When the judges reached our dish, they hesitated, unsure how to tackle it. They dipped into the milky lake and pulled out a spoonful of dripping trifle. They tasted, faces inscrutable. I was aware that I was holding my breath, my expression identical to that of the other village contestants.
At long last the judges were satisfied. The Smart Ladies pulled up a wooden crate and the Mayor stepped up importantly. He drew himself up to his full height of five foot five inches and began to speak.
“It is always a great honour to be invited to judge this prestigious cooking contest. The village of El Hoyo may be small, but rarely have I seen such a wonderful array of delightful and delicious dishes…”
The crowd shuffled their feet and stifled yawns. People began to mutter and some of the older ladies fanned themselves exaggeratedly, although their efforts barely stirred the hot heavy air.
“Madre mia, get on with it!” hissed a lady to her companion. Perhaps the Mayor heard her because he stepped up a gear.
“And now the moment has arrived,” he announced. “The decision is made. And so, without further ado…” He paused for effect, enjoying the suspense he was creating. The crowd stopped fidgeting and waited with bated breath.
“The winning dessert this year is… The traditional Andalucían rice pudding in the green ceramic bowl!”
There was a brief ripple of applause, then the crowd surged forward like an advancing army, paper plates and cutlery held like shields and weapons. The Smart Ladies skipped aside and the villagers pounced on the entries.
The poor Mayor was almost knocked off his wooden box in the crush. The crowd reached the tables and battle commenced as they fought over the dishes. Within minutes the culinary display was reduced to a few crumbs and greasy smears on the tablecloth. Even our soggy trifle evaporated. A plague of locusts couldn’t have demolished the feast more rapidly or efficiently.
The contest was soon forgotten however, as the next event appeared on the stage. Three figures on stilts, crazily dressed, danced and told jokes which entertained the villagers hugely. They ate fire and juggled with flaming torches. Finally they plucked sweets from hidden pockets and threw them to excited children.
And so the festivities continued and we became almost immune to the explosion of fireworks. Event followed event, procession followed procession. Now I understood why Seville always has a Bank Holiday immediately after its Fiesta. To allow the participants to recover from the festivities.
On Sunday evening the cars began to leave as the villagers locked up their houses and returned to the city. Grace and Paul departed and peace descended on the village. Only the coloured lights, rocket sticks and blowing litter gave any clue to the frenzy of the Fiesta weekend. And by ten o’clock nobody remained, except of course for Marcia, Old Sancho, Geronimo and Uncle Felix. And me.
Dear Reader, please do not be unduly concerned about Britain’s culinary reputation. It gives me great pleasure and pride to report that the following two years Britain won the contest. I’d love to say that I created the winning dishes, but no, it was my visitors’ efforts both times. So thank you, Linda, (now known as the Pudding Queen) and her assistant, Doug, for the bread and butter pudding. And thanks to you, Glennys, for the sticky toffee pudding. Well done all of you.
14 Chickens...
Paco’s Rabbit Stew
Winter in the mountains takes one by surprise. The air is crisp and clean and icy winds funnel through the valley. In the distance, the sea is electric blue, the horizon clearly defined. Ripening oranges and lemons are bright daubs of paint on a brown canvas. The swallows deserted months ago. At night the temperature can drop to below freezing and village cats sleep on the rooftops huddled close to working chimneys.
Marcia and Old Sancho felt the cold and warmed their old bones by their perpetually burning stove. The shop doors remained closed. If we needed anything, we would tap softly on the window. Marcia would let us in while Old Sancho dozed, only the tip of his nose visible from the folds of his blanket.
Joe was back in Spain for good now, having completed his time in the Army. We kept warm by working on the house, but at night, we too huddled round our fire before taking hot water bottles to bed.
How we loved that wood-burning stove, and how we hated it! Daily chores now included chopping firewood as we struggled to satisfy its voracious appetite. Joe adopted it and spent much time with his temperamental baby. Every evening he would sit hunched on a low stool, peering hopefully into its stomach, willing it to light. He sang tuneless little songs to it, encouraging it to flare.
