Black Pig in Donnybrook
Monday 27 February 2012
I think we could safely say that from the start of the package holiday in the 1960’s holidays to Spain were best known for sun, sea, sand and sex! Food and fun to the tourist was limited in their mind to paella, Sangria, followed up with a good belt of ole ole and, as a friend of mine in the wine business used say, “cheap Spanish plonk.” For many of the young crowd, and the wey hey merchants, the focus will still be the same as before but nowadays there are many more who are really interested in the local food and its provenance. The popularity of tapas here is now on a par to what Thai food was ten years ago and, no doubt, we will soon have a tapas spot in every village in Ireland. The upside is that it does raise awareness and knowledge of Spanish produce – if properly done!
Spain too has greatly raised the level of its food image being home to some of the best restaurants in the world including what was the No. 1 Restaurant in the world El Bulli. There is a lot more to Spanish food than the well known Irish imported olive oil we see on our supermarket shelves every day of the week, and calamari is now as familiar as Irish stew in every pub and restaurant in the country! Sure we’re a well travelled lot!
We mainly think of fish and shellfish when it comes to Spanish food but one of their great delicacies is Pata Negra – cured ham from the black hooved Iberian pig. These animals live primarily in the south and southwest of Spain and are allowed to roam in pasture and oak groves to feed naturally on grass, acorns, and roots until it gets near their time to be dispatched, when their diet may be limited to acorns to achieve the top quality jamon Iberico de bellota, or Jamon Iberico de Montanera, The exercise and diet these pigs get has a major impact on the flavor of the meat, which is cured for 36 months. The next grade down is Jamon Iberico de recebo which is ham from pigs that are pastured and fed on a mix of acorns and grain, whilst the third level is Jamon Iberico de cebo, aka just Jamon Iberico, which indicates these guys are fed only grain, and the ham is cured for 24 months. All good but the divil is in the detail – the last two words - if you want the top notch Pata Negra.
Paul Walsh is so taken with the food and wine of the Iberian Peninsula that five weeks ago he opened a delightful new niche shop in Donnybrook called Black Pig importing his own range of charcuterie and cheeses and other goodies from Spain. Paul has a long history in the wine business having been with Oddbin's, the wine merchants, who closed down last year. He also has amazing contacts in Spain in that his brother, Niall, who has been living in Madrid for over twenty years, sells gourmet food there from around the world through his website www.lagranjagourmet.com
A very young looking 41 from Sutton, Co. Dublin, Paul is married to Jessica and they have a six year old daughter and 18 month old son. After working in the P.R. and media industry for a number of years, he decided he didn’t want to “wear suits any more and make presentations. He applied for a job in 2003 with Oddbin's. “I started at the bottom at Oddbin's branch in Clontarf . I thought I’d be there for about a year and learn about wine as I had an interest in it. They were a very customer orientated company and believed in everybody in the company from the lowest grade working in the shop learning everything possible about wines. They paid for staff education so you could study up to Diploma level with WSET – Wine & Spirit Education Trust. So, as a company they supported that constant education, and there were regular tastings and good Managers as well who wanted the staff to learn, so in terms of education and learning a lot of it has to do with tastings and keeping up to date with what is going on. I stuck at it and was managing a couple of their shops until Summer 2010. After 8 years my focus had turned to opening Black Pig, which had been on my mind for quite some time as Spanish food, and Spanish wine had a wider appeal to me than anywhere else. I spent a lot of time in Spain setting up Black Pig sourcing the best suppliers.”
It clearly seems to have appeal as I watched a very ‘young fogie’ type come in looking for a packet of the same Paletilla Iberian ham at €8.99 he’d bought the previous week - so delicious he wanted another “to seriously impress his friends”. Never mind his friends, he seriously impressed me, as I thought of what my own two boys might be buying even with, or maybe because of (!) a food critic as a mother. “Lets start here with the outrageously priced clams at €20” I said to Paul. “Mind you the €10m Lottery winner lives in Donnybrook” I added. “There is a great tradition in Northern Spain of tinning and preserving quality fish; they do it better I think than anyone in the world.” He said. “There are large producers like Ortiz doing tuna that is available on the Irish market. Los Peperetes are a small cannery in Galicia, family owned, they cook all the fish on site, like in the case of tuna, the meat is removed from the bones by hand, it is tinned by hand, the olive oil is added by hand. Things like the cockles are actually arranged in the tin by hand so when you take the lid off it is attractive to look at, ideal for tapas. The clams are in their shells or in salsa verde and they are fantastic – second to none. Almegas de carril at €20 for 300 grams – would suit two people.” There was octopus with paprika at €13 and ventresca, the belly of white tuna at €15.99, or Bonito at €9. I loved the little squid ink sacks at €1.50 for making squid ink risotto. There is also the very attractive Querida Carmen range which gives you all you need to make Paella de Calamar; Arroz de Boletus con Pollo de Corral (rice with mushrooms and free range chicken) or indeed Caldo de Buey de Mar (crab soup) – make wonderful gifts for foodies. I also liked the Serrano, Conservas Artesanas range which had a brace of quails in escabeche at €10.99 and Bloc de Foie Gras at 19.99. There are wonderful olive oils, and La Chinata sea salts mixed with chilli, or five peppers, as well as PX sherry or Moscatel sherries which have atomisers for spraying over fish. Paella spice sachets are €4.50 for 5, and lovely Spanish Guadalajara honeycomb. “Our hams are sourced in Salamanca, sliced and packaged in Madrid under our own name so are as good as hand sliced.”
200 wines are arranged in “broad regions of Spain” and covers a range from €8.99 to €160. “There is a mixture of wines we bring in ourselves and wines from Irish distributors. “ Paul recommends a great wine they are importing themselves called 12 Volts at 22.99 which is very elegant, extremely complex, from a winery called Quatro Kilos in Majorca. “It is not a massive wine, this is structured and quite feminine and unique and I think it is spectacular for the money. The producer Francesc Grimalt has pretty much singlehandedly brought back the Callet grape variety in Majorca. He is one of the new breed of wine makers. Their top wine is 4 Kilos and we sold out of that immediately but we have more coming . We start at €15.99 for Cava, up to €31.99 for a Cava from Dominio de la Vega, who are close to Valencia, and not Catalunya which is where most Cava comes from. This in my opinion rivals any of the big brand Champagnes. I love Sherry too and that’s something I would love to champion a comeback for here, which is already happening in London. These Fernando de Castilla Antique sherries are in my opinion some of the best in the world.” Must say I love sherry too and Brendan laughed when he recalled my asking for a sherry in a pub in Longford and the barman said he hadn’t served a sherry in years. I felt like Granny scratch scratch – so guys let me tell you – Sherry is cool!
Black Pig,
95B Morehampton Road,
Donnybrook,
Dublin. 4.
Tel> (01) 667-4828
-FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT.