Rosalía de Castro's Broth of Glory
Lucía Freitas is a chef at A Tafona* (Santiago de Compostela, Galicia)
“Miña casiña, meu lar” is a poem by the Galician writer Rosalía de Castro, through which she records the harsh living conditions they had to endure. The first verses paint a vivid portrait of the poverty of that time: “I came from Santiago to Padrón in a downpour that was enough to make you cry, barefoot, without eating or having lunch.”
The poet explains how the protagonist of this poem tries to satisfy her hunger by asking her neighbors for food, but they refuse her help. She ends up searching through the few things she has at home for the ingredients to cook a humble broth. This soup, made with lard, cabbage, and little else, as Rosalía de Castro writes in her verses, manages to quell her hunger. A recipe provided by Lucía Freítas.
(For the broth)
600 g of turnips
300g of sour potato
35g of dried mushrooms
90 g of Yondu
1.5 liters of water
7 g of salt
20 g of lemon verbena
20g of lemongrass
1 lemon tree leaf
Cabbage leaves
Turnip in continuous cut to finish.
-Weigh all the ingredients and cook in a pressure cooker for 35 min.
-Strain and texturize with starch.
(For the bolo do Pote)
175 g of purple corn flour
5 g of smoked rancid fat
270 ml of water
Cabbage leaves
Semi-cured bacon
–Steam the bacon at 80°C. Chop finely and set aside.
-Infuse the lard in hot water for 5 minutes, strain and scald the cornmeal with it.
-Knead and make small balls, flatten them and fill with the chopped bacon, cover with the scalded cabbage and flatten slightly.
-Heat in the broth itself.
(For the root vegetable cream)
300g of cooked turnip
100g of cooked potato
50g of fermented butter
35 g of potato starch
–Make a cream with the potato and turnip from the broth, pass through a fine sieve and emulsify with the fermented butter. Thicken with potato starch.
Finish and presentation
Place a spoonful of turnip cream and two pieces of cabbage in the bottom of the bowl, cover with a thin, continuous slice of turnip, and pour in the broth. Arrange three cracked circles of blanched kale and three drops of lemon leaf oil.
In the second course, serve the lacquered and hot bolo do pote.