“Come on little fire, tra la la,
You can burn much higher, tra la la,
Come on, fire, if you’re good,
I will give you lots more wood…”
And so on, and so on. Shivering, he would hand-feed it until it developed a healthy orange flame. But woe betide if he turned his back on it. Then it would sulk and smoke and fizzle out unless he tempted it back to life with choice pieces of kindling and more songs.
Eventually it would flare up enough for us to place saucepans on the top. Sometimes it would become much too enthusiastic, so hot that we sweated and removed layers of clothes. We began to recognise different types of firewood - which logs would burn slowly, which burned hot and fast. Every evening became a battle to keep the stove happy and fed. We were slaves to its moods and insatiable hunger.
Torrential rain caused us to place buckets strategically where our roof leaked. The drip-drip-drip of water plunking into those buckets that first winter will stay with me forever.
We soon exhausted the supplies of firewood that Alonso, the previous owner, had left behind. Then we burnt his old furniture that we had dumped in the orchard. Next, the fruit trees were chopped down and burnt. Our plans to build two houses in the orchard would mean they would be sacrificed anyway. (Geronimo helped us slice the biggest logs with his outsize chainsaw and stayed drinking brandy for the rest of the day.) Lastly, Joe pulled down the old chicken shed and coop in the orchard, and we burnt that, too.
One weekend in January we were in Paco and Carmen-Bethina’s house. The fire blazed and quails in tiny domed cages hung on the walls. Paco explained that they were female quails. In spring their call would lure horny male quails, allowing Paco to shoot them. Of course we wholeheartedly disapproved and threatened to release the poor quails when his back was turned, much to his amusement. He thought we were joking. We weren’t.
“Pah! The birds like being in the cage,” he said. “They do not have to look for food because I feed them every day. Now, look at this!”
Stooping, he pulled out a single-barrelled rifle from under the couch.
“Watch, English!” he said, and strode the two steps to the front door.
To our horror, he loaded a cartridge into the barrel, aimed the weapon skyward and squeezed the trigger. The blast was so loud our ears sang and we were forced to lip read for the next few minutes.
“Imagine this happening in England...” Joe mouthed to me.
“What you need,” Paco said, putting the gun back under the sofa, “are chickens. You have plenty of space in your orchard.”
I loved the idea in principle. Joe looked more doubtful. The conversation went on to other things and we forgot all about it.
Every February Paco took two weeks of his annual leave. This was his time, time away from work and family. Time to hunt, time to farm his cortijo, time to be with his male friends, discuss football, skin rabbits and drink vast quantities of home-made wine. These were the only occasions I ever saw Paco cooking. A cauldron bubbled on the open fire as he and his mates cooked rabbit stew.
We had heard much carousing taking place next door that week. Paco’s cronies popped in and out of the little house as often as wasps in a nest. We were invited to join them, but the rabbit entrails spilling onto the floor put us off and we declined, saying we were working on the house.
On the Friday, Paco went back down to the city to collect Carmen-Bethina and Li
ttle Paco and bring them back for the weekend. Their arrival was always noisy, but this particular time it was ear-splitting. Carmen-Bethina’s voice was raised and angry and Paco’s replies were grunts. Apron flapping, Carmen-Bethina swept into our house. She ignored Joe, presumably because he was male and therefore one of the enemy at the moment. She seized my sleeve and dragged me next door.
She was too fired up for me to understand her exact words, but the meaning was clear. The usually neat little house was a disaster zone. Rabbit entrails caked the floor and table. Dirty plates and glasses littered every surface. Ashtrays overflowed. The sink was full of pots and pans. Empty beer and wine bottles stood amongst the ornaments. A trail of mud tracked across the floor. Paco looked sheepish as his wife pointed out every sin he had committed. Finally she shrugged, grabbed the floor mop and set to work. I tiptoed out, but not before Paco had winked at me, his eyes full of mischief.
