His Excellency, the Fabada

The N-632 certainly feels like a small local throughway.  We will mostly be following the route of the4 A-8, albeit a bit to the side and above it.  First, however, it is time to eat.


The Restaurante La Reguerina opens from 12 till 5.  Google is not sure of this so if one of you wants to go and look, they would be grateful  it gets 4.6 stars and fabada is the top listed dish.  Let’s talk about fabada.  It is the iconic Asturian dish. It requires fabes beans.  I grow them and admit it may be easier if we were 800 miles further south.  





The fabada is thought to have originated in the sixteenth century but doesn;t get recorded till the nineteenth.  It is, essentially, a classic peasant dish,  Takes the beans.  Let us pause for a moment to contemplate the pure joy that is a big fat fabes bean allowed to soak up the juices of a stew.  These are cooked with blood pudding, chorizo and pork fat.  The animal products power drive the flavour and give the joy to the cheap beans.  I have cooked a fabada in Asturias, which is only right and proper.  Like all stews, it is better on the second day of flavour seeping.  After eating one you really need a mountain to walk over to burn it off.




Fabada has become a commercial thing. It is possible to buy the kit, either the three pieces of meat alone or with the beans, in supermarkets across Asturias and, in fact as far a field as the Canary Islands.  You can buy it in tins.  Don’t.





While the chorizo is easy to get, the slab of pork fat is usually replaced by belly pork in my Fabada Lincolnshire.  The black pudding can be acquired as per the photo however if you use the larger sort of slicing pudding it is a discovery that it does cook down in a stew of any sort and really enhances the thing.





Since 1980  The Jornadas de su Excelencia La Fabada have been held in La Felguera.  They enjoy all things fabada for three days,  The wiki page goes as far as to recommend bicarb of soda to counter the heaviness of eating the dish.  https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabada

Back to the restaurant.  Review time. Three weeks ago Maria Teresa - no, not that one - gave five stars ad said ‘Good food and attentive, although they were a little slow in serving, the price was a little high’  Isabel said about the same time ‘Very good value for money. The fabada is exquisite, the desserts are homemade... An endearing place with traditional food of very good quality. Whenever we pass by the Villa it is a safe passage for its food and good welcome.’





The only other diversion on the road is near the end  Restaurante Alenda gets 4.9 stars from 150+ reviews and has a website.  https://alendarestaurante.com/  It has one, one star review.  OP said ‘The welcome was so unpleasant and unfriendly that we preferred not to stay for lunch.






The fact of not having seen the little sign to "wait outside" and having dared to enter the dining room earned us the greatest of reproaches and very ugly manners. A pretty incredible and out of place deal.’





The most recent one was a week ago. Rafael wrote ‘A surprising discovery and a sign that work rewards effort. Good food and good treatment’




With that, we will cross the A-8 again and head north.


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