La Pobla de Farnals soup festival
I've been really privileged, living in Valencia, to have been invited to my friends' pueblos where you can really find another dimension of Spanish life.
This month, I attended one day of the weeklong village festival of La Pobla de Farnals, where the tradition is to eat caldera, a rice stew.
Here are some guys coming into town center with empty pots.
The town center is where a whole line of cauldrons were bubbling away over wood fires!
Stewing the caldera.
You have to get tickets from town hall about a week before the event, but the tickets are free. They're just so that the village can estimate the quantity to make. Here is one of the many long lines for caldera.
Finally, at the front of the line, someone manages a huge ladle to give you your food!
Then you haul your pot back home! I thought that the whole town would eat together in the streets, but actually everyone then makes their own party at home with their friends and relatives.
So what is caldera exactly? It had rice, ox (from one of the bulls who run through the streets during other festivity days!), beef, thistle (quite common to cook with), chorizo, and morcilla (blood sausage, which perfumes the whole dish).
What was the best part of all was while we were dining, after everyone I guess had taken their share of caldera, someone came onto the town's public address system to make an announcement. I guess they have such a system to broadcast announcements during emergencies. The announcement this day? That there were leftovers available for those who wanted it!
A discussion ensued about whether or not the soup would have already had rice put in, in which case it would only be "good" to eat that day. If they hadn't put rice in yet, you could get some and freeze it for another day. They do care a lot about overcooked rice here!
As an aside, a cool appetizer I came across at my friend's house was this potato chip appetizer. It's quite common here to eat potato chips with canned mussels, but I've always seen the two served separately. Here they put the mussels, along with pickled peppers, pickled cucumbers, and sardines (all canned) on top of a cut open bag of potato chips!
