00 00 18 14
Christmas in Europe. Across the continent the ancient celebration of light illuminates dark winter nights; the time to embrace beliefs, traditions and food.

00 00 31 11
As globalism impoverishes farmers causing them to leave the land, many stubbornly maintain their beliefs and their ways of making music and food.

00 00 52 23
But for many farmers, global forces have pushed them off the land and away from their families and the things they love.

00 01 09 19
In this episode we go to Portugal’s western Atlantic coast, the Beira Litoral, where the customs of the mountains meet those of the sea.

00 01 22 04
Cold nights, frosty mornings; frozen dew melts in the rising sun.

00 01 28 22
The land is asleep.

00 01 41 01
But barns must be cleaned -mucked out- and the animals milked twice a day.

00 01 51 17
On industrial farms where animals are mostly confined and fed antibiotics to force weight-gain, the stench is overwhelming.

00 02 00 12
On this organic farm…
…the animals are free to roam and are naturally healthy. Here the barns smell of sweet hay.
The waste is hauled to the fields to fertilize the grasses which feed the animals in summer. What is taken from the land is returned; this sustains essential organisms in the soil for future generations.

00 02 30 24
In the cold weather, while life-giving sap rests, it’s time to prune the vines of the vino verde…the grapes of the fizzy Portuguese white wines.

00 02 43 17
A vineyard takes up to 15 years for full flavoured grapes to develop. It is an investment of land, patience and a dream or two.

00 03 01 00
These men employ their experience to nurture the vines….a tradition which reaches as far back as the Roman occupation of Portugal.

00 03 13 22
At A Pousadinha, a famous patisserie, recipes developed centuries ago by Carmelite nuns, are still made.
There is the famous Tentugal, a pastry made of flour and water, called ‘virgin’s pastry’.

00 03 29 02
After resting an hour stretching and thinning begins and then it rests again.

00 03 35 06
In the kitchen below a favourite Christmas cake is made of pastry, candied fruits and piles of icing sugar, a symbol of distant snow capped mountains.

00 03 47 05
Again Dona Marfa stretches the pastry.

00 03 55 24
Whilst another assistant prepares the egg and syrup filling, the owner, Dona Calcida said: as a child I went from house to house learning recipes from the women of my village’, and she added: ‘the making of the Tentuga is more art than ingredients’…
as Marfa proves in this final stretching.
00 04 12 22
While it is clear from her busy patisserie that people enjoy Dona Calcida’s confections, she said ‘as the European Union encouraged hygiene, ingredients have been industrialised and sanitized reducing their taste.’

00 04 25 14
After several hours the stretched and now dried pastry is cut. Marfa said: ‘Calcida taught me it’s ready when it wrinkles; I was 16 then.’

00 04 39 13
Dona Aurora assembles the packets of tissue-like pastry and thick custard.

00 04 52 19
They are baked until crisp on the outside and thickly soft on the inside.

00 05 08 14
Dona Maria(Graciete Luis) milks her animals every morning and evening. Christmas now, little milk but enough to make 10 cheeses a day.
Her life, as her grandmother’s and father’s, is lived for the animals and the making of cheese.

00 05 30 17
Recently the authorities said ‘you must sell your milk to the cooperative; you can no longer make cheese’. She discovered if she got a licence she could but the authorities said ‘impossible; complicated regulations, a special room…’ Dona Maria studied and passed. She still makes cheese.

00 05 55 24
Back in her village, in her special room, yesterday’s milk has been slowly warmed and thickened.

00 0610 22
She pushes the curds into moulds gently forming the shape.

00 06 18 17
Once the liquid or whey has been pressed out, the cheeses are left to dry and age from one day to three months.


00 06 32 06
People come from miles around because they say ‘unlike the co-op’s stuff, Dona Maria’s cheese is tasty’.

00 06 56 15
In a mountain village, another Dona Maria (de Lurdes Oliveira e Silva) and her husband Senhor Adriano (Jesus Pereira) have created a restaurant serving regional seasonal organic food.

00 07 07 03
Adriano said ‘We buy a live goat, kill and cook it; this is what we do.’

00 07 15 16
Portugal’s dark African history is tasted in the hot chillies which they grow and dry themselves.

00 07 24 01
With these, potatoes and onions, she prepares baby kid in the Serrana or mountain style.

00 07 37 17
It is cooked in a wood oven sealed with a flour and water paste to keep the heat in.

00 07 46 10
They make their own hams and sausages which spend 2 months in salt and then are smoked for 2 to 3 months producing rich, silky meat.

00 08 06 23
Adriano said: ‘Everything is either grown in our garden or bought in the mountains except for sugar which we get from the supermarket’.

