For all that fuel, the pile generated surprisingly little smoke, which Sr. Plà explained is what you want with this oxygen-deprived burning process. He told us he was on the lookout for “clean” smoke, which indicates things are progressing well and the wood converting to charcoal as it should. “Too much air and all this would go up in flames,” he said, “and that would be a disaster.”

“Listen,” he said, sklonking two black logs together. The sound was hollow and glassy. “This is from last year’s Carbonera. You can hear that this is good charcoal. It doesn’t weigh a thing, but it will burn perfectly.” If all goes well, he said, every thousand kilos of wood will yield about 170 kilos of charcoal.

Plà learned the art of charcoal-making as a young man, when every community had a carbonero who knew how to turn aged cork oaks uprooted to make room for crops into cooking fuel. “This is what I did up until 1950 or so, but then they came along with gas.”

“Nowadays,” he said with a shrug, “we do it to entertain ourselves.” And so they do: hundreds of people from towns up and down the coast find their way down a winding dirt road to a clearing in the oak woods around the old Mas Frigola farm in the village of Sant Climent de Peralta. Sawhorses and plywood are strung together into long communal tables and festival lights dangle overhead. Since the Carbonera has to be tended from the time the fire is lit on October 12th until the time the finished charcoal is stacked on the 30th, visitors are welcome to stop in any time, 24 hours a day. A dozen barbecue grills dot the clearing and everyone is expected to bring along plenty of sausages, bread, and wine, at the least.

The Carbonera is about tradition-keeping, too.

“Want to see our barraca?” asked Sr. Plà. We stepped in through an opening on the side of a long oval hut faced with stone. The Homes del Foc (Men of Fire), including the mayor of Forallac, Josep Sala, sleep here, right next to the pile. The mayor wasn’t around last Thursday––perhaps he was napping back at Town Hall. But we did meet one intrepid young Dona, Cristina Colom, who has joined the crew. Her father, Lluís Colom, knows the ropes well. “I’m still learning,” she said with a modest but confident smile.

“Yeah,” said Sr. Plà, with a glance at the sleeping bags lined up on the tamped earth floor of the barraca, “I’m here every day, but my days of sleeping on the ground are over.”

XVIII Edició of La Carbonera de Forallac, 2010, began on October 2 (when the carboneros built the wood pile); the earth layer was added on October 9. Things really got under way October 12, when the ull or “eye” of the fire was lit (a local archaeologist is responsible for rubbing a couple of stones together to supply the spark). Special events so far have included music, children’s activities, and a screening of “El territori al plat”––a documentary about the relationship between our landscape and what we eat) by the journalist and gastronome Salvador Garcia. Click here to see the trailer on Facebook.

Let the txotx season begin!  Today is the day they tap the ’08 harvest kupelas in the Basque Country.  Astigarraga, just outside Donostia, is, of course, the place to be.

More specifically, the place to be is probably Sidrería Petritegi.  That’s where, this year, after the Mayoral speechifying whereupon the virtues of the most prodigious (10 Million kilo) and most aromatic apple harvest in 30 years will be extolled, and after the apple tree planting (if you want the bounty, give back to the land) is done, at 1:45pm, the txotx season officially opens with a shout of “Gure Sagardo Berria .” That’s so many daunting Basque words for:  we’re talkin’ cider here, folks, the hard stuff, come and get it — fresh and fruity and flowing from kegs all over town.

The shouter this year is a local pelota hero, Aimar Olaizola.  Over the 16 year history of this cider fest, the job has been pretty much equally shared among men performing the most honorable Basque Country deeds:  pelota champions, footballers, cyclists, and chefs (there’s been one woman, the soprano Ainoa Arteta).

Yes, they’re manly men up there in the Basque Country.  And they’ve come up with yet another ritual after my own heart.  After today’s festivities, the Sagardoetxea — cider museum — is launching a season of “Kirikoketa” workshops, so that you too can learn to make the onomatopoeic  sound of the mashers hitting the fruit (Jan-March, free to all who visit the museum).  And of course there will also be, “Probaketas” — that’s tastings to those of you who still haven’t picked up Euskara (Jan-March, local ciderhouse tour and new cider tasting, 10E).

