real cider and perry
Just an off-the-cuff video of Linda and I opening the special bottle of Basque cider which was given to us by the kind woman who runs the cider house we visited en route from Bermeo to Astigarraga.
The new year’s cider at the Sagarotegia straight from the barrel and expertly poured was superb, and this bottle was excellent too.
Following my last video post about pouring the cider from the barrel in the Hondarribia Sidreria, this one is about the traditional meal that goes with it. It’s pretty much the same as offered at nearly all of the Basque sidrerias or sagardotegi. The furniture is usually long heavy wooden tables with benches, set amongst or near to the enormous cider barrels so that you can get up and help yourself to a small glass of wonderful fresh cider poured from a great height as often as you like. If there is a short queue of people replenishing their glasses from the same stream in turn then so much the better.
At the Sidreria in Hondarribia, the standard cider meal in March 2008 cost 24 euros with unlimited cider, or there is slight variation for the gastonomique menu at 28 euros and some a la carte options as well.
The traditional cider meal consisted of:
* cider
1) Bacalau omlette. Bacalau is salt cod, but it’s not as overpoweringly fishy as the Portuguese version which I feared, in fact quite tasty with lots of onions.
* cider
2) Bacalau with peppers. This is almost like fresh cod and the Basque peppers are always special, they have several denomination controlees for the peppers.
* cider
3) The T bone steak. Enormous and rare, cut into chunks with one steak serving two people as plenty.
* cider
There’s baguette to mop up the juices but by this time you will have noticed that a lot of protein has been served with hardly any vegetables. So the desert is
* cider
4) Cheese. Special sheeps cheese, not Manchego but Idiazábal A smoked unpasteurized sheep’s milk cheese aged 8 months with a strong but subtle flavour from being smoked with hawthorn and cherry wood. Served with quince “cheese” ( a kind of thick fruit paste) and whole walnuts to crack. We were given a nutcracker but apparently some people like to use the traditional method which is to smash the nuts against the table with your bare hands.
* cider
5) coffee
* cider
This is the first in a short series of posts about Basque cider following a recent trip. At this time of year thousands of people visit the Sidrerias or cider houses especially at weekends to drink the fresh cider straight from the barrel and to eat the traditional Basque cider meal.
Visitors are encouraged to get up from their benches and tables as often as they like to pour a small glass of cider from a height so that it aerates and froths in the glass, tasting wonderful. All three barrels contained the same cider but some people felt the need to keep checking this fact by tasting them all on each visit.
Hondarribia is a medieval walled town very near the border with France, and the Sidreria is outside the city walls down by the harbour and slipway where the small boats and tenders are kept. The cider, sidra natural or Sagardoa as it is known in the Basque language is a very good one.
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