The mountain stew tastes of rich earth inflamed by the red chilly.

00 08 20 12
It is served with rice or her dense wheat, corn and rye bread.

00 08 24 24
Of course homemade desserts: Sopa Seca made of stale bread, cinnamon, sugar and water; rich egg custard dishes and wine stewed pears.
00 08 38 12
Adriano said ‘we respect the sanity of food’.

00 08 44 02
Maria said ‘we say to visitors “you are family”; as in our home, we cook with love’.

00 08 58 16
Olive trees, like grape vines, are at the heart of southern European identity, culture and food.

00 09 07 06
The harvest is a strenuous affair.

00 09 12 02
Senhor Silveira’s wife and his brother join in; his daughter and her husband return from Switzerland for a work-holiday.

00 09 20 13
They tease the branches with their long bamboo sticks, knocking the olives onto the canvas below.

00 09 27 13
They climb into the trees to strip the more stubborn fruits.

00 09 33 02
The collecting is meticulous and tiring.

00 09 39 04
In Europe, corporate food buyers pressurize farmers to produce greater quantities for lower prices -forcing them to use soil destroying chemicals to increase yields.
Meanwhile many olives and grapes, as on Senhor Silveira’s farm, are left to rot because buyers won’t pay a fair price.

00 09 55 24
Young men, as Senhor Silveria’s son-in-law Nuno, are driven away. He works in Switzerland six-and-a-half days a week with no voting rights, he’s treated as an inferior, he has no dreams…

00 10 11 23
‘Day by day’, he said, ‘day by day’.

00 10 31 07
But the harvest continues as the leaves and twigs are separated from the olives.

00 10 38 14
Their crop provides them with delicious olive oil for the year and some left to sell.

00 10 45 01
They leave the olives to mature in a water filled cistern for 6 days; then they are milled.

00 10 52 08
This is what it’s about: the thick greeny gold pungently perfumed virgin oil, the fundamental ingredient of their cooking.

00 11 01 05
The olives are brought from the cisterns and loaded into the washer where they are cleaned and separated from remaining twigs and leaves.

00 11 21 09
Pedro, the son of the ever watchful master miller Senhor Oliveira, oversees the process.

00 11 34 12
In a preliminary splitting of the olives under pressure, an acrid watery substance is extracted and drained away.

00 11 44 04
Then the slow milling presses the olives without cracking the stones which would create a bitter taste.

00 11 52 18
As oil fills the jugs, one farmer said: ‘in this area there are too few people for our harvest. We manage to gather only about 25%…wages are too low; the young are forced to leave…the trees are full but our houses are empty.’
00 12 14 11
The fleshy pulp is collected and trucked away for animal feed; nothing but their un-picked olives is wasted.

00 12 33 06
Higher in the hills, is the Busaco forest, planted by monks in the 16th century with over 700 varieties of trees from many areas of Portugal’s extraordinary sea faring explorations.

00 12 56 20
At its centre, is the wedding cake like Hotel Palace built by command of King Charles of Portugal as a hunting lodge. Finished in 1906, it immediately became a hotel.
Although the forest is a state protected park the hotel is privately managed as a family business.

00 13 29 13
Nearby, a local herb called Zirpãu, used in game dishes, is picked by Carlos, the hotel’s second chef.

00 13 39 13
The Head Chef, Senhor Heleno, chops and sautés garlic in olive oil for a classic dish of salted cod -the famous Baccalau of Portugal.

00 13 51 14
He makes migas- a dried bread mixture to which he adds a bitter local green vegetable called Grelos.

00 14 00 24
Chef Fernando enrichens this with ‘monks beans’.

00 14 11 24
While a sweet pepper sauce simmers he deep fries lightly floured Baccalau.

00 14 18 14
From the late middle ages Baccalau provided Europeans with affordable protein, increasing people’s physical and mental abilities. Still today, in many parts of the continent, it is rich with memories of the sea and ancient traditions.

00 14 32 23
Chef Fernando confirmed: ‘although this is food from the sea, for centuries it has been treasured by people of the mountains.’

00 14 55 11
At the Monastery Singeverga, maintained by a Benedictine Order, a secret recipe for a liquor based on aromatic herbs and spices is prepared by Padre Albino.

00 15 06 05
After the fire is stoked for the distillation process, he mixes various liquids composed of dark caramel, essence of bitter almonds, medicinal glycerine, essence of orange blossom, cinnamon sticks, cloves, nutmeg, angelica root, saffron, coriander seeds and myrrh.

00 15 39 07
He lifts the vat onto the fire using a ‘modern’ device.

00 15 43 20
Padre Albino reduces the pressure and eventually the liquor begins to trickle out .