A few days later, Paco pounded on our door with his usual zeal. “English! Get your coats,” he ordered. “We’re going to get chickens.”
In Paco’s Range Rover, Joe and I exchanged furtive glances. Where were we going to keep chickens? The chicken shed in the orchard had been demolished for firewood. And houses were to be built on the orchard anyway. How do you look after chickens? Did we really want chickens?
The chicken shop was not what I expected. It displayed every type of cage, hutch, animal feed, mule harness, animal antibiotics and pet paraphernalia imaginable. First we chose a water dispenser and feeder. Then Paco spoke to the assistant who unlocked a long barn. Racks of wire cages were stacked high, each small cage housing about five frightened young chickens. The noise and stench was overpowering. Suddenly the outing had become less of a buying trip and more of a rescue mission. Save some chickens from this ghastly place.
“¿Cuantos quieren Ustedes?” asked the assistant. “How many do you want?”
“Two,” said Joe.
“Eight,” I said.
We stood back and let Paco choose them. After all, what did we know about chickens? The assistant reached into the cages and grabbed the chickens that Paco selected. Each chicken was held upside down by its feet and handed over. Paco checked them over, felt their crops expertly, then stuffed them squawking and flapping into the cardboard box provided by the assistant. Six brown chickens and two white.
“They’ll never get eight into that tiny box,” I muttered to Joe.
But they did. The assistant taped the box shut then produced a wicked looking penknife with which he viciously stabbed the box.
“Air holes,” he explained, but I was convinced we would be taking home shredded chicken. They were unharmed, but it reminded me of the stage magic trick where swords are apparently passed through glamorous assistants.
Back in the orchard, Paco pulled his woolly hat off and scratched his head when he saw Alonso’s chicken shed had gone.
“Qué pasa?” he asked, reproach in his eyes. “What happened to the chicken shed?”
“We burnt it,” said Joe. “We used it for firewood.”
“Pah!” said Paco and shook his head in disapproval. But he was not a man to be beaten by a little thing like no chicken shed.
Ever resourceful, he dragged over some old doors and leaned them up under the corrugated asbestos roof that was still supported by uprights. There was plenty of chicken wire lying about which he fashioned into a closed-in run secured by bits of wire. He found a stick and fixed it horizontally as a roosting perch.
Time to release the girls. Without ceremony, he emptied the cardboard box and eight chickens slid out to stand stock still like a bizarre waxwork display, frozen on the spot.
“They’ve never been outside before,” I said quietly. “They’ve never seen the sky. Or grass. Or earth.”
Joe nodded. It was a moving moment. Gradually, life flowed back into the eight chickens and they began to explore their new world. Jerky little steps were taken, the ground unfamiliar between their toes. They found the feeder and fed furiously. They took sips of water, tipping their heads back to allow the water to run down their throats. They tasted the grass and picked at tiny specks on the ground. They flapped their wings and stretched - all new luxuries.
“They won’t lay eggs for a couple of months,” said Paco. “You will need to give them a box to lay in.” He left us to it, amused at our rapture.
All work that day was forgotten. We pulled up the old yellow vinyl sofa from Alonso’s rubbish pile and just sat and watched. It was fascinating. All the chicken cliches we had ever heard suddenly came to life. The ‘Top Hen’ emerged quickly, one of the white chickens. Bolder than the rest, she pecked anyone who annoyed her and the others treated her with great respect. The ‘pecking order’ was established. We named her Mala Leche, meaning bad milk, a Spanish insult.
‘As rare as hen’s teeth’ became clear when we discovered the girls couldn’t manage dry bread. Being ‘chicken’ became clear, too, observing Mala’s conquests. If a sister annoyed her, she would attack mercilessly causing her victim to cower low. The cringing chicken didn’t attempt to escape, just crouched and endured her whacking until Mala got bored and strutted away.
When dusk fell, we were still in the orchard, still fascinated. Instincts kicked in and the girls started craning their necks, looking for the highest place to roost. Mala was the first to fly up to Paco’s makeshift perch. The others followed gradually, bickering like schoolgirls about who was going to sit next to whom.
