Food: A History of Sila Part 2-Spain and Portugal

As we moved south, the climate, language, and culture changed; and with them, the food did too. Between Spain and Portugal almost nothing but the coffee changed. (Portugal coffee was apparently quite good, but Spanish coffee was not.) Many things that we had loved about France disappeared as we went south. For example, we were always at a loss looking for butter. We soon found all the highlights of Spanish and Portuguese food.

We searched for the aisle devoted entirely to butter until France had disappeared behind the horizon. Once nestled safely in a Spanish harbor, we discovered nearly butterless stores. Olive oil on the other hand was sitting around every corner in the grocery stores. Butter became so valuable that no one even thought of putting it in pans for cooking. Butter was for bread, olive oil was for cooking. Everyone knew the law and it was punishable by loss of butter rations.

After three weeks of sailing the Spanish coast, we went into a restraunt for lunch. We picked out an assortment of different appetizers, or tapas, to share. The best of the four tapas was definitely the padrόn peppers. Over lunch we decided that these peppers were simply sautéed in oil and sprinkled with salt. On the way home we scooped up a bag of uncooked peppers from the nearest grocery store. During our visit in Spain and Portugal, we bought at least 30 bags of these mini peppers. After enjoying a few bags of this appetizer we began to search the stores for another pepper product.  We quickly came upon a new pepper we had never seen before. It was like a giant jalapeño. It had zing like jalapeños and was a great addition to many bland meals. We diced them up in sauces, pastas, and in many other meals. Its most famous use was chopped up in cheesy pasta. We had maybe twenty cheesy pasta meals with diced up peppers.

A few weeks ago, we finally ran out of an extraordinarily useful Spanish and Portuguese product. The bagged olives had three helpful traits. To start, the pitted green olives always tasted delicious. They also kept indefinitely. The handiest of the traits was the size. There were 15-20 olives in each bag, the perfect amount for one lunch. Every time we had a snack plate lunch, we had had a bag of olives in a bowl on the side. At one point, we had 50 bags of olives. Maybe this delicious food is still stored in the bottom of the "For Later Locker." I hope it is.

It was great to have hard cheeses again in Spain especially. I loved being able to sprinkle cheese on my pasta again. The flavor of the cheese wasn't why it made my list. It was the relief of getting a food that I hadn't seen in awhile. The two best hard cheeses we had I called The Cheese Ball and The Icky Cheese Wheel. The cheese ball was a large ball, about the size of a bowling ball, of an orange salty cheese. We grated it onto bread and sometimes into sauces for pasta or rice. Mama said it was a type of Gouda cheese. The Icky Cheese Wheel was a wheel of cheese we had kept in the bilge (the bottom of the boat, just underneath the floor boards) for about a month. When we brought it out, the outside was gooey. At first, we wondered if we had wasted more than five pounds of cheese. We cut a slice out and discovered a delicious parmesan-like cheese kept safe by its tough rind.

During our visit in Spain and Portugal, we found many bags of delicious oranges. We actually bought a bin that could be crammed behind the heater. We put all our oranges in there. Every day we all ate two oranges. They could be peeled quickly and broken into the natural segments. Most of the time, we found seedless oranges but occasionally they would have a seed or two. Once Jack and I kept mindlessly tossing peels into the air where they would be pulled overboard by the wind. We had a reef in the main so a sort of cup was formed. Looking back on it, it should have been obvious that the wind was blowing right into the sail. When we removed the reef, as well as the cupping of the sail, thirty orange peels fell out. Sadly half of them landed on the deck. Jack and I were sent forward to pick them up.

My favorite food from Spain and Portugal is definitely the prosciutto. We bought three thick blocks of it. All of them were vacuum packed so they kept well. We would cut thin slices for bread or put them with potatoes and hollandaise sauce. The three chunks of meat lasted until most of the way across the Atlantic. I wish we had gotten another chunk or two because prosciutto is simply delicious.

Stay tuned for the next installments of Porter's Food Blog, which will include the Cape Verdes, shopping adventures, and restaurant recommendations.  – Porter