THE FOOD AND CIDER OF ASTURIAS By Gerry Dawes, John Mariani´s Virtual Gourmet. Excerpted from Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain By Gerry Dawes ©2021

 

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Excerpted from Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain By Gerry Dawes ©2021  

John Mariani´s Virtual Gourmet

 

 

THE FOOD AND CIDER OF ASTURIAS
By Gerry Dawes

 

       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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 Constructive comments are welcome and encouraged.

 

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Text and photographs copyright by Gerry Dawes©2021.  Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2021 on Facebook.  Publication without my written permission is not authorized.

 

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  Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?

 

Poem by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington,

in the courtyard of the Hispanic Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York City.

 _______________________________________________________

 

In 2019, again ranked in the Top 50 Gastronomy Blogs and Websites for Gastronomists & Gastronomes in 2019 by Feedspot. (Last Updated Oct 23, 2019) 

"The Best Gastronomy blogs selected from thousands of Food blogs, Culture blogs and Food Science blogs in our index using search and social metrics. We’ve carefully selected these websites because they are actively working to educate, inspire, and empower their readers with frequent updates and high-quality information."  

36. Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel
 

About Gerry Dawes Bio, Awards, Quotes from Famous Chefs and Culinarians and Custom Gastronomic and Cultural Tours to Spain

My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's culinary life." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019

Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York (streaming live and archived at www.pawlingpublicradio.org and at www.beatofthevalley.com.)

Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 

 

Pilot for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com

 

 

Comments are welcome and encouraged.

 

Text and photographs copyright by Gerry Dawes©2021.  Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2021 on Facebook.  Publication without my written permission is not authorized.

* * * * *

  Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?

 

Poem by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington,

in the courtyard of the Hispanic Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York City.

 _______________________________________________________________________________________________

 

In 2019, again ranked in the Top 50 Gastronomy Blogs and Websites for Gastronomists & Gastronomes in 2019 by Feedspot. (Last Updated Oct 23, 2019) 

"The Best Gastronomy blogs selected from thousands of Food blogs, Culture blogs and Food Science blogs in our index using search and social metrics. We’ve carefully selected these websites because they are actively working to educate, inspire, and empower their readers with frequent updates and high-quality information."  

36. Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

 
About Gerry Dawes

My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's culinary life." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019

Gerry Dawes is the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York (streaming live and archived at www.pawlingpublicradio.org and at www.beatofthevalley.com.)

Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 

 

Pilot for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com