Portugal smells of chestnuts
"Kentsh and Bo-Oasha!" "With heat, with heat, union!" When these screams are beginning to be heard on the streets of Portuguese cities, you can not doubt – Christmas is not far off. Because just shouting can only merchants fried chestnuts. Portugal – South Country, and Indian Summer, Chestnut Walnut Season, is late here.
It is called this season here in its own way – the summer of St. Martin, who is respected throughout Europe. The legend says that the saint, in the IV century of our era served as the border guard of the Roman Empire on its most stubborn backyards, that is, the territories of modern Hungary, saved from the cold of the poor stranger, taking off his half of his officer racing. At night, Martin dreamed of a dream in which Christ himself appeared in half the raincoat. The officer threw the military service and became a Christian priest, and then a bishop, devoting the life of the disadvantaged.
In memory of good deeds, which saved his suffering from cold death and gave him warmth, and got the name of the last smile of Portuguese summer. The holiday falls on November 11, although in fact the Saint Martin focused the soul of the eighth day of this month. Just that day, as in the next two, moved into the world of other other saints, and the dates were already busy. This year, by the way, the anniversary is celebrated, since Saint Martin died in 397, that is, 1610 years ago.
By this case, what a portuguese will refuse to drink? Moreover, it has long been there and the corresponding saying, unequivocally calling for decisive actions: "How will day Martina Saint, go to the cellar and try alcohol". Often, it is not necessary to walk far. Cellar in the district – the abyss, and special celebrations are organized. So, this year in Lisbon, the center of attraction was the central shopping area, where the whole ton of chestnuts were roasted on one brazier.
The authorship of the record, however, belongs not to the capital inhabitants. It was installed in the town of Vinyaish, located in the remote mountain province of Traz-U-Montesh, where a third of all Portuguese chestnuts is grown. As President of the Municipal Council of America Pereira told, it was in his head the idea came to make a giant adaptation with a diameter of eight meters. "I did not think about any guinness – he assured. – Just last year, during the previous holiday, saw such a brazier on the street of our city, and thought it would be good to make it more. And people can be attracted, and good advertising holiday to provide. So it turned out. And the form exactly will repeat what was produced in the TRAZ-ENTERS".
From Vinyais, from the extreme northeast of the country, a huge brazier, tested there on November 1, brought to Lisbon. Deliver a metal construction weighing more half-bottom was not easy. I had to equip a whole autocolonna, but it’s good that it ends well. Megazharovna became a place of pilgrimage for residents and guests of the capital. Nearby, in the stretcher on the occasion of the tent, there were tasting halls, where it was possible, in full compliance with the saying, try alcohol.
Hunters for an inexpensive fee to taste the indispensable on this day Agupa, a cheap drink from grape seals, and other wines from different regions of Portugal, as well as the gift to taste fried chestnuts so much that the police had to intervene. Without guarantly the fight for the free treats took not too polite forms. People pushed, trying to break through the mountain nuts with all their might, over which the appetizing league smoke has grown, and grabbed more, feverishly stuffing ulles and packages.
Some lovers of chestnuts, especially the elderly, in the consensus I had to fall out. Only after the police post appeared, the meal took the similarity of a game event, and the holiday entered the safe bed. Although, anyway, while chestnuts did not end, it was not easy to break into the roaster. Yes, and when at the bottom of the colossal sieve, under which the trellies of coals, a read nuts remained, the biggest enthusiasts continued to reach them, encouraging for it.
Perhaps the people were so much because the holiday fell on Sunday. Yes, and the weather turned out to be solar and warm. But as always. Nobody remembers the Day of St. Martin to bring Portuguese. Even if the flip winds are flown on the eve of the Atlantic Ocean, and from the sky, without stopping, it rains, it is miraculously muddied in a miraculous way. The sun comes out due to clouds, the temperature rises degrees to 25, and even more. It’s time to take advantage of the gift of nature and go celebrate.
But not all do not do. In TRZ-U.-Montesh, hot days compete in that there is a direct sense of the word. There in the midst of the field suffering – the collection of chestnuts. Grown nuts and in other areas, but the main "Hitter" Located in the north, in highland. The best products are obtained on trees growing at a height above eight hundred meters above sea level. This season, because of the droughst, the ladder-Montchet is incited. But not all is lost. While the peasants collect fallen fruits, and then, if the lack of moisture does not allow them to fall on the ground, will knock them down with sticks. So, of course, you can damage the trees, but what to do if it does not go different?
Cooperatives, combining hundreds of owners of small, sometimes less than hectares, sites are engaged in cultivation and collection. Chestnuts, as if seeds, remove from fluffy fruits, which are called Portuguese "hedgehogs", fold into plastic buckets, then spend in plastic bags and sent to the factory. There they wash them, rebel the unsuitable and lay out for five varieties, in accordance with the size.
Every year in Portugal is grown to thirty thousand tons of chestnuts, which brings tens of millions of euros to manufacturers and sellers. In November they are sold fresh, and then, from stocks, frozen to keep moisture and useful substances. A significant part of frozen chestnuts is exported to France, so the famous Parisian chestnuts are partially also Portuguese. Love Portuguese nuts and in Italy, Spain, Brazil.
