bakery is rather special: Mrs García was 22 when she was diagnosed with coeliac disease and since there weren’t any artisanal foods available, she had to make do with bland, industrial foods. However, when her first daughter got the same disease when she was 3 years old and her youngest one when she was1, she was really in despair. Then, she set up a goal: make foods which her children could eat like muffins, pastries and fresh bread. Why should she settle for less?

    She was originally working in the quality department of a petrol distributor, a job she really liked, but when her daughters got ill, she started to make cakes at home, being helped by her sister, her mother and her husband. In the beginning, she failed repeatedly and she had to discard lots of doughs, but gradually she succeeded. Then, she let her friends taste her cakes and they advised her to make cakes for everyone with food intolerance.

    Having decided to found her own combined bakery and confectionery, she applied for funds in order to convert the garage and the storeroom into a kitchen according to regulations. In September 2015, she sold her products at a market for the first time and they were very well received. Now, her company is called Magora bakery whose name is derived from the names of her daughters: Matxalen and Gorane.

    She makes a very wide selection of sweet and salty products, including muffins, biscuits, bagels, breads and pies, and all of them are without gluten and milk. Unsurprisingly, she gets up at 4 in the morning in order to make her products, all of which have to be packaged in plastic, else they may be contaminated by traces of gluten in the bakeries or markets where they are sold, which may cause trouble for her customers.

    She listens to the demands of her customers and she tries to cater to their needs as far as possible. She tries to use organic ingredients and she likes following old recipes, adapting them to her needs. She enjoys watching her customers eating similar food to other people at local markets, which was impossible before she started.

    During our visit, she made a cake, which is called carolina and it is only made in the area of Bilbao and the province of Bizkaia. It is the same cake as we saw being made at the Bizkarra bakery where a filled pie was topped with a spiral-shaped filling.

    Before we left, we were each offered a carolina, which my Basque guide ate completely, while I had to give up about halfway. Having my mouth full of filling was unfortunately too much for me. This shows that I need to spend more time in the Basque country, enjoying the rich diversity of foods on offer.

    Last but not least, Magora bakery has a very active Facebook profile.

    A Complete Guide to IBS & How To Ease It can be found here.

  • Vista Alegre farm and farmhouse dairy

    Turning the cheeses upside down to expel whey

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    Having arrived early in the morning, Cesar and Helen, the farm and dairy owners, wished us welcome to Vista Alegre farm, and they invited us to go to the barn where their Friesian cows were being milked by machines. As usual, cows are timid when strangers are present such that we had to stay some distance from the entrance to the machines, else they wouldn’t enter.

    After all the cows had been milked, they were let out in the barn where they were fed cereals from a trough, then they got freshly cut grass, both of which seemed to be well received.

    While the cows were eating, we went to the farmhouse dairy located nearby. In fact, before 2011 milk this farm was sold to large dairies. However, since the price of milk was continually decreasing and farmers in the Basque country were expected to intensify production, this family turned from conventional to organic farming and started selling pasteurised milk, yoghurt and cheese directly to consumers and in small shops in this area. This farm was certified organic from 2013.

    Before we could enter the dairy, we first had to wear a white jacket, a hat and rubber boots. Inside, the whole family apart from the Englishwoman Helen, was making yogurt. The milk from the cows was stored in a container, from which it was pumped to the farmhouse dairy. There, it was filtered, then heated to 90ºC and quickly lowered to 43ºC in order to get rid of unwanted bacteria. Since all processing was done by machines, their only task was to fill small glasses with yogurt and put on lids and labels.

    While Cesar and two helpers were making yogurt, Helen, who’s originally from the UK, was packaging cheese manually in an adjacent room. After having packaged the cheese, she put on a label, which was in accordance with EU requirements, both regarding what information should be included, but also the size of the font.

    Helen told us that they often receive visitors, in particular children from local schools. She even taught them English at the same time as she was teaching them how to package cheeses.

    When the yogurt was completed and the cows had finished eating the freshly cut grass, Cesar let them go outside on a pasture next to the farm.

    The web site of the Vista Alegre farm has a huge amount of interesting information and the following is an extract of a small part of it.

