Oh how ignorance abounds when it comes to our food and our times.
The urban elite view us as barbarians confined to our villages, subsisting on bowls of cold gruel.
What blasphemy! What disrespect!
This is a time of change. A time of castles and cathedrals. And nowhere is that more evident than this pilgrims' inn on the route to Santiago de Compostela.
Every day, wealthy travelers -- merchants, traders, priests, and pilgrims -- gather for food to sustain them on their journeys along this road, which begins at Le Puy in central France, crosses through the Pyrenees, traverses northern Spain and ends at Compotela, one of the most well-known shrines in Christiandom.
For many who walk or ride this route, roadside dining is a risky business. Typical travelers must carry their provisions and eat in the field. Those with moderate means can afford to stop only at the poorest of monasteries, where a single bowl of nourishment awaits them. What a contrast that is to the pilgrims' inn.
The quality of this establishment was obvious from the moment my dining companion and I sat down for a midday meal.
The server, a young child, barely able to carry the ceramic tankards, gave us our choice of beer or wine. Knowing that the local grape harvest was bountiful and assured that the new wine had just arrived this week (it turns to vinegar so quickly in those leaky old barrels), we opted for the juice of the vine.
For the main course, we had a venison stew with pepper sauce -- one of the finest dishes one could hope to find outside the lord's banquet hall.
The venison had been roasted a day or two earlier over an open pit and then cut in bite-size pieces before it was added to a sauce full of the pungent bite of black pepper.
Served in a large, hollowed out bowl of two-day-old bread, the venison was topped with cooked carrots and peas. It was accompanied by several large loaves of freshly baked wheat bread (no plebian rye here), which we cut with our own knives. When all the meat had been consumed, we broke apart the leavened bowl, which had softened, and ate the now-peppered chunks of bread.
For dessert, we had fresh pears, whose luscious sweetness provided a finish fit for a prince.
While the masses still engage in that in that unsanitary practice of dipping their full hands into shared entrees, those at this inn followed the latest written etiquette: Never dip below the first knuckle.
The atmosphere of the pilgrims' inn was comfortable and well-appointed. The dirt floor was covered with rushes, and the large common room featured an immense fireplace, with long trestle tables and benches lined in front of it. Children scurried between dining hall and kitchen, where older women handed them the servings of food. Clearly, cuisine and culture are rising to new heights!
