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
PATA NEGRA SCANORAMA DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013 87 