    The steps taken to achieve greater sustainability

    From the early 1990s, following a certain degree of intensification, the Vista Alegre farm decided not to carry on with the intensification-industrialisation that could be observed on other dairy farms (fodder based mainly on imported compound feedstuffs, high milk yield per cow, bought in embryos, permanent stabling of livestock, slurry dumping…) and, in fact, began a process of de-intensification. Basically, the amount of compound feed given the cows was reduced, cows were put out to graze whenever the weather was suitable (March/April to November, at least) and the stocking rate was lowered. Lower milk yields are achieved, but, on the other hand, the quality of milk has been purposefully improved.

    These changes have had immediate positive repercussions for animal welfare (less health problems in the dairy herd and, as a result, less use of veterinary products), for the environment (less slurry, lower energy costs due to fewer imports of fodder, greater biodiversity in fields…) and for the nutritional quality and health standard of milk (higher protein and unsaturated fat content…).

    The milk is not homogenised, it’s fat content thus being visible and the possible health risks associated with homogenisation and still open to debate in scientific circles are avoided. As cows graze in open fields the nutritional quality of milk has improved, for example concerning the presence and appropriate relationship between elements such as Omega 3 and Omega 6, calcium and phosphorus.

    Our aim is to sell as many of our products as possible straight to consumers, reducing the number of intermediaries. We also wish to provide consumers with as much information as possible about our farm and our products, emphasising the agro-ecological character of the farm project and the contribution it can make to food sovereignty. We therefore give priority to work with producer-consumer groups in the Nekasare network, but also sell our produce in small shops and restaurants, once again establishing clear priorities, in this case, selling as close as possible to Karrantza, our ideal being to sell in the area between Karrantza and Bilbao ( Encartaciones, Zona Minera, Margen Izquierda and Bilbao).

    Milk from the Vista Alegre farm

    Three of the issues that heavily influence the nutrient composition and health quality of milk from the Vista Alegre dairy herd are:

    • the type of fodder given to cows and the way it is supplied

    • the importance given to cleanliness and hygiene on the farm and in milking

    • the way milk is processed in the farm dairy

    As far as the type of fodder given to the dairy herd is concerned, two parameters have a positive impact on milk quality: firstly, the high percentage of forage in fodder and the low percentage of concentrates; and, secondly, the fact that cows graze at least seven months a year, weather permitting. Our cows are not permanently stabled and are thus able to move around more freely, a fact that has positive implications for the dairy herd’s health

    As far as hygiene is concerned, in both livestock management and milking, particular attention is paid to cleanliness in fields, cow barns and the milking parlour on the farm.

    With regards to the type of processing applied to milk, this is pasteurised at 63-65ºC for 30 minutes. Milk is not homogenised to avoid applying greater pressure which can alter milk and to uphold the precautionary principle, given the scientific data concerning the possible adverse impacts of homogenisation for consumer health (see the document “Getting to know milk”). Fresh and soft cheese is made from pasteurised milk, whilst yoghurt is the result of a different process during which milk is heated to 90ºC. Our fine cheeses and mature cheeses are made with raw milk, something we are able to do given that our milk has “A” category status from a health and hygiene point of view. Milk from the Vista Alegre farm is not enriched in any way and the presence of each nutrient, such as calcium or non saturated fatty acids (the omegas) is a result of the way in which the cows are fed and our dairy products made.

  • Lurrarte – fruit producers

    Male and female kiwi flowers

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    Ignacio Artola Lurrarte and his partner Antton Olaizola are fruit farmers who have called their company «Lurrarte», which means «between different lands» in Basque, because they live between the farmhouse and their customers. In addition to producing their own fruit, they also buy fruit for sale from other local producers and, if necessary, they import fruit from Holland. If required, they store fruit in a cold room until they can sell it.

    We visited Ignacio Lurrarte on the outskirts of the town of Azkoitia where he lives next to an orchard covering 18 hectares, where 8 has are set aside for kiwi trees, another 8 has for table apple trees and another 2 has for cider apple trees. Besides, they have a small field of cherries. He and his partner Antton have been cultivating this orchard for more than 25 years and they rent it from a convent next to the orchard. In 1989, they were the first ones that started a plantation of kiwi fruit in the Basque Country.

    Kiwifruits were originally called Chinese gooseberries because they originate from China and they tasted like gooseberries, but a woman missionary brought seeds of this plant to New Zealand in 1904. From the 1950s onwards, Chinese gooseberries were being exported to the United States, but since it was during the Cold War, the Americans didn’t want to buy anything related to China. Then, then name kiwifruit, probably inspired by the kiwi bird, was introduced and has since spread worldwide.

