What, no grelos, no cocido gallego!!!!

¡Domingo, hay cocido! ¡Martes y jueves, hay cocido! ¡Hoy, hay cocido!

You see the notices outside restaurants all over Vigo, indeed, all over Galicia. If you really worked at it you could find somewhere serving cocido (and eat it) every single day of the week. You might have a prodigious indigestion as a result but that’s a different matter.

Cocido, basically stew, is one of the favourite dishes around here. The main ingredients are lots of meat, some chorizo, white kidney beans (or some people prefer chickpeas), potatoes and grelos. These are turnip tops. I suppose you might call them “greens”. Nunci who went to yoga with me last year used to get seriously over-excited when she knew there were grelos on sale.

Cocido is a dish you can’t really be indifferent about. You either love it or you can’t digest it. Not being a great meat eater at the best of times I tend to fall into the latter camp.

Now, there would seem to be something of a problem with the supply of grelos in some parts of Galicia at the moment. This has definitely been the worst winter for a really long time here in Galicia, well, in the whole of Spain, indeed in the whole of Europe. One consequence of the excessive rain in November, followed by very low temperatures is that the grelos harvest in the Xestoso district near La Coruña, instead of being a nice green, is a sort of dirty frost-bitten brown.

Grelos producers say that it is only the milder weather of recent weeks that has saved the harvest and even so it is down to about 50%. Even so, they tell us, “Non son de boa calidade.”

It’s not just cocido that will suffer either. There is a dish called grelos salteados, where the greens are spiced up a little with the addition of chilli peppers. Then there is sopa de grelos and, of course, caldo gallego, a rather tasty broth. And we must not forget lacón con grelos, a sort of joint of pork served up with ... wait for it... grelos!!!

As you can see grelos figure in Galician cookery almost as regularly as patatas.

The situation gets worse because next Sunday is the feira do grelo de Val Xestoso when prizes are given for the best bunches of greens. (Around here, they DO like to have ferias at the drop of a hat, especially on food-related themes!) How will they ever manage to produce enough lacón con grelos for the degustación (tasting) which is a big part of the feira?

There is one piece of good news however: because of the recent milder weather there will be plenty of grelos in March. But by then carnavales will be over and really it will be too late!