Spanish pig festival coming to London

What Spanish celebration calls for seven or eight chefs, more than 50kg of charcoal and around 25kg of fresh pork, washed down with aged Rioja? It has to be Fiesta La Matanza. Sarah Neish reports.

Iberian ham serrano ham cutting slice male hands and knife

In November, Parillan Borough Yards, the sister restaurant of Barrafina, will introduce Londoners to Fiesta La Matanza, a rural Spanish tradition celebrating the pig and all its many parts, through a community feast held in Borough Market.

Speaking to the drinks business, Chef Francisco José Torrico explains why the pig holds such cultural significance.

“Spanish rural communities have for a long time been poor and underdeveloped. You can eat 95% of a pig, including offal, blood and intestines, and one large pig used to feed a family for a whole year,” he says.

He recalls witnessing as a child the preparation of the meat. “The adults would chop 100kilos of onions for the morcilla de Cebolla, and work would begin in the early morning and last until midnight. There were enjoyable pauses in the prep to take a bit of chorizo meat and test the seasoning. My favourite part was eating pieces of freshly cured loin on the third day, along with a giant paella or migas for the whole family. There would be music and drinks and celebration when all the work was finished. I have so many fond family memories.”

According to Torrico, as rural Spanish families “lose interest in the toil of animal husbandry”, Fiesta La Matanza is starting to die out, so he wanted to commemorate the custom for both Spanish ex-pats “looking for a taste of home” and Londoners wanting to experience “something different, authentic and interesting.”

“We enjoy sharing Spanish culture and giving diners a deeper insight into the customs and regional specialties of the country,” Torrico tells db.

Curated wine programme

Next month is the perfect time in which to hold the event as according to the chef, “November has always been a defining month across the Spanish countryside”.

“By November, the grape harvest has finished and the olive harvest is starting,” says Torrico. “It’s also the beginning of chestnut season and 1st of November is All Saints Day – “Dia De Todos Los Santos” – for Christians. Cones of candied chestnuts are one of the traditional sweets enjoyed on that day all around Spain.”

Wine, too, plays a big part in the celebration and for the London event a carefully curated Spanish wine programme has been created by Rafa Martin, “our amazing wine buyer for Barrafina, Parrillan and Bar Daskal”. Starters at the feast (cold cuts and salchichón), will be paired with “a young red wine from Bierzo”, while a white Rioja, aged for 40 months in oak, has been chosen for the mains (cooked using premium Iberico pork imported from Spain), and a Crianza from Ribera del Duero will be poured with dessert at the nearly sold-out event.

While wines from a few extremely well-known producers feature on the Parillan Borough Yards wine list, such as Muga Reserva Selección Especial and Vega Sicilia’s Unico, the lion’s share of the list is given over to wines less commonly found in the UK, offering a chance to explore and discover new wineries.

Regions including Rueda, Navarra, Rias Baixas, Valencia, Priorrat and Valdeorras, and even the Canary Islands, are represented among the restaurant’s whites. Meanwhile, reds come from lesser-known spots such as Utiel Requena, Alicante and Bierzo, as well as the big-hitters like Rioja and Ribera del Duero.

San Benito

Torrico, who grew up in Madrid, spent much of his childhood in the small town of San Benito in Ciudad Real, where his grandparents lived.

“The town only has a population of 200, so as you can imagine, everyone knows each other. I spent lots of time in my grandparents’ garden, watering their tomato plants and generally helping out.”

He admits that the first time he saw the ritual pig slaughter as a young boy, was “quite traumatic”, even though “it is done very respectfully, quickly, and with minimal stress to the pig.” As he grew up, he “gained more of an understanding of the tradition and its significance to the families who would be fed for a whole year by the products of one pig.”

Will the restaurant be making any adaptations to the traditional feast to suit a London audience? “No, because we want to honour the tradition and the quality of Iberian pork that we’re using,” reveals Torrico. “If anything, the dishes will be simpler than those we might have had in San Benito, as we don’t want to obscure any of the subtleties of flavour by adding sauces. All courses of the menu will showcase different cuts and products from Iberian pigs.

“I haven’t seen cured morcilla in the UK, so that’s exciting.”

Open fire cooking

Parillan Borough Yards is all about spotlighting key seasonal ingredients from the Spanish culinary calendar, cooked over open fire, so charcoal will play an important role in the Fiesta. Morrico reckons that he and his seven co-chefs will get through about 50kg of charcoal on the night (11 November), and around 25kg of fresh pork.

“Iberian pigs can weigh up to 200kg, and so considering that a whole pig could feed a family for a year, we’ll only be using a fraction,” he says.

Guests will be seated at shared tables to replicate the community feast feeling of the traditional Fiesta La Matanza in Spanish towns and villages, and the menu is priced at £70 per person.

“We are using premium Iberico pork that is imported from Spain, and cooked by extremely accomplished chefs – so already our event is a different beast,” says Torrico. “We’re also serving the feast in our beautiful restaurant, with all the well-reported costs that that entails, from staff, to rent, utilities and tax. All of that being said, we’ve kept the ticket price as affordable as possible for guests, whilst refusing to compromise on quality.”