    Kiwifruits are vine plants and they grow best across vertical structures that provide support and abundant access to light. Having entered the orchard, we could see rows of kiwifruit trees which were supported by trellises with T-bars, but we could also see branches and twigs which had been attached to horizontal steel wires, say, 1.5-1.8m above ground.

    Quotation: Kiwi trees are rampant plants and their trunks never become sturdy enough to hold the plants up off the ground of their own accord. Under cultivation plants must be trained to some sort of support that is both sturdy and allows vines adequate room to ramble.

    The goals in training and pruning are to make a potentially tangled mass of rampant shoots manageable and easy to harvest, and to keep a vine fruitful by allowing adequate light to fall within the plant canopy. Pruning also stimulates an annual flush of new wood, important because flowers, and, hence, fruits, are borne toward the bases of current seasons’ shoots that grow from canes that grew the previous year only.

    The kiwi vines have male and female plants that have corresponding male and female flowers. In order to produce fruits, pollen from male plants must be transferred to the female plants and since there are many beekeepers in this area, the pollination is done by honeybees. For a good yield of fruit, one male vine for every 4.5 female vines is required in this orchard. When the female flowers have been pollinated, they will grow into kiwifruits, while the male ones will wither.

    Ignacio picked one of each and showed us how they look like as shown at the top of this article.

    The kiwi fruits grow from the same fruit spur and, in order to have one big fruit instead of several small ones, only one in a group of fruits is kept, while the other ones are removed.

    During bud break, frosts are very harmful for the buds. As regards diseases, kiwifruits are susceptible to some fungal diseases of the trunk that they treat by cutting it off just above ground and letting it be replaced by another sprout growing from the same trunk.

    There are some problems with Phytophtora fungus, which can cause crown rot, in the soil. Thus, Ignacio and his partner feel they have to use herbicides in order to keep diseases under control. They also use artificial fertlisers, meaning this orchard is not organic, but they follow the requirements set up by the Agricultural Department of the Basque Government and it’s qualified as «integrated production». 

    The kiwi fruits are picked by hand in November and sold to the BM supermarket chain in the Basque Country. BM is a local chain that has a section of local products and they treat producers fairly..

    Irrigation is done by droplets via hoses, which extend along the length of each row of trees

    They sell whole fruits only and they don’t process them in any way.

    Having got an introduction to kiwifruits, we went to the apple trees. This site gives some interesting background information:

    • Archeologists have found evidence that humans have been enjoying apples since at least 6500 B.C.

    • The apple tree originated in an area between the Caspian and the Black Sea.

    • Apples were the favorite fruit of ancient Greeks and Romans.

    Quotation: In winter the apple tree rests. On the branches are buds, some of which contain leaves and others that contain five flowers. With warmer spring weather, the leaf buds unfold and flower buds begin to grow on the ends of the twigs.

    Honeybees are attracted to the apple flowers by nectar and the scent of the petals. As the bee collects nectar, it also picks up pollen. When the bee lands on a flower on another tree, it brushes against the pistil of the flower, leaving pollen grains on the sticky stigma. The pollen grains send tubes down through the styles to reach the ovary (pollination). Through the filament the sperm present in pollen can reach the ovules that are in the ovary. The fertilized ovules will become seeds. The outer wall of the ovary develops into the fleshy white part of the apple. The inner wall of the ovary becomes the apple core around the seeds.

    In summer, the apples grow bigger and gradually change color, and the tree produces new growth. In fall, the apples ripen. About two weeks before the harvest, the apples’ food supply from the tree is cut off and the apples become sweeter. Most apples are harvested by hand, primarily in September and October. Source.

    Ignacio and his partner grow an apple called Elstar, which is profitable, but it is susceptible to diseases Since 2014. they also grow Topaz apples, which are more more resistant to spotted disease. As shown here, apples are subject to a variety of diseases. In addition, they can easily be fed on by aphids  and caterpillars.

    They are also trying other varieties, keeping in mind that local people prefer red apples.

    The most environmentally friendly way of avoiding diseases is to prune the trees, allowing lots of light to enter to ripen the fruit and air can circulate more freely, reducing the spread of disease.

