Montserrat's wild boar casserole: "In love, we used to go too fast. Now, on the other hand, perhaps they go too slowly"

“Hello, my name is Montserrat, I'm from Plans de Cornet I'm eighty-three years old, and today I'm going to make you a wild boar stew”, she tells us, as she opens the farmhouse door for us. If we look in the Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear we find that singlar, also written singlà, appears “as a synonym for senglar" in Igualada, Calders, Centelles, Manresa, etc. Our wise woman is from Bages. She lives in a neat farmhouse, where geese, dogs, rabbits, and chickens also live, in addition, of course, to part of her family. Today she is accompanied by one of her granddaughters, from Manresa, who, smiling, tells us: “I'm her assistant, but she goes on her own!” It's true. Our wise woman is agile, she doesn't stop moving, lifting pots. She immediately cuts fuet (homemade) to offer it to us.

The ingredients

The main ingredient is wild boar thigh. His son hunted it, when it was in season, and, as the law dictates, he took it for analysis. “We don’t want the very big ones”, he says.

They put it in the freezer. And it’s worth mentioning that all the wise women in this series value the great inventions of humanity that have made their lives simpler. They all talk about the freezer or the “electric arm” or the microwave as tools that have made their lives simple and have contributed to what they all practice: the cuisine of making the most of everything.

Besides the boar, we need:

-Carrot, onion, leek. All from the garden.

-Last year's basil that she dried in a glass jar.

-Bay leaf.

-Almonds and hazelnuts, parsley and toasted bread for the picada.

-Oil, salt, and pepper.

-Tap water.

-A small glass of cognac.

-If necessary, to thicken, corn flour.

The wild boar recipe explained by Montserrat

“I put it the night before to macerate with water and vinegar. They taught it to me this way and I’ve always done it this way. The vinegar is from home, from the barrel, with mother cultures over a hundred years old. People are used to macerating it with wine. But the person who taught me told me it was done this way. And you have to think that the people who come here to eat wild boar say they haven’t found any as good. And it must be for that reason.”

“Now I drain it and wash it.”

“I turn on the heat and put a pot in it, with nothing. I put it in, but with nothing, because it will now release some water. And when it seems to me that it has released it all, we will drain it and put it back here, in the pot. You have to be there, now, so it doesn’t burn.”

“Now I add the glass of brandy. And once it evaporates, I can start adding the vegetables. And once the vegetables are softened, which we stir, we can add the water. And then, since the cooking is for many hours (until you see that the meat has become tender), you can go about your own business.”

Montserrat came to live here, with her husband’s family, when she got married, at twenty-one. And like so many women of wise cooking, the one who taught her the arts of cooking was her mother-in-law.

“We met for the Feast of Our Lady of August, at the town festival, and a year later we were getting married,” she explains. And she smiles: “Before, we went too fast. Now, on the other hand, perhaps they go too slowly. That about love has changed a lot. Sometimes they spend years living together and then suddenly they break up. If you are with someone you have to have patience. He has to have it for you and you for him.” She bursts out laughing, very frankly, and her eyes, a sky blue impossible to describe, light up when talking about her granddaughters:

“Of my granddaughter, the one I have here today, I’ve known four boyfriends!” she explains. And from behind, the granddaughter, who clearly loves her grandmother madly, protests scandalized (in vain). “The first one lasted four years. Then, the second one wasn’t right for her.” I laugh and say to her: “You didn’t like him.” And she replies categorically: “Not at all!” But it doesn’t end there. “The third one? Even less so. Because he was twenty-two or twenty-three years old and she was already twenty-eight. Where are you going? Good thing he himself realized it. And the current one is more normal. He is thirty-three years old, which he just turned, and for her... For her, I see this one as good.”

The frankness of this grandmother with her granddaughter's fiancés, offering opinions but not judging, and always adding humor, moves me. She says that when she came to live in this house, she had only met her in-laws two or three times. “And you had to do what they told you.” These lives, with little marital intimacy, with new customs, a lot of work in the fields and at home, always leave me thoughtful. “Once I went to visit my own home, with my parents and siblings, and when I returned, I did miss it,” she explains. And she also explains that her husband is no longer here. She exercises all day. She goes up and down stairs, goes to the municipal pool, and walks with her little dog. She makes lunch and the family's takeaway meals.

“At a given moment, when it has been cooking for a long time, we will take the vegetables with the juice and blend them. We will add the mixture: the toasted bread, the parsley from the garden, the hazelnuts and the almonds. All blended with an electric mixer. And again, into the pot. When it seems to you that it is already creamy, you can turn it off. It’s the whole morning cooking, but it’s worth it”.

I always like to ask the wise women if they have gone hungry. Or if their parents have gone hungry. In the countryside, the answer is usually no. Montserrat, without losing the smile of someone who has seen it all, sighs and says:

“People from the city used to come here asking for food after the war. And they tell me that no one ever left empty-handed”.

The wild boar is a predator that has run out of predators. Its only predator is us, humans. It damages the crops, looking for worms and water. We must vindicate the role of hunters, as regulators of the ecosystem, and we must vindicate the wild boar, as a regular dish in our cuisine.