Just Peppers, Wine, and Cheese

I think this is a journal.

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Life-changing events, for the most part, are a dime a dozen. Birth, marriage, death, things like that. This one wasn’t in that group. Not at all. I’m not sure if the biggest factor in making this event life-changing is the seed or the coarse salt, but maybe we can determine that by the end of this story.

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It was an accident that I visited to Galicia for a few days. We went to a well-known restaurant, because they insisted. It was a very quaint place, like so many in the area. The people I was with ordered some things off the menu. It was all new to me and I had lots of questions about what the things were. It wasn’t easy to translate the food items, we immediately discovered, but we managed. 

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Pementos de Padrón. Uns pican e outros non. Peppers from Padrón. Some are not and some are not.

Laughter, friendly, must be served along with green blobby-like forms between an inch and a half and two inches long, a good number still decked out with a tail.

Green forms with slightly-blackened portions, sweating greenish olive oil, tinged slightly by their skin.

White motes of salt, called fat salt in Galician, forever caressing and pirouetting around the green, dark green, sliding off into greenish pools, some hiding from the voracity watching them.

Inside, entirely edible, were the little pepper seeds. They looked exactly like the seeds of any other peppers, hot or not, cayenne or bell, habanero or Hungarian. Little round discs, flat worlds, texturing the bites that entered mouths. Yes, these were seeds for eating, because nobody would ever cut the Padrón with a knife to dispose of them and nobody eats part of a Padrón. They must be inserted whole between the teeth, only nipping off the little stem if it’s still attached. Even newcomers to this food item get that right away. I got it.

Apparently all the words and food had to rhyme and the words had to be pronounced right at the beginning, before the platter was brought to the table. Note: There is an appropriate time for everything, just like there is an appropriate tone of voice and manner of laughing. If you’re new, you might not know how important tone and timing are in Galicia, but you’ll get it eventually. 

It is also understood that when certain dishes are ordered, all eyes should initially be facing the newly-arrived platter. That way, somebody can recite the rhyme and the members of the small group can laugh again before giving the reason for the saying: Pementos de Padrón. Uns pican e outros non. If not linked to the appearance of the peppers, one would think this was merely a rhyme for children. These people were not children, and they liked the rhyme. We must take into account that newcomers need to be warned about what might happen during the course of consuming the pementos. 

In a way, the warning also explains that, until there is nothing left on the plate, people will be focusing on the pementos and one another. They will subtly watch green go into mouth after mouth, waiting to see if ‘it’ has happened. ‘It’, of course, is the uns pican part of the refrain. If it does, laughter will once more sprinkle over the table and a brief rescue operation might occur. Offer water. Offer bread. Laugh until the hot is gone.

There are theories about what percentage of the pementos de Padrón - local pride - will burn the roof of the mouth with a certain ferocity. The peppers don’t care. The eaters don’t care. It’s part of the game. Part of the plan. Even if they don’t care, they will still have explanations and all must be given. One person will suggest that the hot peppers were picked from plants that got less water. Related to this belief is the absolutely certain possibility that they were grown - heaven forbid! - not in Padrón but in Murcia. Everybody knows that means they were cultivated far to the south in another Iberian land. (The map will show a place off in the direction of Andalusia.) If these came from Murcia, it would mean they weren’t really peppers from Padrón so they didn’t have the same pedigree. People from Murcia probably didn’t even know how to prepare them.

Some theories about the Padrón peppers affirm that size matters, meaning that it’s the larger peppers that have more bite. The people who adscribe to that idea might only be trying to convince themselves they have the ability to detect the degree of hotness. Or they might be pulling a fast one on inexperienced pepper eaters, who go for the smallest ones if they fear having their mouths burned. This has two results: (1) The person who says larger means hotter gets to eat the juicier units on the platter; or (2) The amateur gets a small one that sends a spike of heat into the palate. Both are pretty funny, when you think about it.

Other eaters offer alternative theories regarding hot or not. Most of those in this group insist it has to do with whether the end of the pemento away from the stem is round or pointed. Everybody laughs again and nobody verifies whether that statement is true or not. Besides, once those babies are fried up, their skins partially blackened and salted, the pepper puffiness they started out with has collapsed and the original shape is lots. This logic generally isn’t clear to the visitor, who might try to study the blobs and classify the non-stem end as round or pointed. Uh-huh, newcomer, meet retranca.

We should note that the probable Latin American origin of the pementos de Padrón is ignored because, after all, they are from Padrón, which by no means is a tautology. Now if one wanted to get technical, they are legitimately pementos de Herbón, Herbón being just a stone’s throw away from Padrón. Whatever... it’s hard to get a clear account on why this happened, but it really doesn’t matter. Just don’t make the mistake of comparing the Galician variety with a jalapeño. Laughter could turn to snickers, which means nobody is laughing. Jalapeños might be fine for Mexicans and gringos, but here? They’re not even part of the conversation.

Speaking of imports, in Europe the friars, monks, priests, bishops and so on who went to convert the inhabitants of many cultures and climates always made sure they returned with items they could press into culinary service. That’s how eucalyptus came to be such an invasive species. That’s what happened with chocolate. It’s how the capsicum or pepper of the New World arrived in Europe. Galicians don’t feel a strong obligation to point this out. The capsicum story, that is.

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Eyes follow minuscule drips of oil and pan de mollete (a wheel of solid bread that is truly to die for) torn into hunks. There is initially one portion of bread for each person, who guards the ration carefully - for without the bread there is no pepper eating - then tears the hunk into bite-size pieces. Bread pieces take their places in one hand while the other hand, with or without a fork, captures a green form and moves it toward the bread. When well executed, the gesture deposits just the right amount of oil and coarse salt on the bread base, which then helps guide the chosen pepper into a mouth.