    All pruning should be carried out in the winter months, that is between November and February, when the tree is dormant and it is easier to see the shape of the tree.

    When the fertilised flower begins to develop a seed, the stage of fruit set starts. Soon afterwards, the smallest apples and any damaged ones have to be removed.

    The apples are harvested in autumn. The cider apples are sold to cider houses and the table apples are sold whole in Basque Country

    The last words go to the producers themselves. Our orchards are small compared with those of the multinational companies. This allows us to take great care of each of our individual trees, and collect the fruit one by one at the optimum moment of ripeness, in this way ensuring the quality of the entire harvest in a way that the large producers cannot.

  • Joseba Insausti – shepherd

    Milking sheep

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    My guide asked Jose Ramon Aguirre «Marron», a versatile man (photographer, alpinist and blogger) in charge of Lizarrusti House  (Environmental Center, Tavern and Hostel) in the Natural Park of Aralar to bring us by car from the town of Ataun to the Aralar mountain range via curvy mountain roads and through forests until we reached a lovely area with rolling hills and meadows where horses, cows and sheep were grazing. Finally, we arrived at the mortared stone house of Joseba Insausti, a shepherd only 30 years old, but who has already been doing this work for 19 years, an early start indeed!. Since this area is usually covered by several metres of snow in winter, local farmers practise transhumance, that is they bring their animals in a van to the mountains in late spring and walk down to the valleys in autumn. Transhumance, man bringing animals to the mountains in summer and to the valleys in winter, has been practised for millennia worldwide, but nowadays it is done only in a few a places due to factors like national borders, heavily trafficked roads, only a few who want to be a shepherd, etc.

    Having entered the house, Jose Ramón led us through the house to a small annex where Joseba was milking his Latxa sheep manually. All the sheep were inside an enclosure next to the house and Joseba ordered his shepherd dog to chase the sheep against him by issuing short, sharp commands in Basque. Then, the sheep had to enter a small cage one by one. Depending on if it was a lamb or a ewe, he let the first ones pass, while he closed a small gate if it was a ewe. In the latter case, he milked it by hand, letting the milk into a bucket. When he was finished, he opened the gate such that the ewe could pass. This procedure was repeated until the bucket was full at which moment he poured its contents into a container through a filter of porous cloth. Then, he went back to his milking place and let the next sheep enter the cage. As the number of sheep decreased, the remaining ones weren’t entering the cage willingly, making Joseba order his shepherd dog more frequently to move the sheep against the cage.

    Having milked all the sheep, he brought the milk container to the other part of the hut where there was a small dairy, which is called Otatza de Ordizia. There, he poured the contents of the container through another filter into a rectangular vessel. Having added rennet, which is used to turn milk into curd, he lit a gas fire below the vessel to heat the milk to about 38ºC and stirred the milk for some time. Then, we had to wait for about for about half an hour until the milk started coagulating, meaning it was being turned into curd.

    Afterwards, he used a utensil, which is commonly called a harp or a guitar, because it consists of a metal frame crossed by parallel wires. Moving the harp through the curd in various directions, it is broken up into solid and liquid parts. Next, he spent some time stirring the mixture in order to make it even. Finally, he put a a perforated metal plate into the container and pressed it towards the mixture such that the liquid parts, called whey, flowed out through the holes in the plate, while the solid parts remained. Compressing the solid parts further, a thick block of cheese mass was formed, while the whey was removed by compressing the cheese mass. Next, he used a knife to cut up the cheese mass in cubes with a length of about 12 cm, which he put into circular containers. However, he had already put a porous piece of cloth in each container such that it would be easier to extract the cheese mass from the container at a later date. At last, he put first a label to get traceability, then a a lid on each circular container and put all of them under pressure to press out as much whey as possible.

    Joseba brings his sheep to the mountains in early May and he brings them back to the lowlands in November. He milks the sheep twice daily and he works 12-hour days. There are lots of mortared stone houses in this area and he told my guide that up to 47 shepherds may be staying in this area in season. During our stay, horses and cattle were walking around freely and a car with a trailer even brought two cows, which were released in the same area.

    He has two labels for his cheeses: one for mountain cheese and one for valley cheese. In 2015, he won two prizes: the first prize for the best sheep cheese of Spain and the first prize in «Premio Mejores Quesos Españoles» or «Best Spanish Cheeses Award».

