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PATA NEGRA
It’s lunchtime in Badajoz in Extremadura,
southwest Spain, and I’m leaning over the
counter of a vast state-of-the art kitchen
in the Monasterio de Rocamador examining
different cuts of meat. This is not any
old meat mind you, but beautifully sculpted cuts
of Ibérico de bellota – pork from acorn-fed pigs –
for which the region is famous. The richly marbled
meat is as dark as good Bordeaux, almost the
color of beef. My host, Carlos Tristancho, an actor
turned pig farmer, is bent over the stove pressing
his fingers into the top of a pork steak. “You can
tell when it’s done by the bounce,” he says, before
rushing off to scrabble in a cupboard for a pot of
sea salt.
Perched on a lonely ridge high above the dehesa
– the rolling landscape of meadows and forests of
holm oak and cork oak that the native Ibérico pig
has roamed for mil len nia – the early 16th-century
Franciscan mon as tery has a certain crumbling
majesty about it. The unruly gardens seem to
sprout from the founda tions and huge stork nests
crown its disused chimney stacks. Inside, the
rooms are dark and cool with mazelike corridors
leading from living rooms and bedrooms to sunbaked
terraces and shady porches.
For the past 15 years this ancient stone building
has been a hotel as well as a home, but it is on
the market now that Tristancho is divorcing. “It
had 30 bedrooms,” he says. “It was simply too big
for us.” While I sip a nutty aged Manzanilla from
Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Andalusia, Tristancho
flutters about the kitchen. A raw cauliflower salad
with sunflower seeds and soy sauce is paired with
juicy slices of pluma (the triangular shaped muscle
taken from just over the pig’s shoulder), which
he serves rare – the Ibérico pig is trichina-free so
you won’t get ill if the meat isn’t cooked through.
While we eat, Tristancho regales me with stories
of his acting career, including a role in Pedro Almodóvar’s
first film Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980).
It was then that he met his wife, Lucía Dominguín
Bosé, the daughter of legendary bullfighter
Luis Miguel Dominguín, whose circle in cluded
Er nest Hem ing way, Lauren Bacall, Ava Gardner
and Frank Sinatra, all of whom were avid
ad mirers of the dashing matador and frequent
guests at his estate during la temporada taurina
(the bull fight ing season ). They would turn out
to cheer him on at the corridas and in so doing
sprinkle a little stardust over this remote corner
of Spain. Tristancho, however, attracts a different
kind of celebrity.
His company, País de Quercus, supplies charcuterie
to many of Spain’s top chefs: Andoni Luis
Aduriz (Mu garitz), Manuel de la Osa (Las Rejas),
Xavier Pelli cer (Can Fabes) and Joan Roca (El
Celler de Can Roca), to name a few. Ferran Adrià
and Britain’s Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck)
swear by his meat. Tristancho, however, insists
that they also get to know its provenance: the dehesa
and its inhabitants.
AND SO IT IS THAT ON A sweltering July day, after a
late lunch and a long siesta, we find ourselves
driving across the dehesa in Tristancho’s dusty
4x4 to the Finca Cantillana, the farm where he
raises 650 purebred Ibérico pigs, 350 head of
Retinta cattle and 1,600 merino sheep. I had
expected wild and untamed country, but the grass
– or what is left of it since it has largely turned to
dust now – is manicured to perfection thanks to
the cattle and sheep that graze here before it is
turned over to the pigs in the fall.
The Ibérico pig is indigenous to the Iberian
Peninsula and is a close descendant of Iberian
wild boar. Extre madura fa vors two breeds: La
Colorada, which is distinguished by its russet
tones and com pact body; and La Negra, which is
bigger and more cartoonish with an elongated
snout and coarse black hair. Most have black
feet – hence the term pata negra, or “black hoof,”
referring both to the pig and the ham – but what
differentiates these from just any old grain-fed
Iberian pig is that during the montanera (fattening
period) they scamper freely around the dehesa
on a diet of acorns, fresh air and exercise, which
Salad days: Tristancho
(right) in the kitchen of the
Monasterio de Rocamador ,
which counts Ferran Adrià
and Heston Blumenthal
among its guest chefs
86 DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013 SCANORAMA