Northern Spain Pigout

 

Finished “Everything but the Squeal” this week and found I had learned a lot. The book is focused on Galicia, the northwest region of Spain. The author visits crazy Carnival celebrations, dying small villages, Catholic pilgrimage sites and some of the major cities all the while searching for a piece of pork he hasn’t yet checked off his 3 foot pig pie chart. Most of the pork served sounded good except for some from the innards collection or where the meat to bone ratio was rather small. Things I learned,

- The Castro brothers (of Cuba) are from Galicia

Cervantes the author is reportedly from Galicia

- Santiago means Saint James

- The emblem of Saint James is a scallop shell

- There is a small train across Northern Spain (FEVE)

- A version of the bagpipes is played in Galicia

- The owner of Zara clothing company is Galician

- Franco was born in Galicia

- Laza has a crazy Carnival; it includes mud, ash and ants and later boiled pig heads.

- Grelos is a green from the turnip family that is a staple in Galician cooking.

- There are a lot of food festivals in Galicia

A Galician I know personally had also told me a few of these facts.

The chapters are a fairly quick read and you could skip a chapter if you didn’t have an interest in the topic the chapter was covering. One aim of the book is to cover eating pig pieces so you really won’t know which bit you missed if you do skip chapters. Along the way you will learn a lot about Galicia and the culture. I had already wanted to visit and the book did a very good job of deepening that desire.

 

 

We had been to an authentic Galician restaurant on Portobello Road in London this past March. The favorite daughter who lives in London had a friend who was a boy who was from Galicia. He took us to the restaurant and ordered us food, but couldn’t stay because of a mix-up. The food was excellent and some was very different from anything we had had before. I would definitely go back.