    He considers what he’s doing not a job, but a way of life.

  • Aranburu brothers – sheep farmers

    A sheep, which has been milked, is released

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    After having left the Basazabal farm, we went to another sheep farm a short drive away. This farm is being run by 3 brothers, Jesús, Juanjo and Jose Luis, while Mª Angeles is also helping them.

    The farm has 1200 sheep and 3 hired workers were milking the sheep by means of machines during our visit. 700 of the sheep had been brought by car to the Urbia mountain range in the beginning of May and the rest would be brought up to the same place a few days after our visit.

    After having watched some of the sheep being milked by machines, Ms Angeles invited us to join her on a car trip to the cabin her family is renting from the Provincial Government of Gipuzkoa. On our way up, we saw several mortared stone houses, besides horses and cows which were free to walk wherever they wanted.

    Having arrived at the house, which the Aranburu family is renting, Ms Angeles with help from my guide cooked a delicious meal, consisting of red beans with chorizo and local green peppers «guindillas de Ibarra», lamb chops, a junket called «cuajada» made with fresh ewe‘s milk and finished by a cup of coffee.

    On our return trip, Mª Angeles drove us to a path, which led to a beautiful beechwood where sunrays could only reach the ground through small holes in the canopy. Having passed the forest, we arrived at a natural tunnel called «Tunel de San Adrian»  named after St Adrian’s chapel inside the tunnel. Actually, we were hiking a small part of the St James Way and the Royal Way used by Spanish royalty in times past.

    When we arrived at a road, Mª Angeles arrived shortly afterwards and she kindly drove us to the dairy where we met the rest of her family. This dairy is much bigger than the others we visited. The Aranburu family like to show how they make cheese to visitors. That is why they have set aside a big room where the process from milk to cheese is shown and where the prizes they have won are exposed. Besides, they are constructing a farm behind the dairy in order to show all the process to visitors, from milking the sheep to cheesemaking.

  • Basazabal farm and farmhouse dairy

    Bring a flock of sheep to a pasture

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    We arrived at the farm of the Muñoa family before sunrise. Inside a big building, we could see lots of sheep being milked by milking machines operated by Javier Muñoa and his brother-in-law. His former assistant has recently retired and he’s looking for a replacement, but he hasn’t found a suitable person yet.

    Each time a group of sheep had been milked, they were let out through an exit, while another one was allowed to enter through an entrance. All in all, 270 sheep of the Latxa race were milked this morning. Latxa sheep are considered to be native to the Basque region, but genetic analyses have traced them to present-day Israel from where they started migrating about 7000 years ago. They are very well adapted to the mild and wet climate of the north of the Basque Country.

    Having finished milking, we followed Javier to the farmhouse dairy, where the milk from the sheep already had been pumped into an open vessel, which obviously was part of a cheesemaking machine. Small dairies light a gas fire below the vessel containing milk in order to heat it, but Javier just turned on a switch to heat the milk to 38°C. Then, he prepared rennet, a substance which is used to start curdling, by mixing solid and liquid parts by means of a kitchen mixer, then pouring it into the milk. Afterwards, he started stirring the milk by inserting a couple of harps, a metal structure with parallel metal wires, into a part of the machine and turning on another switch. After some time, he stopped the stirring, letting the milk slowly turn into curd.

    While the milk was turning into curd, Javier went to another barn where he filled feed in a trough, then he let young sheep about 6 months old enter in order to eat. Having eaten, they were led back to the other barn. Then, he released a large flock of sheep, walking in front of them on the road down to a communal meadow where they were allowed to graze freely. Next, he released another group of sheep on a pasture on his own property.

    We returned to the farmhouse dairy where the milk had curdled and it was time to separate liquid and solid parts, that is whey  and cheese. First, Javier restarted the machine, letting the harp stir the curd. Having stirred the solid stuff into small clumps, he exchanged the harp with another metal tool, then letting the machine continue stirring until the mixture looked homogeneous. Next, he put a perforated plate into the liquid on one side of the vessel, likewise on the other one. While one of them was stationary, he started pressing the other one against the first one such that the whey was allowed to exit through the holes in the plates, leaving even more cheese mass inside. After having compressed it as much as possible, Javier used a stencil to divide the cheese mass into cubes whose side was 10-15 cm. Having already put porous cloths into a lot of plastic cylinders, he lifted the cheese cubes and put them one by one in the cylinders. Next, he put small labels on the top of each cheese in order to ensure traceability. Finally, he put lids on all of them and put them in a rack were they were subjected to continuous pressure in order to press out as much whey as possible.

