Author: Ben

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Cuisine from Spain Podcast Spanish Food and Drink

Cuisine from Spain Podcast 16 – Setas


[Download MP3]

setas

This seasonal mushroom dish, made here using wild setas, can actually be adapted to make a great tapa all year round.

Ingredients:

4 cloves of garlic
3 Tbs olive oil
Half a kilo/1 pound wild mushrooms (setas)
Half a glass of white wine
3 sticks of parsley
Salt (a generous pinch!)
Pepper (optional)

Preparation:

Start by washing the mushrooms thoroughly, then place them in a sieve and let them dry for a while – if you need to cook them immediately, dry them a bit with a tea-towel. With the type of mushrooms I used, you can simply tear them into strips but if you use button mushrooms you need to slice them with a knife.

Put all the oil in a frying pan and wait till it starts to smoke. Add the garlic, which has been previously peeled and sliced roughly, and stir with a wooden spoon. When the garlic starts to brown add the mushrooms and stir them every now and again for 5 minutes. At this point add the wine and turn the heat down to medium. After another 5 to 10 minutes add the parsley and serve immediately.

Tips

If you want to try adding even more flavour to this dish, you can fry some bacon or ham (serrano or parma) in the oil with the garlic (remember that the garlic will need less time than either of these ingredients.)

If you can’t find wild mushrooms that you thing will be suitable, standard or button mushrooms will do just fine.

Discuss this recipe in the forum

Categories
notes Spain Glossary

Enchufe: NFS Spain Glossary

The other day I was telling my sister-in-law about a relation of mine who has just landed an important job at Reuters UK, a job gained entirely through hard work and personal merit. “In Spain”, she replied, “that job would only be for the son of someone important”, (‘solo para el hijo de.‘ were her exact words, and no, she wasn’t swearing.)

The point is that nepotism is rife in Spain. From getting a decent job, to finding your way onto an oversubscribed course, to having your internet connection up and running faster than anyone else – if you have a friend or relation in the right place, known as an Enchufe, you’re sorted.

The interesting thing is though, that no one in Spain really seems to mind. There is very little resentment of the enchufe system (until it’s your turn to loose out). This is probably because everyone is enchufado (plugged in) to some extent, and as long as their pizza is arriving hotter because their mate rides the delivery bike, or their son gets a better promotion because daddy knows someone who knows someone in HR, then everyone seems quite happy to let this little bit of sociological corruption run and run.

And if you are worried that as a foreigner in Spain you’ll never get Enchufado, just how many good reasons do I have to give you for getting an intercambio?! 😉

Categories
Spanish Culture and News

Eta reportedly steal 350 guns in France

350 pistols and revolvers were stolen from a company in France last night in a raid that seems to have been carried out by ETA. At least 5 were involved in the robbery in Vauvert, near Nimes, tying up hostages with handcuffs that were reportedly stolen from Gendarmes by members of ETA on March 5th, earlier this year.

The Partido Popular, doubtless delighted to see Zapatero made to look stupid at this very provocative action (the first since the announcement of the ceasefire in late March, when ETA promised not to rearm) have called this a Political Statement. Whatever it is, this action certainly won’t help engender a sense of trust in ETA amongst the ordinary men and women on the streets of Spain.

Sources
El Mundo news link. Plus, the comments below the 20Minutos article certainly hint at the attitude of the people on the street – “zp ha dejado que ETA se rearme de nuevo”, Zapatero is gifting ETA the chance to rearm again. Update: More in the Guardian.

Categories
notes Spanish Culture and News

Corruption in Spain – Putin’s verdict

We all know that there has been a lot of corruption in local councils and town halls over recent years – half of Marbella’s politicos are permanently in and out of prison these days… But things must be pretty bad when President Putin uses Spain’s woes to make Russia look good.

There is obviously no point in putting too much faith in his comparison, as one quick Google Battle easily proves!

Categories
notes

NFS on Myspace

If you can’t beat ’em…

Categories
Spanish Culture and News

Signs of things to come

Two of my photos from our recent trip to the Valencian Coast struck me as interesting:

ruin

“España es un pais desunido e incierto que no sabe a donde va.” Spain is a separated and uncertain country with no idea where it is heading. The graffiti on this ruined house, hidden behind a wild stretch of beach near Gandia, is not uncommon. It could have been there for years. The next photo, by contrast, hints very strongly as to where Spain is heading.

ruin

This sign, posted in the lobby of the block of flats where we stayed in Gandia, deals with the simple matter of the local refuse collection service. But look closely: in order to communicate with the population of Valencia as it stands today, the message is written in Valencian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Romanian, Russian and Arabic. A sign like this would never have been seen 5 years ago, probably not even 18 months ago for that matter. After hundreds of years, is Spain becoming a truly plural society again?

Categories
notes

Cordero Asado and Patatas a lo Pobre recipe

The recipe details for last week’s Cuisine from Spain podcast have been added to the post.

Categories
Living in Spain

How to find friends in Spain and settle in on arrival

It is by no means easy just to turn up in Spain and start a new life with no connections, and your old social network far away at home. Scared the hell out of me when I first got here.