In the Middle Ages, the next holiday of St. Martin, considered the main thing across the country, because the chestnuts were the main food. It is now difficult to imagine, but in some areas, chestnut nuts occupied the place in the diet, which the potato was long. The lives of many families depended on their stocks, without them could not survive the winter. They boiled the first, fry the second, prepared a garnish, baked dessert. And when there were scattered potatoes from America, the Portuguese at first called them "Chestankami".
Scientists confirm: to live on some chestnuts possible. They twice the starch more than in potato. In addition, they are not only nutritious, but also useful. The content of vitamins C and B6, as well as potassium exceeds the indicators of many popular vegetables and fruits. And there is such a difficult identity, but the powerful and powerful thing like nostalgia.
After the celebration of St. Martin, when the air of Lisbon, usually caught and resolved by breathing of the Atlantic, soaked in thick aroma of fried chestnuts, Portuguese, and not only very older, begin to remember childhood. Someone is the years spent in the village, someone – only brief ribs on nature, to grandmother and grandfather, someone had a kulechki with fried chestnuts, which each autumn and winter sold next to the School of the same An old man or an old woman, screamed by naked, hoarse voices: "Kentsh and Bo-Oasha!" "With heat, with heat, union!" Kulechki preserved to this day. All the same: minimized from newspapers or yellow pages of an old telephone directory.
The doptop portable stoves installed directly on the streets did not change, in which on the coals immediately in front of the buyer will fire another portion. Blue-gray ash sewing them, flourished from turning into couples and broken from the inside of moisture. "The most delicious is the smallest, – advise Portuguese. – Those that are not more than three centimeters in diameter".
In Moscow, now also sell fried chestnuts, but it is rather a new-fashioned dressing, graceful nodes in the direction of stylish Europe, or rather, our idealized idea of it, diligently brought up not in one generation with literature and cinema. Freshly cut, with a needle of a cart with saleswoman in the clean, neat forms of Moscow shopping centers do not go to the shabby, burned fry, standing on the corners of the Lisbon streets and serving their dirty, remembered staff.
Here it is not exotic and not a window in someone else’s, seemingly beautiful life, but a familiar, everyday routine. Akin to our sellers of seeds. Running half a dozen, and then a dozen nuts in a coal, people walk on themselves further, chewing dense, nutritious pulp. And shells – according to their own idea of the rules of decency – or fold back into the crox, or throw right under the feet. So, under the sign of Chestnuts, and takes place in Portugal this season, starting from the Holy Holiday Martin and Babiy Summer and lasts until the New Year – Shorenight, Green, but for our man painfully cold and uncomfortable, because in the street warmer than in homes which, as a rule, are not heated.
Now in different villages raised chestnuts and festivals. They can enjoy soups and puddings, and pies, and sweets, among the ingredients of which nuts play if it is not important, then a prominent role. And when the summer of St. Martin is over, and winter will enter their rights to warm up and dispersed the blood, in addition to the chestnut meal, strong liqueurs and grape samogon of zheropiga will go well. Pointy, no worse than your brush name.
If you’re lucky, bring to caustic and such a rarity, as stuffed with chestnuts a boar or a ripper. Often, dishes made of forest nuts, almonds, honey are served on such gastronomic fiores. These products go well together, explain the Portuguese. Do not be broken by the old folk favorite and the most expensive institutions.
One of the Yarya Adherents of Chestnuts is considered to be Enrique Mouuru, a restaurant chef with a five-star metropolitan hotel "Carlton". His recipe for exquisite chestnut salad under a very suitable name "Noble company", Of course, good, what to say. Only it is unlikely to reproduce most of the owners. In addition to chestnuts, quail, and thymes, and bulls, and a special, local grade of mushrooms are required there, and a special, local grade of mushrooms, and considerable culinary art. One modeling from green vermicelli hedgehogid chestnut fetus!
Therefore, for a start, it seems to me, it is better to try a simple, but useful chestnut soup. Pulkulo chestnuts are taken, you can frozen, two bulbs, several cloves of garlic, it all cuts, poured with water and boiled ten minutes. Then the halfbank of finished red beans and a slightly olive oil is added. Cooking for a few more minutes, everything salts and crushed in the processor. Chestnut puree soup ready. It does not happen easier. And I assure it to be at all worse than the one that will be offered in Marvaau, Valpasush or other numerous Portuguese villages, where in the summer of St. Martin, brown abdomen.
Here’s where you can get roaring. In Valpasa, baked chestnut cake weighing six hundred kilograms. To create a giant, two brothers and two sisters, all offacarious bakeries, spent fifty kilo chestnut flour and 75 kilo wheat, almost as much sugar and butter, more than a thousand eggs, sheltered salt and "something else, which is not necessarily reported to all". The result turned out to be quite edible, if you judge the countless pieces of cake with what appetite. But what I did not try, I did not try. Therefore, repeat this brave experiment readers Recommend I do not take.