    Having finished the cheesemaking, Javier showed us a brochure from the Guild of Fine Food  where one his cheeses had been deemed to be among the 50 best products worldwide in 2015. In addition, it also got an award of three stars, where one star means delicious, two stars mean outstanding and three stars mean exquisite. This is even more impressive when there were more than 10,000 products which were entered into the competition.

    The cheeses made at this farm from part of Idiazabal cheese  and it is a Denomination of Origin, meaning it has to be produced in the Basque region from the milk of Latxa or Carranzana sheep and the cheese has to be prepared in certain ways. There are about 112 cheese producers, who make Idiazabal cheese and they are located in the territories of Araba, Gipuzkoa, Navarre and Biscay.

    Although Idiazabal cheese has existed for many years, it was common for sheep farmers to send sheep’s milk to dairies where it was turned into cheese. About 30 years ago, there was a marked change when a priest called P Mitxel Lekuona, persuaded farmers to make cheese themselves because the price of milk was steadily decreasing, giving the farmers very little profit. He encouraged them to turn all the milk they produced into cheese and to improve their way of making cheese. He ran courses in cheesemaking, bought various tools and organised excursions to other cheese producers, e.g. in France.

    Regarding the sheep, the ewes are made pregnant by means of artificial insemination, but if it doesn’t work, Javier let the ewes stay with rams for some time. Lambs are born at the end of November and some of them are slaughtered at Christmas when the farmers get the highest price for them. When the lambs are weaned, milking of the sheep is started. Ewes, which aren’t able to get pregnant are sold to Greece and Lebanon.

    Although many sheep farmers bring their sheep to the highlands in summer and to the lowlands in winter, Javier Muñoa lets them stay at or near his far all year.

  • Agrotourism Ondarre

    Grazing sheep

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    While we were visiting small-scale producers in the area of Idiazabal, we stayed two nights at the Agrotourism Ondarre on the outskirts of the town of Segura.

    Both the grandfather and the father of Eneko Goiburu, the present owner of the farm and inn, had worked as shepherds all year, spending summers in primitive mountain huts without any facilities apart from running water. Nowadays, Eneko carries on the farm and makes cheeses as they did, but he also runs an inn, which is naturally most busy in summer, in the farmhouse. As a memory of his ancestors, there is a small ethnographic museum next to the inn where we could have a look at various tools for farming, making cheese, handling wool and turning it into clothes, etc

    In order to attend to the inn properly, the sheep graze on pastures near the farm, instead of staying in the mountains in summer as was done by by his ancestors. Besides, a group of four rams were grazing on a separate pasture next to the farmhouse.

    The sheep are milked daily and sheep’s cheese is still being made manually as it has been for ages. The finished cheeses are Denomination of Origin-certified Idiazabal cheese.

    This summer, Eneko and his parents, Félix and Maria Carmen, have been invited to the 2016 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC, USA, where they will demonstrate how to make and smoke cheese, besides carding wool, spinning, knitting, and more.

    In order to show us how cheeses are smoked, a way of flavouring and preserving cheese, Eneko put some firewood in a big metal bucket and lit a fire. Then, he put nettles on top to produce as much smoke as possible, Next, he put the bucket in a chamber and locked the door. Above the chamber, there was a small room with shelves where the smoke would enter. Having put in some cheeses in advance, he closed the door to the cheeses and let them stay inside for a few hours. Before smoking, the cheeses are whitish, while they have a warm yellow hue afterwards.

    How to make cheese

  • Oiharte cider house and restaurant

    Pouring apple cider into a glass

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    Upon arrival, I recognised a local specialty: a rusty iron plate through which the name of the company had been cut. Interestingly, the plate was also shaped like the profile of an apple.

    We were met by a young man called Aritz, who together with his father, are running this company. The Oiharte family lives in a restored eighteenth century farmhouse and they have built the cider house next to their house. Using an excavator, they have dug out a large volume, built the cider house and refilled with soil and planted grass such that it looks to some degree like a part of the landscape.

