The Principado
of Asturias is
located on the mountainous Atlantic coast of
northern Spain, from which each
succeeding Spanish king-in-waiting takes the
title of Principe de Asturias. Its people
proudly call their land a Paraiso de
los Quesos (cheese paradise),
about which I will be writing soon.
Even if you are not a cheese aficionado,
Asturias also claims to be a Paraíso
Natural for scenery aficionados,
hikers, rock climbers, fly-fishing enthusiasts,
even cave explorers. The
stunning scenery of the snow-capped Picos
de Europa mountains—some of Spain’s
highest—soars above a rocky landscape
scored by cold rushing trout and salmon rivers
that flow through bucolic rural
cheese-producing villages whose surrounding
pastures are often enclosed by rock
walls. And on the beautiful Cantabrian Sea coast
of Asturias, there are fine
beaches and remarkable fishing villages with
restaurants serving some of the
best fish in Spain.
When I
visited producers of the superb, unique cheeses of
Asturias, I
also got a fine overview of the region’s cooking
in Prendes, near Gijón, at
Chef Pedro Morán and his son Chef Marcos’s Casa
Gerardo, a local product-driven, modern
cuisine restaurant with one
Michelin rosette. I also ate in rustic country
restaurants serving such dishes
as fabada
Asturiana, the region’s
“national” bean dish, venison scrapple, wild goat
and corn tortos filled with chopped meat and
eggs. At Tierra Astur Parilla in Oviedo, we
had tortinos con revueltos de picadillo
Tierra Astur, a fried corn disk
something like a cross between a Mexican tortilla
and Italian polenta, topped
with sauteed ground wild boar meat.
I
also had verdinas
con mariscos
(green flageolet-like beans with shellfish) and nécora crab and shrimp; an excellent
version of verdinas
con mariscos was served to my
partner Kay Balun and me for lunch at the charming
Casa Rural Heredad de la Cueste,
owned by Jaime Rodríguez Alonso
and his wife, Marichu Fernández, where we enjoyed
a snack of cider and Quesería
Priédamu Gamonéu cheese made by
Jaime’s sister in the nearby pueblo of Igena.
Marichu also served us an
excellent version of a traditional Asturian crêpes
dessert, frixuelos
(left) which are similar to French
and Galican filloa,
filled with
whipped cream and homemade mermelada de
frambuesa, raspberry jam.
One of the best versions of classic fabada
Asturiana I have ever eaten was at La
Máquina (below),
a restaurant outside the town of Lugones, north of
Oviedo, which
has become a
culinary pilgrimage for gourmands. The dish is
made with large
white beans, morcilla blood
sausage,
chorizo and slab bacon. The meats are separated
from the fabes and the cooking liquid and
served with the broth and el compangu,
the meat and sausages
separated from the beans. We ended our meal with a
typical Asturian dessert, arroz con
leche, rice pudding with a
caramelized sugar crust.
Asturias is also known for a variety of
fish—trout, salmon, hake, sea bream,
turbot, sea bass, monkfish and red mullet—as well
as shellfish, including
crabs, razor clams, oysters, squid, mussels, percebes (very expensive goose
barnacles), sea urchins and scallops
with the coral still intact.
In 2017 my friend Marino González, who owns
six sidrerías, cider houses, brought me
to Tierra Astur Águila (right)
in a former industrial space next to a
Harley-Davidson dealership, with a cavernous
375-seat restaurant that claims to
be the largest cider house in the world. Along one
wall is a row of 12,000- to 
18,000-liter
toneles
(horizontal wooden vats) that have had the ends
removed and tables placed
inside with seats for eight to ten people. In this
mind-boggling space there
are 3,000 empty cider bottles hanging from the
ceiling with lights embedded
among them. In the front is a bar with a wall of
full cider bottles over which
cold water continuously flows.
All evening long, the bottles
are pulled from the rack, their caps popped and
the cider poured in a unique
manner by barmen and waiters. The specially
trained sidra pourers who perform this
dexterous feat hold a bottle bottom
in one hand and raise it above their heads to the
length 
of
the pourer’s arm,
tilt the bottle and let the cider cascade some
four-to-five feet and splash
into a wide-mouthed glass held in the other hand
at the pourer’s knee level.
The result is a spectacular stream of cider, part
of which often misses the
glass and spills onto the floor, which makes
patrons grateful that cider is not
all that expensive.
This escanciar
technique of
pouring from a height into a glass causes much of
the excess CO2 in the cider
to be released. The cider drinker is then expected
to drink the two-fingers of
cider in one gulp before all the sparkle
dissipates. Though the cider is not
high in alcohol, knocking back a dozen glasses of
cider over the course of a
meal or a bar session can take its toll.
