Homenaje a un Filosofo

For two days Fausto (yes, that was his name!) filled me with so much information about the food of Sierra de Francia that I thought my head would explode. What really impressed me was his love of the countryside and his knowledge of edible wild plants. In the country, foraging for nuts, berries and leaves is still an important part of the food culture. Fausto showed me sloe berries and wild fennel and one day took me to a dark forest of fruit-bearing trees — an ancient madroño (arbutus) forest. The fruit looked like thick-skinned strawberries. ‘This is all part of your heritage,’ he said to me. ‘These are the plants that the people survived on in hard times. These are the foods that kept people alive during the Civil War.’