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Do
Visit
the
Mill
By Jennifer
Brundal
Do visit the olive mill: it’s a most interesting experience.
Firstly, your sacks of olives are tipped into your own little numbered holding bay. From there they are sent down a shoot into the mill. The process begins with the huge stone press crushing the olives, which then proceed to a sort of “bain-marie” or large cauldron, which has heated water from a small furnace circulating around the olive pulp.
The pulp is then transferred to a screw press between mats made from esparto grass and the final pressing is completed. The oil trickles along a pipe into a huge urn, known as a tinaja, set in the floor of the mill. From here a measure called an arroba (12.5 litres) is used to pour your own pressing of olive oil into your plastic containers. 600 kilos of olives should produce about 7 arrobas. In Monda the price of the pressing is about 7000 ptas.
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During the harvest of olives, food should be provided for all the workers, normally a sopa del campo. This consists of a sofrito:- fry onion, red and green peppers, garlic, and tomato until soft, add stale bread cut into cubes and let it soak up all the juices before serving. - Or a
specialty of my Village (Istan) , sopa de maiz - this again starts with the fried onion, peppers, garlic, tomato, then corn bread is crumbled up and added to the mix; plus water and saffron, then boiled up - there are numerous variations - some add fish, prawns or fried sardines or garlic and green pepper crushed to vary this dish. These are dishes to be prepared on an open fire out in the country. My
favorite is always Paella - in the paella dish fry the meat such as chicken, rabbit or pork cubes. Fry calamares then drain all this and make the usual onion and pepper, tomato, garlic base - when soft, add the rice stock, bay leaves, colour (aeroplane), cloves, salt and pepper and return all the meat to this. Later on, in the cooking, prawns, clams, mussels and peas can be added. Everything tastes delicious when prepared in the campo!
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