Along the
walls are food stations including a grill for
meats, including
Asturian beef, where diners can select some of the
best steaks in Spain.
Another station offers grilled vegetables and
other dishes; a bread station has
big wheels of crusty Asturian bread, and customers
cut the amount they want for
their table. And, of course, there is a large
table featuring a broad selection
of cheeses. There is also a desserts station, a
take-out station and a store
selling artisanal products.
One
afternoon,
we traveled up to the coast to Ribadasella, where
the river empties
into the Cantabrian Sea. On the way we stopped in
for a look at Casa Julián,
a hotel-restaurant in the
hamlet of Niserias overlooking a beautiful
reservoir with a salmon ladder on
the far side. The late dictator Francisco Franco
used to stay there when he
went salmon fishing. We followed the seacoast west
to Lastres, where we found Bar El
Puerto overlooking the port and
had a simple lunch of a salad, a casserole of
steamed local clams and a plate
of grilled sardinas.
On a Saturday evening in Arriondas, the Mirador bar was packed with men,
women and children attracted by
the Asturias’ Sporting de
Gijón
soccer team’s match with Real Madrid on TV. Those
with a bottle of cider on the
table in the bar area had waiters dedicated to
patrolling their areas and
pouring cider as needed, which meant that the
floor of the Mirador was
constantly being washed down with spilled cider.
The
Asturias, generally considered to be too far north
and too mountainous to
produce good wines, is now producing a couple of
wines in the western region
that now has a D.O.P. (Protected Designation of
Origin), Vinos de Cangas (de Narcea)
worthy of serious attention, including the
mercifully light (12 percent
alcohol), charming, delicious Monasterio
de Corias red wine, which is reminiscent of
a French Bouzy, and a white
Asturian albarín-verdejo blend. Gregory Pérez from
Bierzo, a wine region southwest
of Asturias in the province of León, is now
producing a promising Nibias
Albarín Blanco, a crisp petillant
white wine. The Casería de San Juan del Obispo
distillery produces the very
high quality Tareco
cider, which 
is
also the base for an excellent artisanal
eau-de-vie type aguardiente, L’Alquitara del Obispo;
the excellent barrel-aged
Salvador de Obispo, Spain’s closest equivalent to
Calvados; and the unique
L’Alquitara del Obispo Cidra de Postre, a
deliciously tart, appley dessert
cider.
All my
experiences in Asturias were part of a large
tapestry into
which were woven my visits to cheese producers, a
cheese museum in Foz de
Morcín where Afuega’l Pitu
is made,
colorful cider houses, memorable Asturian cuisine
restaurants and a wonderful
honey producer-cum-honey education center, La
Aula de la Miel. I also made
excursions to the coast, to
historic Covadonga and I spent wonderful days in
the old quarter of Oviedo. It
seemed that each place I visited to sample a
cheese were also connected to yet
another Asturian memory of note and most were
connected to Marino González (right), my
guru for all things Asturian. By the
end of each of my visits to the
Asturias, I vowed to return at the first
opportunity to continue exploring this
mountainous Paraíso
de Queso, cheese
paradise and veritable natural paradise.
Restaurants
Tierra
Astur, Calle Gascona, 1,
33001 Oviedo. +34 985 20 25 02
Tierra Astur
Parilla (Grill), Calle Gascona,
9, Oviedo . +34 984 84 66 24
Sidrería Tierra Astur Aguila, Colloto, suburb
of Oviedo. · +34 985 79 12 28
Restaurante
La Máquina, Av. Conde Santa
Bárbara, 59, BAJO, 33420 Lugones. +34 985 26 36
36
Casa Gerardo, Carretera AS-19, km 9,
Prendes. 33438 +34 985 88 77
97
Restaurante-Hotel
Casa Julián,
Carretera Panes-Cangas de Onis, Km 45, 33578.
+34 985 41 57
97
Sidreria Marisquería El Mirador,
Calle la Peruyal, 1,
33540 Arriondas, Asturias. +34 984 19 35 07
Recommended
Hotels and Casas Rurales
Casa
Rural Heredad de la
Cueste, C/ La Cueste, 26, Llenín, Cangas de
Onís, Asturias)
+34 686 92 73 04
Parador de Cangas de Onis, Villanueva de
Cangas, s/n, 33550, Asturias. +34 985 84 94
02
Eurostars Hotel de La Reconquista, Calle Gil de
Jaz, 16, 33004, Oviedo .+34 985 24 11 00
Gran Hotel Regente, Calle
Jovellanos, 31, 33003, Oviedo. +34 985 22 23 43
Excerpted from Sunset in a Glass: Adventures
of
a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain
By Gerry Dawes ©2021
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