People watch each other eat. They watch the sheer, shared, pleasure of the peppers from Padrón, some hot, some with a twinge for the tongue, some just neutrally delicious. Maybe there is a call for more bread, maybe for more peppers. The more laughter, the more food.

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All this while I’ve forgotten to mention the wine. Now there’s no rule that says the only beverage allowed for this particular repast is wine, but there’s still a rule. Nobody orders anything other than wine. The choice of wine is vast, but let’s say on this occasion, when the Padrón plate is being so heartily, lustfully, celebrated, a good choice is Amandi. If the bar or restaurant has it, don’t pass it up.

Amandi cannot be brought up in conversation without somebody expounding on the historical fact that the sucalcos or terraces on several levels from the Ribeira Sacra produced a wine so good the Romans shipped it back home. It’s not necessary to be actually drinking Amandi for the person telling the tale to get a far-off look in his or her eyes, thinking about how the Romans must have had good taste in wine, even though they might have been creeps who invaded the northwest corner of the peninsula and oppressed the local residents. Sure, they laid down some fancy stone roads, built the monstrous walls of Lugo, even did a few other things of note, but they were still invaders. They carried off a lot of mineral. However, in matters of wine, they had good taste.

Right, the wine. I was going to discuss the wine from Amandi. Well, it’s really good, and since 1996 has its own Denominación de Orixe, but there are some other excellent vineyards and wines. The Ribeira Sacra has five groups... (The discussion about wine options can become pretty lengthy, so I’ll just leave it at that.) 

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Garnet shaped like a glass, cavorting with the mica reflecting the lights overhead, mica that shimmers on the face of rough stone walls that can no longer remember when they were built. Shift the angle of the stem and find ruby surging from the garnet that promises to return in the next round, in the next bottle. A glance toward the bar, where other labels line up, seeming to say, “Drink me!” Faces across the table admiring all the same things.

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Amandi is a lot farther away than Padrón or Herbón, but a lot of people have been there as well. Galicia might be roughly the size of Maine, but you can’t even think of seeing everything in a lifetime. One of the reasons is that new old things are appearing all the time. Newly discovered pre-Roman constructions and objects, petroglyphs... the lure of the ancient and primitive makes it new. Amandi sounds old, sounds like the gerund form of a Latin verb, sounds like something to love.

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When you think there’s a saying out there about the flavor of the landscape in this part of the world, you know it’s going to take quite a while to getting around to seeing it all. Stop. Savor. Start. Stop again. Savor. See all that is around you. Stop. Then savor. Never stop.

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The truth is that peppers and bread and wine can make for a banquet all by themselves, especially sprinkled with the retranca I already mentioned (it’s Galician humor, not to be confused with Irish or German or Italian) and the arrival of more familiar faces. Nevertheless, there is one item that would help round out the menu: queixo (cheese). I asked about it and was rewarded with more food, more words.

The selection of the queixo? Tense. Grueling. Why? First of all, because the quality is high. Second, because the quality is high, everybody has favorites. Locals frequently like to present the tetilla sort to visitors first, because of course it means tit cheese and that’s funny. The name tetilla refers to the shape, the shape, not the origin of the milk used to make it - let’s be clear. Maybe it was Pliny the historian who first noted how good it was, or maybe it came from a convent in the eleventh century. Whatever… This particular queixo is still around and filling stomachs. It might take its shape from the funnel used to strain the liquid off, or it might have been modeled after the female anatomy. Nobody really knows or cares. The name is still risqué and worth a smirk or two.

Visitors may be informed - like I was - that there is a huge festa do queixo in the town of Arzúa, just in case the visitors are still around at that time of year. They usually have very attractive posters for it. Look around town. The bars put them up. One of them might give you one. A nice souvenir.

Hunks of holey bread (holey from the holes, not because a priest blessed it for communion) with chunks of cheese the color of… the color of anything creamy, cloudy, and slightly pocked by missing air bubbles. Sturdy if aged, flexible if fresh, savory if wrapped in a toasty, smoked covering like the San Simón brand.

San Simón. No self-respecting Galician will let the visitor escape without knowing that this refers to an island near the city of Vigo where the fascists put prisoners during the civil war. None of the prisoners escaped, apparently, but they left writings on the cell walls. None of this has a whole lot to do with the cheese, except… It does. You can’t eat it without knowing the lay of the land, the flavor of the land, which is still greased and cut through by a war that left nobody unscathed. You must eat history or you will not receive your cheese.

Slightly white, but more the color of heavy cream, some of the cheeses allow the eater to flatten them between thumb and index finger, watching the air spots move in different directions. It’s not clear why one wants to do this, but cheese definitely has its own sort of sensuality. I saw that immediately with one of the cheeses that my friends ordered.

It would be possible to smear the whiteness on the bread, but this is really not finger food. Save that for gripping the tail of the pementos; however, if people are using forks for getting hold of them, stick to that method. Toothpicks are also allowed, but it takes practice to hook the green blobs, lift them toward the teeth, and deposit them on the tongue without the proverbial slip ‘twixt platter and lip. (They really aren’t blobs, but are so misshapen that there is no other way to describe them. ‘Deflated balloons’ isn’t accurate, nor is ‘crumpled buds’, so I’ve settled on my own term for the deformed green bodies.)

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I think this journal is just about over, but I need to clarify one thing before the entry is complete.

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If you don’t think the first meal was a life-changing experience for me, then you don’t know me very well. There was me before the peppers, wine, and cheese, and there was the me after that.

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Is it possible to have this type of meal anywhere else in the world? A meal where four provinces with the mountains, the coast, the monuments, the historical events - where all of these just walk in and sit down with the eaters?

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I should add something. The peppers were not too hot. They were all just right. All of them, down to every last seed, little and fried, changed my life.