Spanish cheese

Hello again欢迎来到Happy Hour英文小酒馆。关注公众号璐璐的英文小酒馆，加入我们的酒馆社群，邂逅更精彩更广阔的世界。

Hi everyone and welcome back to our special segment, Global Village,小酒馆,大世界。

Today we have two new guests in our studio, Sara from Spain and Liliana from Portugal.

Sara has been working at La Antigua currently as marketing director mostly dealing with sheep milk and sheep cheese; and Liliana has been working for 12 years in international market and has been collaborating with La Antigua for 3 years as an international business developer.

Welcome to the studio Sara, welcome to the studio Liliana.

Thank you so much.

Would you mind saying hi to our audience in Spanish and in Portuguese?

Of course, Hola todos y bienvenidos al show.

Hola Olá a todos, bem-vindos a este show

Thank you.

Now we've already introduced your country, but could you tell us where you are from, like which city? First, let's start with Sara. How would you describe the city that you live in right now, the general vibe or the general feel of the place.

Sara:

I'm based in Salamanca. It’s a small city in the northwest of Spain, the mainly activity are tourist primary sector, and we have a lot of students because we have one of the most ancient university, university of Salamanca, it has 800 years. So in my city Salamanca, we have lots of university life. It's a very happy vibe.

Sounds like there's a lot of young people then.

Yeah, that's it.

I see. And Liliana, you are from Lisbon?

I'm not from here, but I currently in Lisbon. Although it's not my hometown, my hometown is a small town in the North of Portugal. I've been living here for 5 years, and Lisbon is a historical city full of stories to tell, where the sun shines 290 days a year and the temperature rarely drops to 15°, so it's warm, most of the time is warm.

I've been to Lisbon before, I've been to Spain before as well. I think both places are just... you know you've got really really good climate, blessed climate, and also like you both said the historical, the architecture, general vibe of it, it’s just very relaxing and very nice.

One thing that I have notice that I really enjoyed about my trip to Portugal and Spain is the food and drink. So I'm gonna ask you is food and drink a big part of Spanish and Portuguese culture? Let's start with Sara again.

Yes, for sure, it is really important. One of the most important thing is that we have the Mediterranean diet. I don't know if you know that in China?

Mediterranean diet yeah, yeah. It’s quite popular.

Yeah, it's popular and really healthy. It's very important the local products and natural products attached olive oil and tomatoes, all fresh vegetables, fish, meat and also cheese of course, and all the dishes and all our cuisine are based in all those products, and also about the culture we love to meet with our friends and family around a table or go to a pub and drink something. So it is really really important for our culture.

If I remember my days that I spent in Spain, most of the best memories are about food and drinks.

Yes for sure.

Yeah. And Liliana what about in Portugal, is food and drink a big part of Portuguese culture?

Yes, yes, a lot. I believe in all the country plus the North or in the center of Portugal.

However, Portuguese food doesn't have the same high profile as other European cuisines because the menus are usually relying on a traditional repertoire of grilled fish and meat, healthy stews and casseroles and of course the ubiquitous salted cod Bacalhau.

Ah, yes, the bacalhau

Did you taste it?

Yeah, I love it.

We have like over 1,000 ways to cook our beloved bacalhau.

Yeah. Actually, one of the things that I found is now I'm in China. If I want to cook that Portuguese food again, it's very difficult for me to find the salted cod fish. It's quite difficult to source them here.

Exactly! The salted cod, it's an icon here in Portugal. we have the Mediterranean food base like Spain with the same oil, garlic, onions, you know when every time we cook. But then with the salted cod and others, we have the crispy suckling pig from the local grill house. We have several plates. And then we have some cities with the Spanish cuisine. We do like the sausages which in Spain is the embutidos and the ham, she's very very Spanish but we do like here in Portugal and we have the Portuguese wine and not only the famous Vinho do Porto, which has a world-wide reputation.. We have Vinho Verde, green wine and Alentejo, red.

Alentejo wine is beautiful. Yeah, I get a bottle from time to time.

Did you get Alentejo and Douro

Yes.

