The Purple Gold of La Mancha
October 31st, 2011
La Mancha is the Spanish heartland. Sprawling over a high plateau between Madrid and the Mediterranean, it is the birthplace of Manchego cheese and Pedro Almodóvar, and the legendary stomping-ground of Don Quixote himself.
Life has a harsh edge here. The weather is more extreme than elsewhere in Spain, and the villages have a parched, roughened look. But there is gold in La Mancha’s fields—or rather, purple gold—in the form of a plant called Crocus sativus, the saffron crocus. If handled correctly, this humble plant, after surviving La Mancha’s icy winters and broiling summers, is responsible for what many believe is the very best example of saffron, the world’s most expensive, most elusive spice.
For a few precious weeks, starting in mid-October, isolated fields throughout La Mancha sprout the lace-like purple flower. Picked by hand each day before they have a chance to open, the flowers conceal three stigmas, which are removed by fingernail then quickly dried over a heat source like charcoal. The result has the same intense orange-yellow glow of saffron produced elsewhere in the world, but a uniquely sweet aroma that many saffron fans say can only be achieved here.
“I love the crop,” says La Mancha farmer Juan Antonio Ortiz, who, along with his wife Maria Ángeles Serrano, grow and process a small but prestigious saffron supply outside a village called Minaya, an hour’s drive north of the provincial capital Albacete. During the harvest, which peaked this past week but continues on into November, the Ortiz family and their seasonal helpers may work in excess of 20 hours a day. They need to process around 200,000 individual flowers to produce a single kilo of saffron.
A reward for their labours is a constant supply year round. “I put saffron in my milk every morning,” says Mr. Serrano, 61 years old, speaking in late September, when the hot La Mancha sun and the cool fall winds combined for a brief period of balminess. His wife says she puts saffron in everything from Spanish-style tortilla omelets and game courses to raisin cakes. “In traditional La Mancha cooking,” she says, “almost all dishes have some saffron.”
Using saffron is an exact science, argues Ms. Serrano, 55. “The amount is critical,” she says. “If you put in too much, you spoil the dish.”
Saffron cultivation is undergoing “a revival” in La Mancha, says José Antonio Fernández, a plant geneticist at the Albacete campus of the University of Castilla-La Mancha. Prof. Fernández, who has made a study of the saffron crocus his life’s work, says the local habit of roasting saffron is key to high quality.
“There are many different ways to dry the stigmas,” he says. Invoking the world’s other major areas of saffron production, he adds: “For example, in Iran and Morocco, they dry the stigmas in the open air.” He says the immediate roasting causes “a chemical reaction” that both transforms and preserves a sweeter, more intense aroma. La Mancha’s harsh conditions may be hard on residents, but provide just the right situation for the saffron crocus. Dry, hot summers and cold winters keep fungi and other predators and pests at bay, explains Prof. Fernández.
Saffron cultivation in the Mediterranean dates back to Minoan civilization, but it seems to have come to Spain with the Moors, who not only used it as a medicine or dye, but as an actual spice. Saffron has long been a valued commodity, and has subsequently “been adulterated for centuries,” says Mr. Fernández. He adds that these days, “Spanish” saffron is likely imported from Iran, the world’s largest producer, and repackaged by unscrupulous middlemen. Saffron from some Asian suppliers may be adulterated with everything from turmeric to dyed poppy petals. Mr. Fernández says that in some instances, artificial dyes used by deceptive traders and distributors are actually carcinogenic. When in doubt, he says, “the best thing to do is use turmeric or paprika,” which are both far preferable to fake or adulterated saffron.
One way to insure that you are getting genuine saffron is to restrict purchases to a few European regions whose saffron has received protected geographical status from the European Union, and is marked by a seal. These include La Mancha, L’Aquila in Italy’s Abruzzo region and around Kozani in western Macedonia in Greece. The professor also recommends saffron from new sources in Tasmania, Chile and Argentina. “Saffron is in fashion in the southern hemisphere,” he says.
Observers have high hopes for this year’s La Mancha crop; 2011 is turning into “a very remarkable harvest,” says Prof. Fernández, who keeps in close touch with local growers. He says both the quality and the quantity of the crocus blooms are unusually high.
In La Mancha itself, saffron has become a tourist attraction, with Consuegra, a small town near Toledo in the northwest of the region, holding its annual saffron-themed extravaganza in October, the Saffron Rose Festival. Taking advantage of nearby windmills made famous in Cervantes’s “Don Quixote,” the festival is a celebration of La Mancha customs and includes events like competitive stigma separating.
Elsewhere in La Mancha, some enterprising foodies are trying to produce saffron-flavored Manchego cheese, thereby combining two of the region’s most celebrated products. “It’s in the experimental phase,” Ms. Serrano says of the newfangled orange cheese.
Saffron can now retail for nearly €20 a gram, and as its price rises, it has become a symbol of luxurious experimentation for some of Europe’s top chefs. Pierre Gagnaire, whose three-star Michelin restaurant in Paris is the flagship of a world-wide culinary empire, created a sweet red-pepper dessert called “Hell,” featuring olives, candied tomatoes, Peruvian peppers and ewe’s milk yogurt, generously dosed with saffron. First introduced five years ago, the dish is now made upon special request. Mr. Gagnaire also uses saffron to flavour orange and grapefruit sorbets, and a special custard tart.
In Denia, an hour’s drive south of Valencia, innovative Spanish chef Quique Dacosta uses saffron, blood oranges and red mullet to create a dish named in honour of painter Mark Rothko, who himself once named a red-hued abstract painting after the spice.
“I love saffron,” says Mr. Dacosta, a native of Spain’s Extremadura region who moved to Valencia when he was a teenager. Mr. Dacosta, who is known for finding radical culinary solutions lurking behind local Valencian customs, is a fan of saffron’s most famous application in Spain—paella, the rice mélange that Spaniards associate with Valencia but also treat as something of a national dish.
“Paella is the dish most representative of Valencian cuisine,” he says. “And in this recipe, saffron is a main product—paella without saffron is like paella without rice.”
Unlike many of the spice’s aficionados, Mr. Dacosta doesn’t assign superlatives to La Mancha saffron. (He himself relies on a producer in the neighboring Alicante region.) “I do not know if there is a ‘best’ saffron,” he says. “But I know the one from La Mancha is very impressive.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
