Sketches from Spain

"At Valencia too, when it is hottest, you can eat down at the beach for a peseta or two pesetas at one of the eating pavilions where they will serve you beer and shrimps and a paella of rice, tomato, sweet peppers, saffron and good seafood, snails, crawfish, small fish, little eels, all cooked together in a saffron-colored mound. You can get this with a bottle of local wine for two pesetas and the children will go by barelegged on the beach and there is a thatched roof over the pavilion, the sand cool under your feet, the sea with the fishermen sitting in the cool of the evening in the black felucca rigged boats that you can see..." Hemingway, from Death in the Afternoon






There would be the hours in the afternoon off the beaches at San Sebastian that only the simplest little dish would make do against the beating of the Biscay Bay sun.  You might as easily see the farmers at the outskirts of town, where the grand crescent of the Sebastian Bay is barely visible, out at the foothills, waves in the distance crashing 

like tips of long sacks of fine jewels, that the man might bring to a fire a hand full of onions, zucchini, tomatoes and peppers for the Pisto Manchego.  This was a dish that originally came 

from the Castilian heartland of La Mancha, the same famed quarters of Don Quixote.  The farmers here took the cooling of the Manchego quite seriously, had formed clubs that would meet as frequently as each week, and hunker down onto the cobblestones of the main squares with their days retrieval, peel the tomatoes, toss it in a pan with a 

slip of sugar and salt until darkened as they sauteed onions along the side.  Add bell peppers and finally the zucchini, simply stir to coat, adding the special Spanish seasoning of paprika after 20 minutes of simmering.  The others of the group would wait out in the afternoon sun for the familiar smells of the sweetened vegetables to mingle and would know, well before the cook would know the time, when it was ready for serving into simple earthenware bowls.  If it was a special day and the fish was being caught off the quaint waters of the Bay of Biscay, and if the farmers had sewn and harvested recently, there might be a Navarran red to swish around the mouth for the hour or two of the siesta.  After so many rounds of the Manchego, it would be said, at later quiet hours, that the Spanish sunshine tasted something like stew and all were quite certain that their eyes would light up at first taste.