    In autumn, apples are harvested and several small-scale producers bring their apples to this cider house. Besides, the Oiharte family has planted some apple trees on their own property and they plan to plant many more. They use apple varieties like: 

    • Errezila
    • Urtebi txiki
    • Urtebi haundi
    • Gezamina
    • Txakala

    When the apples arrive, they are placed on the top of a platform. Next, it is filled with water and the apples are forced to flow down to the cider house directly below the platform.

    The following workflow has been taken from this site, but it is considered to applicable to cider production in general:

    Harvest acidic, bitter and sweet apples: Classify the characteristics of the apples varieties. Depending on the product to be made and the characteristics of the various apple types, more of one variety of apple may be harvested in order to obtain the desired mixture of apples.

    • Pre-washing – removing any dust or mud.
    • Washing – this is not applicable to organic apples
    • Selection – spread out the apples on a table and remove any which has been damaged during transport or are overripe
    • Crushing – crush the apples to extract must
    • Pressing – apply low pressure to the apples such that the pips are not crushed.
    • Must – apple juice analysis. Add must from a different variety of apples if necessary.
    • Cooling – cool the must in order to defer fermentation
    • Decanting – separation of solids from the must by letting them settle. Remove the residues.
    • Fermentation – transforming the must into alcoholic cider by means of yeast, which may be yeast already present on the skin of the apples or add a pure yeast culture.
    • Bottling – fill all piping with nitrogen to make it inert and avoid oxidation before the cider is bottled.

    Regarding fermentation at this cider house, it is divided into two stages where the first one is as described above. After about 2 weeks, a second fermentation, called malolactic fermentation starts. where malic acid is turned into lactic acid by means of a certain strain of bacteria.

    Malic acid contributes to the sourness of green apples and malolactic fermentation tends to create a rounder, fuller mouthfeel. 

    As regards apple juice, after decanting the must is pasteurised, cooled, and bottled.

    After first having entered their restaurant, where they serve meals daily with space for up 100 guests, we entered the cider house where we could see huge tanks storing their products, while nothing interesting was happening due to our arrival some months before harvesting time.

    However, being a good cider maker, Aritz showed us how he fills glasses with cider. First, he holds a glass in his hand as far away from his other hand as possible. Then, he opens a tap and cider is flowing out at great speed, filling the glass. Lastly, he let us taste his delicious cider.

    Besides apple juice and apple cider, sparkling wine is also produced at this cider house by means of a third fermentation following the champagnoise method.  This fermentation will create even more carbon dioxide inside the bottle, leading to an internal pressure of a few atmospheres.

    Finally, Aritz showed us a rack containing sparkling wine bottles which were facing partly downwards. They have to be turned regularly in order to let residues settle. When the settling is finished, the necks of the bottles are frozen and the residues are removed. Next, the bottles are refilled, a cork is inserted and a wire is used to prevent the cork from popping out.

    This cider house was founded 6 years ago, but the family of Aritz has been making cider for many years for private use. Lots of tourists arrive at Christmas and Easter, likewise during a recent marathon run.

    Actually, apple cider is a drink, which has very long traditions in the Basque country since Basque sailors went to the banks near Newfoundland in Canada in order to catch cod and whale. Since water would be contaminated shortly after leaving land, apple cider was used instead and large amounts of apple cider was produced in the Basque country from the 1600s onwards.

     

  • Garoa farmhouse dairy

    Making cheese

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    We arrived at the Garoa farmhouse dairy in the village of Zerain where we were met by Jon Harreguy. Inside, he was turning sheep’s milk into cheese. In fact, the milk had already been turned into curd and he was about to divide it into pieces by using an instrument called a harp, really a rectangular metal shape with vertical metal threads and a handle. Passing the harp through the curd, it is divided into small pieces such that the solid parts, the cheese mass, can be separated from the liquid parts, the whey .Afterwards, he put two vertical and perforated plates in the vessel containing the curd, letting one of them be stationary and pressing the other one against the former. In this way, the cheese mass would remain, while most of the whey passed through the holes in the perforated plates.

    Having finished this task, he used a knife to cut the cheese mass into cubes whose sides had a length of about 12 cm. Beforehand, he had put porous cloths into cylindrical containers, into which he put the cube-shaped cheeses. Next, he put a small label on the top of each cheese mass in order to ensure traceability. Then, he wrapped the cloth around the cheese mass and put a lid on it. Finally, when all the cheese mass had been put into the cylindrical shapes, he put them in a device where they were subjected to constant pressure to press out more whey.

