GREEN BEANS
Altamiras opened his long chapter dedicated to locally grown kitchen-garden vegetables with half a dozen yerbas or greens ranging from chard to peas boiled in their pods. Such greenery was still despised at wealthy Spanish tables in the 18th century and would be for a long time to come although it had been appreciated since Renaissance times in Italy, so the recipes are unusual for their time. Almost vegan, except in a few details, they are far from frugal thanks to Altamiras’s orginal and varied used of aromatised Empeltre olive oil, famous for its mildness. All the recipes use aromatized oils, but each one is distinct in method and flavourings. For his judías verdes, grown in the kitchen-gardens of the nearby Río Grio, a valley impressive for its unspoiled beauty and village architecture, Altamiras made a rehogado with sweated onion, cooking everything gently so the beans would suck up his onion oil’s flavour. What I’ve noticed when preparing this dish, as well as his asparagus in spiced oil and spinach in raisin oil, is that all gain in flavour at room temperature and often I wonder if Altamiras intended many of his dishes to be eaten this way.