Country Article / Postcards
Defeated by 13 Morcillas
Date: 09/21/2005
Dear International Living Reader,
La Alpujarra is a heart-stoppingly lovely region of Spain’s Granada province. I’m staying in a rustic hotel called Finca los Llanos in Capileira--the village perches at the top of a gorge that’s a giddy 5,000 feet above sea level. From Capileira you can follow the gorge down to the villages of Bubion and Pampileira, or strike out along forest tracks towards Pitres and the Taha Valley. And if you’re feeling really energetic, you can tackle Mount Mulhacen’s 11,000 feet.
The mountain air will give you an appetite, but make sure you come with a good phrase book. Translations in English are often baffling--if you know what "hoar frost rime to the table" is, you’re better informed than me. Year-round, the locals enjoy feasting on hearty fare more suited to winter. Menus feature stews of venison, goat, or wild boar, rabbit, snails with rice, plates of locally-cured hams, and sausages. Here sopa de ajo is not a blessedly chilled soup of garlic, cream, and almond like in Granada or Seville. In the Alpujarra, sopa de ajo is hot garlic soup spiked with chopped fried eggs and chunks of ham.
Without knowing what it was, earlier I’d opted for a lunch-time Alpujarran Platter. It turned out to be a weird variation of an Irish breakfast: ham, sausage, fried eggs, blood pudding, and potatoes, cooked with red and green peppers.
I’m not sure fried eggs mix well with wine, but the sausage-shaped blood pudding was particularly tasty. Now I realize that some readers may find the idea strange, but I’m extremely partial to dishes of congealed pigs’ blood. (If your stomach is heaving in disgust, be sure to spurn all Spanish dishes that contain the word " morcilla.") But anyway, tonight in the Ruta las Nieves hostelry I’m going for a full plate of morcillas. And here they come...
Good grief! Does the waiter really expect me to tackle 13 blood puddings? Seems so. Costing €6 ($7.30) for the entire plateful, each chunky pudding is about four inches long. The first five are succulently good; getting through the sixth starts to become a major struggle. I give up on the seventh. Even washed down with a €4.40 ($5.40) jug of local wine, I’d guess even the hungriest hiker has never managed to scoff them all.
Steenie Harvey
For International Living
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