La pomme espagnole

This has been a very busy weekend! My parents landed in Madrid on Thursday morning, and its been non-stop since then. We’ve been walking, eating, sightseeing, eating, and more eating. My parents are the reason behind my love of food, letting me run around their restaurant “helping” serve the food when I was just a little girl. So naturally, we will be (and already have been) enjoying a lot of Spanish food during this trip.

We’ve had lots of great food since Thursday, but there is one thing in particular I want to share with you: Cochinillo. Cochinillo translates to baby pig, or little pig. It’s the local delicacy of Segovia, a small town near Madrid which we just happened to be visiting on Saturday (this wasn’t a coincidence). Segovia is also known for its beautiful roman aqueduct and the castle Walt Disney used in his drawings for Sleeping Beauty.

But i’m not here to talk about the tourist attractions. The main reason anyone goes to Segovia, is to eat roasted suckling pig. I know, baby pigs are so cute how can you eat them!? Well, they are also delicious, and tender, and crispy. So I don’t feel too bad. We made a reservation at Duque, the oldest cochinillo rotisserie in Segovia. This place has been here since 1895, and they really know how to roast a pig.

This restaurant has been here since 1895!

To start off our lunch, we had an appetizer of morcilla (blood sausage with rice) along with a marinated cod and salmon salad. Then came the pig. Since we were six, we got an entire pig to ourselves. The cochinillo should be no more than 3 weeks old, and between 4.5 to 6.5 kg; the perfect size for a table of 6! Our waiter brought it to our table and we watched as he expertly cut it into pieces to put on our plates.

The master serving us our pig... YUM

It’s a rather simple recipe in theory, but A’s mother told me it’s virtually impossible to do at home. To roast the cochinillo, you put it in a clay dish with water, salt and lard, and let it roast in a wood stove for about 3 hours. Seems easy, but apparently cooking the meat to perfect juicy tenderness while getting the skin to be extra crispy is quite a challenge. Duque’s cochinillo was just perfect. The meat was incredibly tender and juicy, with so much flavour! And the crispy skin on top was irresistible. I might have looked strange eating a giant piece of roasted skin with my hands, but I didn’t care, it was just too good. Think of the turkey skin you eat at thanksgiving, multiply that taste by 1000, and you might have an idea of what it’s like. YUM! The portions may have been big, but no one had trouble finishing off their plates.

My mother eating her cochinillo with style!

For dessert (somehow we still had room in our tummies) I chose Ponche Segoviano. This is a delicious but heavy cake made with flour, sugar, milk, cinnamon and a ridiculous amount egg yolks, wrapped up in a coat of marzipan. As someone who doesn’t like marzipan, I must admit it was delicious with the cake, and a wonderful ending to an incredible meal.

If you are in Madrid, I would highly recommend going to Segovia and having some cochinillo. Its a great experience, and Segovia is the perfect town in which to take a long post-lunch walk. Beautiful views, amazing history, and exquisite food; it doesn’t get better than that!