00 15 54 20
The strong sweet distillation is left in kegs for months and then bottled for distribution.

00 16 06 24
Padre Albino worries that there is no one to carry on the tradition.

00 16 14 13
Rui Alves (Alvesh), the grandson of Juliana Mesquita(mesh), who looks after the monks, collects corn in the monastery’s storerooms.

00 16 35 04
Geraldo Camões (camoish), now retired, comes to the monastery once a week to bake 40 loaves.

00 16 43 11
Rye and maize are ground and a dough is prepared.
00 16 48 22
Geraldo said the wood fire creates a thick crusty surface with a flavour impossible to achieve with modern processed flour and equipment.

00 16 58 10
After 50 years experience he is modestly emphatic.

00 17 07 221
While the loaves are baked and sausages are smoked, Juliana pounds garlic for another batch of sausage meat.

00 17 20 07
Geraldo picks a sufficiently aged sausage in expectation of the bread being ready.

00 17 38 06
Finally the densely flavoured loaves are pulled from the oven.

00 17 45 07
Geraldo said: “around here people say ‘you have to eat yesterday’s bread, today’s meat and last summer’s wine to stay healthy’.”

00 17 58 07
Rui needs little encouragement to eat the warm bread in the cold winter air.

00 18 09 15
Portugal is a seafaring nation which celebrates the delicacies of the ocean.

00 18 19 23
On the huge lagoon surrounding the town of Aveiro, fishermen collect mussels.

00 18 28 01
Don Manuel and his wife Maria search for large enough ones to be accepted by the wholesaler who sets the price he wishes.



00 18 44 13
These fishermen clean their catch with sea water and pick them over to be certain they will meet the same wholesaler’s requirements.

00 19 14 15
Today the sea is dangerous.

00 19 21 07
Fishermen gather at Joao da Calada’s bar to pass the time.

00 19 27 18
Some of these men have gone for six months on fishing boats to the north Atlantic or down along Africa. Men married for twenty years may have seen their wives for only 40 weeks in that time.
They have stories of coasts and ports one reads of in great adventure novels.

00 19 48 14
The next morning Jose (Ze) Teques dares the still swollen sea to check his eel pots.

00 19 55 09
‘The catch’, he said, ‘depends on the tides.

00 20 02 15
He pulls up the wooden stave which holds his line in place and tugs in the pots which, one by one, rise to the surface revealing his luck.

00 20 25 21
If I get a few kilos it’ll pay my petrol, repairs, insurance and leave enough to live on…eels get a high price’.

00 20 43 01
There are a few eels, not a good day but they’ll sell well in Aveiro’s fish market where Anibal Santus( Santos) is on the lookout for eels and other delicacies for his fish restaurant.

00 20 59 16
He makes his purchase from a trusted fishmonger and returns it to his chef Dona Helena and her assistant, Dulce Aguia.
00 21 08 12
They work calmly to prepare the smaller still living eels for the seasonal Christmas celebrations at Salpoente, his restaurant.

00 21 19 09
Within his excellent regional fish restaurant, Anibal has made a center for musical events and exhibitions.
He believes the worlds of culture and food create civilization.

00 2132 13
Meanwhile the cooks continue prepare an eel stew perfumed with turmeric.

00 21 45 24
In the restaurant Kabuba, visiting folk musicians from Lisbon, warm up the appreciative crowd with contemporized folk tunes.

00 22 03 02
At the last moment the smaller salted eels are deep fried…one of the great culinary skills of the coast.

00 22 51 01
The next morning at Joao’s bar, with the sea still high, one fisherman offers a part of his catch, another brings wood, another wine and someone cooks.

00 23 15 22
What’s in the stew? ‘Only water, squids and rice; oh and salt and peri peri’…the flaming African chilli sauce these men developed a taste for.

00 23 31 24
The fishermen practice a collectivized individualism: they look after and rely upon the others for their safety; many have know each other since childhood.

00 23 46 13
They love their freedom even with the financial hardships… they love their squid and chorizo stew and the young red wine.


00 24 08 19
Jose Correa, a restaurateur, said: ‘I’ve listened to the old people, I tell their stories.’ He also sings fado…that plangent exposition of Portuguese melancholy…from what? A memory of past glory, an infusion of sailor’s tales of dread and woe? No one knows but their music and dignified coolness speaks of it.

00 24 40 08
Then Jose said ‘I accuse the fast-food corporations and the EU for trying to kill off small producers in favour of the big boys and with it they kill our villages, food and culture’ so I sing and write poetry.

WRITTEN QUOTE:
The ideal relationship between people is “brotherhood” and “sisterhood”.
Now we do not flinch to hear men and women referred to as units.
Wendell Berry
The Gift of the Good Land

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