They have lulled you into believing, perhaps, that jamón Ibérico de bellota is the only smuggle-worthy delicacy produced in Spain.  Well, I’ve got news for you:  the farmers of this peninsula’s northern provinces are over there in their little mountain villages quietly making more and more fabulous cheeses.   A few can be found at serious cheese counters in the U.S. (Artisanal, for instance in New York City offers great Idiazabal, a lightly smoky raw sheeps’ milk cheese from the Basque country).  More can be tasted in top Catalan restaurants, where the cheese course is undergoing a revival and chefs and sommeliers are taking up affinage (don’t let the cheese cart roll past you at Les Cols in Olot; the one at Mas Pau in Avinyonet de Puigventós is prize-winning).  But if you’re at all serious about getting a nose-full of the good stuff, the Fira de Formatges Artesans del Pirineu is the place to be.

The festival brings some 40 producers who present over 100 cheeses from across the Pyrenees — Catalonia, the Basque Country, Navarra, Aragon, France — to the mountain town of La Seu d’Urgell during its Sant Ermengol celebration (always the next-to-last weekend in October, this year October 18-19th, next year October 17-18th, 2009).

One of Catalonia’s most accomplished advocates of real food, Pep Palau, and his “Oenogastronomic Productions” outfit has turned the festival into a class act that excites ambitious cheese producers and eaters, with prizes in various categories, workshops, and a grand guided tasting.  (Here is their report on this year’s goings on and winners.)

When I met with him before this year’s fest, Pep said that one cheese to watch would be Serrat Gros, an extraordinary aged raw goats’ milk cheese produced in the Alt Urgell.  He was right:  this one took a first prize.  The cheesemaker in this case is Eulàlia Torras, an adventuresome, well, goatherd who has just written a book about recovering this traditional product of the Pyrennees (Serrat Gros: Ed. Garsineu, Tremp).  She uses only milk from her own herd, which she carefully pastures in the style of Euell Gibbons, and she produces from spring through December or so.  One of Ms. Torras’s aims is to educate consumers about the seasonality of cheese — herds can’t give milk all year, they need time off for reproducing and feeding their young.

Another amazing traditional mountain cheese more people ought to know about, says Palau, is Tupí.  This is a creamy, tangy, soft cheese, named for the earthenware dish in which it is fermented and presented.  It is the invention of frugal shepherds who grated up finished cheeses that had cracks or other superficial imperfections, added more milk, a shot of aguardiente (either eau de vie or anís), and thistle bloom as a coagulant, then let the stuff ferment for a few months. Tupí is a testiment to the fortitude of mountain shepherds, it being one of those leap-of-faith foods that goes through an unbearably stinky phase before it mellows into deliciousness. Serious cheese seekers might want to note that Eulalia Torras’s Tupí took second prize in that category; Baztarrika, a Basque version won first.

Those who can’t wait until next year’s Fira de Formatge in La Seu to try these wonderful mountain cheeses can wander any time into the town’s best cheese shop Formatgeria Casa Eugene, C/Major 58, La Seu d’Urgell, Tel: 973-350-401.  Also, come May 1 & 2, Pep Palau’s team is putting on another cheese event, “Lactium,” in the wonderful market town of Vic.  And in September, little Lladó has its own cheese fair.

To stay tuned about next year’s fest and other important food and wine events in Catalonia and beyond, get yourself on Pep Palau’s list by e-mailing newsletter@forumgastronomic.com.

Pictured are an array of cow and sheeps’ milk cheeses presented at the fair by Mas d’Eroles, with thanks to photographer Xavier Subias.

If you thought the pimientos you ordered in New York or Madrid this winter were good, belly up for another round pronto. What you get, especially if you happen to be in Galicia, in the northwest corner of Spain, will put those wimpy winter peppers to shame. Midsummer is the season for the intensely flavorful, rarely spicy Pimiento de Padrón.

The Galicians are busily pampering and hoarding their best produce right about now for the annual Festa do Pemento de Herbón, held the first Saturday in August in the town of Padrón (where these peppers have denominación de origen status).

Blistered in a hot pan of olive oil and sprinkled with crunchy sea salt, these peppers can inspire serious longing among those of us living at a ridiculous distance from Galicia. Romantics may turn to Calvin Trillin for comfort. His account of the quest for padrones, originally published in Gourmet, November, 1999, can be found in Feeding a Yen. But after one of these peppers left Maricel Presilla “seduced for life,” (Miami Herald, August 10, 2006), she got down to business and found a U.S. source: Happy Quail Farms in East Palo Alto, California.

June through October, Happy Quail Farms will ship retail: a minimum order of two pounds, enough for a party of 10 people, costs about $50 (including shipping to the East Coast). Grower David Winsberg, says, “that’s about the same as you would pay without hesitation for a good bottle of wine. Not bad for the truffle of the pepper world.”

(Thanks to Happy Quail Farms for their photo of peppers in a hot skillet. Their website has instructions on preparing the peppers, too.)