But there are a lot of ways to find your feet, and a social life in Spain, pretty quickly. All you have to do is plan well before you arrive, or get on the case as soon as you get here. Here are some top tips gleaned from my own experiences, and those of others. So, in no particular order:

1. Enroll on a course in Spain before you leave
I walked straight into a TEFL course at International House, Madrid, when I first arrived in Spain. I instantly met 11 other people in the same boat as me. What a relief! It was an even bigger relief when the school hired me afterwards, and I had a whole staffroom of people to go out with at night! Which leads me to…

2. Get a job in a language academy
You will meet lots of savvy ex-pats who have been here for years and can give you excellent advice on those first difficult weeks in Spain (and show you where the beer is coldest 😉 ) Don’t be afraid of mixing with English speakers (some people only want to meet Spaniards), they can be a very useful asset in those early days!

3. Get a job anywhere, better still, have your company send you here!
It’s not all about English teaching. You can work in anything you want with the right amount of effort and patience. If you can get a transfer to Spain with the company you already work with, even better – there will be an office full of Spanish people waiting to bring your language skills up to par.

4. Get an intercambio
No, get three intercambios (see our Spain Glossary entry). Use Loquo.com’s language exchange section for your city. Place an ad of your own. This is the very best thing you can do to make contact with the Spanish. Do not underestimate the power of the intercambio!

5. Use the Irish Pubs
If you feel like you need to speak to someone in your own language, don’t worry about checking out the Irish Pub scene when you first get to Spain. There will be a host of ex-pats propping up the bar, who can give you great advice about finding flats, work etc.

6. Flat sharing
Find a shared flat with one or more locals. Look at noticeboards in bookshops, colleges, universities etc, ex-pat paper classifieds, loquo.com… with any luck some of your new flatmates’ social life will rub off on you!

7. Choose a busy city
All of the above will be a lot easier in a big city such as Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia.

8. Join a Spanish class
…in a language academy. Your Spanish will improve, and Spanish classes in Spain tend to be full of people from all over the world that have just moved to Spain for the long term.

9. If in real doubt, use a relocation service
Some of them are very personal and friendly, and will help you to find a flat, and to orientate you in your new surroundings. I met the owner of one, “Easy Landing“, on a plane to the UK – seems highly recommendable!

10. Find a Spanish bar to call your own
Been in a real, typical Spanish bar and felt quite at home? Make it your local. Pop in regularly for a coffee, caña, or menu del dia. The barmen/waiters will soon come to recognise you and make you feel more at home.

Categories
Spain Glossary

Intercambio (Spain Glossary) – Learn Spanish the fun way!

It’s time to start setting up a glossary of useful terms on this website, so I don’t drive the regular readers mad by repeating 10 times a week what, for example, an intercambio is. So here is entry number 1, the intercambio, which I’ll cite for the first time in the next post.

Intercambio (m.) – Language exchange

The intercambio system is designed to help people improve their spoken language fluency, and is widely used in Spain. The idea is to meet up with a real Spanish speaking person, in a bar or cafe for example, and chat for half the time in Spanish, and and half the time in English. That way both of you get great, natural practice in the language you want to learn (of course this works with any combination of languages).

Plus you get to make a new friend, and probably meet their friends too… and then you’ll be speaking Spanish all the time! I cannot recommend the intercambio strongly enough as a way to improve your Spanish, and to feel a whole lot happier about life if you have just arrived in Spain (again, there is no reason why this shouldn’t work outside Spain too – see the intercambio section in the forum to find a long-distance intercambio!).

Intercambios can be found via: notice boards in language schools, bookshops and universities; in classified ads in the local English press, and on-line small ads services such as loquo.com; asking around (if you teach English, your students will know lots of people). Demand for English speakers is high, so it shouldn’t be hard to have several intercambios on the go at once!

One more thing: a lot of people use the intercambio game in a ‘you never know who I might meet’ dating fashion. Nothing wrong with that – I actually married my favourite intercambio 😉

What Spanish terms would you like to see in the NFS Spain Glossary? Suggestions below please!

Categories
notes

Thanks for all your feedback

Many thanks to all who gave us some feedback on the future of Notes from Spain.

The main conclusion (yours and ours) was not to meddle too much and to carry on doing what we have been doing so far, which essentially means producing lots of podcasts and, to an extent, making the rest up as we go along! So nothing will change too much, but we certainly do intend to expand in new interesting directions.

For a start we hope to get the Spanish conversations going a bit better in the forums (maybe with the help of some competitions – if anyone wants to offer a prize, please contact me!), we want to add more video and pictures (including billboards and ad hoardings, as requested 😉 ), we are going to make it possible to put your video in the forums and, above all, we want to carry on building on and encouraging the fantastic Spain and Spanish-loving community we have in the forums.

Finally, we want to make NFS more useful, by offering useful services to visitors to the site. I have no idea what that means yet, but our aim has always been to make this one of the best Spain sites on the net, and as such the more useful it is the better. Any ideas?

One of my favourite bits of your feedback, which we shall try to follow to the letter, was that it is better to be “slightly arnarchic, unplanned and flexible. Embracing serendipity, idulging your instincts and seeing where it takes you could, as it has, be the most successful plan.” Sounds like fun to me!