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All photographs by Gerry Dawes©2024 / gerrydawes@aol.com.
Ibeas de Juarros, just east of Burgos on the Camino de Santiago,
home to the great little black-red beans of Ibeas and near to discovery
of the world's oldest human remains at Atapuerca, July 10, 2023.
Ironically, this mural suggests that the primeval man is soon going to
add some pilgrim meat to enrich his Ibeas beans stew.)
October 3, 2024
Alubias de Ibeas, Rotten Pot Stew and Vermút at Vermutería Victoria
Cathedral of Burgos.
Part of my night foray in Burgos, a terrific, historic Spanish provincial capital that I know very well (I published an article on the front page of The New York Times Travel Section in 1993 wrote chapters about it in both The Penguin and Berlitz Travellers Guides to Spain).
This is what I photographed between 10:30 and midnight, with a light dinner, then drinks in a Vermút bar. The food, one of my all-time favorite Spanish dishes Alubias de Ibeas (pequeña olla podrida) at Restaurante Rincón de España (just half a block west of the Cathedral), where this version was billed as coming from the famous olla podrida (rotten pot stew), which means everything from a pig goes into it.
Alubias de Ibeas (pequeña olla podrida) at Restaurante Rincón de España, Burgos.
Olla Podrida (rotten pot stew), according to the late Ambrosio Molinos
"One day over lunch at Julián de Tolosa, a superb trencherman´s Basque restaurant in Madrid, Ambrosio carefully related the recipe for a great rotten pot stew into my tape recorder, thus preserving for posterity the secret Castilian formula for mainlining pork: "First, an olla podrida should be made with alubias de Ibeas, the little black-red beans that come from around the village of Ibeas east of Burgos and are the best beans in Spain. That is most important.
Then, in a clay stovetop casserole, you slowly cook the beans with a special adobado (marinated) pig foot, a marinated pig´s ear and pork ribs. The adobo marinade is made with salted water, to which orégano is added or, depending on the area, other spices such as black pepper, bay leaves and Spanish pimentón, paprika, sometimes even pimentón picante, piquant paprika.
Ambrosio Molinos.
The marinade, which gives the olla podrida its strong flavor, also preserves the meat, so it can be left all season in a cool place such as a basement or a cave.
Then you put in some fatty chorizo, the one they call botageño, because it has a higher percentage of fat to lean, and some morcilla, blood sausage"
But there is more. Ambrosio continued, "Once the olla podrida is cooked, you make what we call bolas, made from toasted hard bread that is mixed with some of the pork fat from the stew to make "balls," which are then fried and served on a platter alongside the olla. The meat that was cooked with the beans is served on a separate platter, the beans are also served on a separate dish and guindillas (slender picante green peppers), pickled onions and other pickled vegetables are served as a garnish. Then all you need is a big appetite."
He then recommended a scandalous precaution, not to be repeated here, for the flatulence he said was sure to ensue from eating rotten pot stew.
Ambrosio Molinos with chuletillas al sarmiento, lamb chops cooked over grape vine cuttings.
I had accompanied Ambrosio and his family to one of these olla podrida pigouts near Ibeas. And he also offered to take me to the mother of all pig festivals at the Virrey Palafox restaurant in El Burgo de Osma in the neighboring province of Soria, where they have multi-course pig meals in February to celebrate the winter hog slaughter.
Chef-owner Galo Rodrigo González, Restaurante De Galo. Covarrubias (Burgos).
Restaurant de Galo now closed (owners retired).
But now my concern was for Restaurante De Galo, whose chef-owner Galo was the son of the owners of Galín, who were proud of their olla podrida. Just thinking about rotten pot stew conjured up visions of thousands of tiny porkers lumbering through my arteries in pursuit of the Pig Olympics Gold Medal for cardiac arrest."--Excerpt from Sunset in a Glass: Adventures of a Food and Wine Road Warrior in Spain Volume I.
Back in Burgos
After dinner, I had a Vermút at my favorite Vermutería Victoria, one of Spain's greatest Vermút bars. My friend manager Jorge García helped make it a great stop, as did Ángel Alonso and Javier Pontones, whom I met at the bar and who kindly invited me to my Vermút.