Gatherings from Spain

by Richard Ford

VENTA GARLIC.

The portion of the ground-floor which is divided by the public entrance from the stables, is dedicated to the kitchen and accommodation of the travellers. The kitchen consists of a huge open range, generally on the floor, the ollas pots and culinary vessels being placed against the fire arranged in circles, as described by Martial, “multâ villica quem coronat ollâ,” who, as a good Spaniard would do to this day, after thirty-five years’ absence at Rome, writes, after his return to Spain, to his friend Juvenal a full account of the real comforts that he once more enjoys in his best-beloved patria, and which remind us of the domestic details in the opening chapter of Don Quixote. These rows of pipkins are kept up by round stones called “sesos,” brains; above is a high, wide chimney, which is armed with iron-work for suspending pots of a large size; sometimes there are a few stoves of masonry, but more frequently they are only the portable ones of the East. Around the blackened walls are arranged pots and pipkins, gridirons and frying-pans, which hang in rows, like tadpoles of all sizes, to accommodate large or small parties, and the more the better; it is a good sign, “en casa llena, pronto se guisa cena.” Supper is then sooner ready.

The vicinity of the kitchen fire being the warmest spot, and the nearest to the flesh-pot, is the querencia, the favourite “resort” of the muleteers and travelling bagsmen, especially when cold, wet, and hungry. The first come are the best served, says the proverb, in the matters of soup and love. The earliest arrivals take the cosiest corner seats near the fire, and secure the promptest non-attendance; for the better class of guests there is sometimes a “private apartment,” or the boudoir of the ventera, which is made over to those who bring courtesy in their mouths, and seem to have cash in their pockets; but these out-of-the way curiosities of comfort do not always suit either author or artist, and the social kitchen is preferable to solitary state. When a stranger enters into it, if he salutes the company, “My lords and knights, do not let your graces molest yourselves,” or courteously indicates his desire to treat them with respect, they will assuredly more than return the compliment, and as good breeding is instinctive in the Spaniard, will rise and insist on his taking the best and highest seat. Greater, indeed, is their reward and satisfaction, if they discover that the invited one can talk to them in their own lingo, and understands their feelings by circulating his cigars and wine bota among them.

At the side of the kitchen is a den of a room, into which the ventero keeps stowed away that stock of raw materials which forms the foundation of the national cuisine, and in which garlic plays the first fiddle. The very name, like that of monk, is enough to give offence to most English. The evil consists, however, in the abuse, not in the use: from the quantity eaten in all southern countries, where it is considered to be fragrant, palatable, stomachic, and invigorating, we must assume that it is suited by nature to local tastes and constitutions. Wherever any particular herb grows, there lives the ass who is to eat it. “Donde crece la escoba, nace el asno que la roya.” Nor is garlic necessarily either a poison or a source of baseness; for Henry IV. was no sooner born, than his lips were rubbed with a clove of it by his grandfather, after the revered old custom of Bearn.

DINNERS IN THE VENTA.

Bread, wine, and raw garlic, says the proverb, make a young man go briskly, Pan, vino, y ajo crudo, hacen andar al mozo agudo. The better classes turn up their noses at this odoriferous delicacy of the lower classes, which was forbidden per statute by Alonzo XI. to his knights of La Banda; and Don Quixote cautions Sancho Panza to be moderate in this food, as not becoming to a governor: with even such personages however it is a struggle, and one of the greatest sacrifices to the altar of civilization and les convenances. To give Spanish garlic its due, it must be said that, when administered by a judicious hand (for, like prussic acid, all depends on the quantity), it is far milder than the English. Spanish garlic and onions degenerate after three years’ planting when transplanted into England. They gain in pungency and smell, just as English foxhounds, when drafted into Spain, lose their strength and scent in the third generation. A clove of garlic is called un diente, a tooth. Those who dislike the piquant vegetable must place a sentinel over the cook of the venta while she is putting into her cauldron the ingredients of his supper, or Avicenna will not save him; for if God sends meats, and here they are a godsend, the evil one provides the cooks of the venta, who certainly do bedevil many things.

RECEPTION AT THE VENTA.

Thrice happy, then, the man blessed with a provident servant who has foraged on the road, and comes prepared with cates on which no Castilian Canidia has breathed; while they are stewing he may, if he be a poet, rival those sonnets made in Don Quixote on Sancho’s ass, saddle-bags, and sapient attention to their provend, “su cuerda providencia.” The odour and good tidings of the arrival of unusual delicacies soon spread far and wide in the village, and generally attract the Cura, who loves to hear something new, and does not dislike savoury food: the quality of a Spaniard’s temperance, like that of his mercy, is strained; his poverty and not his will consents to more and other fastings than to those enjoined by the church; hunger, the sauce of Saint Bernard, is one of the few wants which is not experienced in a Spanish venta. Our practice in one was to invite the curate, by begging him to bless the pot-luck, to which he did ample justice, and more than repaid for its visible diminution by good fellowship, local information, and the credit reflected on the stranger in the eyes of the natives, by beholding him thus patronised by their pastor and master. It is not to be denied in the case of a stew of partridges, that deep sighs and exclamations que rico! “how rich!” escape the envious lips of his hungry flock when they behold and whiff the odoriferous dish as it smokes past them like a railway locomotive.

Nor, it must be said, was all this hospitality on one side; it has more than once befallen us in the rude ventas of the Salamanca district, that the silver-haired cura, whose living barely furnished the means whereby to live, on hearing the simple fact that an Englishman was arrived, has come down to offer his house and fare. Such, or indeed any Spaniard’s invitation is not to be accepted by those who value liberty of action or time; seat rather the good man at the head of the venta board, and regale him with your best cigar, he will tell you of El gran Lor—the great Lord—the Cid of England; he will recount the Duke’s victories, and dwell on the good faith, mercy, and justice of our brave soldiers, as he will execrate the cruelty, rapacity, and perfidy of those who fled before their gleaming bayonets.

But, to return to first arrival at ventas, whether saddle-bag or stomach be empty or full, the ventero when you enter remains unmoved and imperturbable, as if he never had had an appetite, or had lost it, or had dined. Not that his genus ever are seen eating except when invited to a guest’s stew; air, the economical ration of the chameleon, seems to be his habitual sustenance, and still more as to his wife and womankind, who never will sit and eat even with the stranger; nay, in humbler Spanish families they seem to dine with the cat in some corner, and on scraps; this is a remnant of the Roman and Moorish treatment of women as inferiors. Their lord and husband, the innkeeper, cannot conceive why foreigners on their arrival are always so impatient, and is equally surprised at their inordinate appetite; an English landlord’s first question “Will you not like to take some refreshment?” is the very last which he would think of putting; sometimes by giving him a cigar, by coaxing his wife, flattering his daughter, and caressing Maritornes, you may get a couple of his pollos or fowls, which run about the ground-floor, picking up anything, and ready to be picked up themselves and dressed.