You tasted it. It fits very good with cheese because it's strong wines. And so every time you drink this red wine, you need to eat it with cheese. It's a perfect match.

We are gonna get to cheese in a bit, I know that's what you two are specializing in. But first of all, let's get back to Sara. I'm going to ask, this is not just the type of food that you eat in Spain, but it's also a special way that people eat in Spain. So the idea of tapas, in China for example, whenever you go to a Spanish restaurant, they always have like a tapas menu. What is tapas? Could you share with our audience?

Tapas is the best invent all over the world. They are a small dishes of any kind of food. When you go to a pub or a bar, you can drink a cup of wine or a coke or water, anything you want. And you can also eat a tapa. It could be, for example, cheese, ham, a tortilla, there is a typical dish here in Spain, patatas bravas that are potatoes with a spicy sauce. And it's very common or you can eat embutidos that is meat. When you go To a pub, you can eat those small dishes. That's why we like too much to be at the pub with our friends and to eat outside home.

Yeah. So what does tapa actually mean in Spanish, how does it translate directly.

Directly is something what you cover with, anything like a jar.

That's a tapa.

Ok, like a lid or something.

Yeah, something like that.

All right. See you said in Spain it's also very very common for people to go with friends to go to a pub, and they drink, and then, they have tapas, right? But then afterwards, do they actually go for a full diner? Or is that it, tapas is dinner.

It's different. You can have dinner eating tapas. But it's not the same. You can go to a restaurant and instead of eat just one dish, you can eat, for example, three or four tapas because they are smaller, the differences is the size.

The size.

Yes. That’s it.

okay.

Now let's get into the field that you both have a lot of expertise in, so cheese, you both worked with cheese. The thing is for people who don't really know that much about cheese. For example, most Chinese when we think of cheese, first of all, people think French cheese. They link cheese with France, is cheesemaking very common in Spain, for example, and also in Portugal.

It is very common in Spain. In Spain, we have 26 denomination of origin, cheeses, more than 150 different kind of cheeses in Spain. You have cheeses of cow and sheep, goat, you can find cheeses all over Spain. It's true that there are regions, for example, Asturias that is in the North of Spain, that only there you can find 42 different kinds of cheeses.

France is typically the country of cheeses, but also in Spain and in Portugal also, we have lots of differences and we have one of the most international cheese that is Manchego in Spain.

Manchego, I absolutely love Manchego. Do you have more of the hard cheese or soft cheese?

We have all kinds of cheeses, but in our region here in Salamanca and Zamora, it's most common hard cheese.

Hard cheeses.

Hard cheese, because we use sheep milk. Zamora is the region of Europe where there are most sheeps.

Never knew that.

Yeah, we are the capital of sheep cheese.

Since you are the capital of sheep cheese, then could you tell us a little bit, because a lot of our audience they really don't know much about cheese. So what is the difference in, for example, in taste, in texture, if you compare sheep cheese to cheese are made from cow milk, or like goat cheese, what's the difference? What is that unique feature.

There can be lots of difference. First is flavor. Sheep milk has more fat than cows and goat milk. So the taste is completely different. Then there is also difference in the time, you have cheeses matured, for example, our cheese is sheep cheese, 1 year matured. Its flavor is much stronger, much harder, for example, cow’s milk cheese with 1 week or 1 month. That's the difference.

I see.

Now let's get to Liliana. So Liliana, do you guys make lots of cheese in Portugal as well or if so, are they different from the Spanish cheese?

Yes, we have several kinds of cheeses here too in Portugal, as well as sheep milk, cow milk, goat using two milks in one cheese. We have our star here, cheeses in Portugal is the Quejio de Serra. It's the most known, it's a creamy cheese, it's not hard and it's not salt in flavor. That's our specialty. Then we have other product very similar to the sheep milk cheese that Sara mentioned, the hard one. We have not the same, like 100%, but in the same style, we are huge consumers of cheese. It depends of the region. However, we like to eat in the end of the meal for example as desert.

As a dessert, hence the creaminess.

Even the hard cheeses, we eat as dessert with bread and jelly.