The next morning brought a huge surprise. It’s strange how you can wake up and sense something is wrong, something is different. Our bedroom was a cave room dug into the hillside with no windows, but when we woke we knew instinctively that something was awry. We gasped when Joe opened the shutters in the living room to a white and silent world.
The chickens! They’d never even set claw outside before yesterday. We’d plucked them from their indoor security and exposed them to the harshness of a snowstorm. Their shelter was makeshift and inadequate. We were desperately worried.
There was no denying that the mountains looked awesome. Like a monstrous dazzling duvet, the snow blanketed every contour, ironing out all familiar landmarks. But there was no time to enjoy the wonderland. Fat flakes of snow were still falling. We didn’t know it then, but this was to be the heaviest snowfall for sixty years. Snow was rare in this part of the world, we lived on the edge of Europe’s only desert, for goodness sake. Paco had told us that occasionally a light dusting might fall, but never more.
There was no time to lose. Joe dressed himself warmly in army boots and several jumpers topped by a thick jacket. He opened the front door. Or tried to. The snow had banked to chest height and blocked the door completely. Never mind, we could use the back door. Luckily it faced a different direction and could still be pushed open. Just.
It was bitterly cold. He surveyed the scene outside. “I’m just going outside and may be some time,” he said. It wasn’t really funny but very apt. Captain Oates would have understood.
The orchard was just a few steps away, the chicken coop a few steps more. But reaching it was tough. The drifts were deep and hid the track. Alonso had used the orchard as a dump and so had we. Obstacles were strewn everywhere. Coils of wire, rubble, the yellow sofa, all smothered and concealed under thick snow. Every footstep was taken warily, like a soldier walking across a minefield.
To Joe’s horror, the chicken shelter was one enormous snowdrift.
15 And More Chickens
Warming Winter’s Brunch
Joe approached the snowdrift with a sinking heart. And then he noticed the drift had a dip in the middle. The ends of the perch disappeared into white, but, locked on the perch, soaking wet and huddled miserably together, were all eight chickens. Their body warmth had melted the snow around them.
How do you dry a chicken? We didn’t know. We did the only thing we could think of, which was rub them briskly with old towels. Joe cleared as much snow out of the coop as he could, uncovering their foo
d and water. Luckily, it stopped snowing and a watery sun peeped out, providing much needed warmth.
Chickens are amazingly hardy creatures. They can survive the furnace of an Andalucían summer or winter temperatures below freezing. Even snow. Our chickens, young as they were, were absolutely fine.
On that first day, we had no electricity, telephone or water. There was nothing to do but sit in darkness as close to the fire as possible. The village was cut off, no traffic could reach us.
On the second day the water returned. Just as well, as our bottled water supplies were low. Geronimo knocked on our door to check if all was well. He unwound the Real Madrid scarf from around his neck and stayed for a few warming brandies. We were relieved to hear that Marcia and Old Sancho had left before the snow to stay with their daughter in the city. Uncle Felix was warm and cosy with his mule.
On the third day, electricity returned. Hooray! Now we could boil a kettle and use the microwave.
On the fourth day, the council ‘snowplough’ (mini tractor with improvised scoop) made the hazardous journey down to the village. It pushed the snow into great dirty heaps, making the road passable.
On the fifth day, the hordes descended. Except for the very old, none of the locals had seen proper snow before. They poured into the village, marvelling and wondering at the phenomenon. Judith’s village, only a few kilometres away, had hardly suffered at all, and everyone was keen to visit snowbound El Hoyo. Paco, Carmen-Bethina and Little Paco arrived.
Paco banged on our door. “English! Come out for a snowball fight! Come on, Spain against England!” He was more of a child than his nine year old son. Spain won.
A week later, the snow was a distant memory. The landscape greened as tight buds unfurled. Wild flowers of all colours turned their faces to the sun. Bright poppies flapped their papery petals in the breeze. The first cuckoo arrived, echoing round the valley like a demented Swiss clock.
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