“You have to pick up the chuletilla from the two bony ends,” says my guide, Sara Garcia, plucking the meat from a heap of burning vine wood as easily as if she were picking grapes. Before making a second attempt at the cutlet, I look around at the labyrinth of candle-lit stone passageways and brick arches spreading out in every direction around us.
At street level, Aranda de Duero — the capital of the Ribera del Duero wine region, which spans Castile and León’s Burgos, Segovia, Soria and Valladolid provinces — looks much like any other provincial town in northern Spain. Queues form at clay-roofed butchers’ shops selling morcilla (blood sausage) and chorizo; unassuming bakeries display their flattened olive oil bread in the windows like trophies; and chalkboards announce a ‘menú del día’ of garlic soup and salt cod. On the pastel-hued Plaza Mayor, where the air smells of fire-roasted lamb and brewing coffee, grey-haired men sip cortados and families sit around wooden barrels laden with oily sheep’s cheese and cherry red tempranillo.
This story is from the Food #12 Summer 2021 edition of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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This story is from the Food #12 Summer 2021 edition of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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