    Shortly before having finished the cheesemaking, a neighbour of Mr Harreguy arrived because he was raising a few pigs and Mr Harreguy filled up a container with whey as feed for his pigs. Some cheeses were lying in brine in order to get rid of whey and to kill bacteria and we also entered the storeroom where cheeses were maturing. In order to get rid of even more whey, they have to be turned around daily.In addition, mould may easily start growing on the surface of the cheeses such they have to be cleaned occasionally.

    Originally, Jon Harreguy and his wife Martina had been renting a farm, but 10 years ago they decided to move to Zerain and buy this farm, starting from scratch and building the farmhouse dairy later. He studied to be a shepherd, while she studied agriculture. From spring to July, a mixture of about 280 Latxa sheep graze on a pasture located near to the Garoa farmhouse dairy. In fact, this breed together with the Carranzana breed are the only ones, which are accepted for the Idiazabal cheese label.

    The sheep are milked by machines at 8 in the morning and Mr Harreguy makes cheese daily. After 10 July, he brings the sheep to Igaratza, in the Aralar mountain range by car. He pays 250 euros per year for staying in a mountain hut with all modern amenities and 1 euro per sheep per year. He stays with the sheep for 5 months, that is until November when he walks the sheep back to the farm where they stay in a shelter in winter. In school holidays, his wife and children join him.

    Before we left the farmhouse dairy, Mr Harreguy let us taste some of his cheeses, all of them delicious and tasty.

    Afterwards, we went a short distance to a pasture where his sheep were grazing on a hill, which was located next to people’s houses.

  • Ordizia market and Restaurante Martinez

    Shopping vegetables at local market

    Web site

    Map reference

    Photo gallery

    We went to the weekly outdoor market in Ordizia, a market which has been arranged for hundreds of years. It started around the eleventh-twelfth century and since the fire of the town in 1512, when Queen Juana «the mad» of Castilla conceded the permission for a weekly market every Wednesday, it hasn’t been interrupted for more than 500 years. There, we should meet Xavier Martinez, the owner of the local Restaurante Martinez, a restaurant which was founded in 1890 At the beginning, it was a coaching inn and it was called «Fonda Urdaneta de Martinez», the second generation expanded the business to a wine warehouse and called it «Fonda de Martínez». The third generation turned it into the bar and restaurant it is today, while the fourth generation has renovated the place completely and has called it «Restaurante Martínez»

    In addition to being the owner of and a cook at «Restaurant Martinez», Xavier has a long career regarding food, like working as a teacher in the cooking school of San Sebastián, as a cook in various restaurants, some of them with several Michelin Stars, in Spain as well as abroad. Besides, he has worked as a food ambassador of Basque cuisine for the Ministry of Trade and Tourism of the Basque Government,

    Having met him outside his restaurant and had a cup of coffee inside, we walked straight to the outdoor market less than 2 minutes away. There, under the roof a huge structure supported by thick brick columns, a lively market was taking place.

    Mainly local producers were offering their wares, like mushrooms, bread, cakes, vegetables, sweets, herbs, snails, meat and seafood, to passersby. Being a local and knowing the market well, Xavier obviously knew what he wanted and after some time had got it. All the local producers preferred to stay under the same structure, apart from a woman who preferred to stay in an arcade of the town hall. She and her family have been selling cheese at that place for four generations and they are granted the sole rights to stay there.

    When we met Xavier in the morning, the bar was nearly empty, while when we returned it was almost completely full. Since we were invited to watch Xavier cooking, we entered the kitchen instead.There, he cooked scrambled eggs with mushrooms using virgin olive oil with garlic. Next, he fried shrimps in virgin olive oil and he mixed them with artichokes and fried leeks. Finally, he invited us to eat the delicious meal he had prepared in his restaurant.

    In addition to the weekly market, there is a cooking demonstration of local and seasonal products once a month. Other events include Shepherd’s Day at Easter, marking the start of the Idiazabal cheese season. A Basque Festival takes place in September and there is an extraordinary Christmas market.

    Going to an outdoor market where local producers sell their products is an excellent way of getting to know them and their products and paying them directly. This really counteracts the alienation most people feel from where their food comes from, who made it and how it was made.