By hand, as Eladio Escobar taught them and as they have been doing for more than 40 years. Specifically 43, the year in which Delicias de Eladio began filming in the family restaurant and which now, four decades later, has become the leading mortaruelo company in Cuenca.
Not only mortaruelo, of course, since the gastronomy of Castilla-La Mancha reclaims the time of the Escobars, who on the outskirts of Cuenca make other recipes by hand such as atascaburras or ajoarriero, ajopringue, gazpachos from Manchego and gachas from Manchego, flags of a rustic kitchen and local that, they confess, they like more every day.
However, it is the mortaruelo that captures all the attention in his recipes, kept secret not in the meat, but in its proportions and, as in all recipes, in the mixture of spices with which they give life to this spreadable that could be a game pâté or vice versa and that can be purchased on their Delicias de Eladio website.
The recipe, as explained escobarthe eldest of Eladio’s daughters and now in charge of the commercial management, has no science: “it is the same thing that our father has always thrown: lean meat, pork belly and liver, knuckle [jamón salado], rabbit, hen, partridge and hare. There’s no more”.
The Escobar’s best kept secret
Today Delicias Eladio produces close to 70,000 kilos of its products per yearalthough the adventure began with a self-taught father who, before being a cook —self-taught, by the way— was a pastor, who decided to open a restaurant in order to have the whole family together.
that’s how it came about Eladio House in 1979, although Eladio Escobar, the patriarch, had already been forging himself in different kitchens since the mid-60s. “At first we made a mortar for the restaurant, but people asked us to take it away, so we put it in ceramics, covered it with butter and the customers took it away,” says Crescen.
It would be in 1992 when they began to work with a health registry and in 2002 when they decide to close the restaurant because “he did not give us life”, as the eldest daughter of the Escobars explains. At present and from a discreet factory on the outskirts of Cuenca, annually they prepare about 30,000 kilos of mortaruelo where almost nothing has changed.
“There are no preservatives, colorings or additives. The only technologies that have entered here is to use an autoclave for pasteurization and sterilization. Nothing more”, he reaffirms. And in our faith, when we see how the authentic mortaruelo from Cuenca is made, that is how it is.
How the authentic mortaruelo is made
“The secret, if you can call it that, is that we cook all the meat in whole pieces [salvo la liebre] so that the parts with bone also leave their taste. Also, it’s easier to crumble it after it’s cooked,” he says.
Just three hours, at about 120 degreeswhich allow everything to be just right and generate a broth that could well bring the dead back to life and that has very little water, just enough so that the mortaruelo later has a creamy texture once it is added to the mixture of crumbled meats and bread.
“We always try to show the meat and have that point of wild pâté, game pâté, because we crumble everything by hand“, they indicate. In other words, the same meats that we would shred for pulled pork or for Mexican dishes such as carnitas or chicken tinga, but with ingredients that have been swarming around La Mancha since time immemorial.
Among the tricks, once they count the meats that they throw into the mortar, is also knowing the recipe by eye. “Sometimes we have to add more bread or some more broth because it can be very runny or thicker,” says Crescen while uncovering the final part of the process, when the spices have been added —paprika (not smoked), oregano, caraway, cloves, pepper— to a large frying pan where they roasted with lard.
Then it is added to a large kettle where the shredded meats that background of spices. Add the cooking broth —strained— and thicken to taste with breadcrumbs, letting it cook and stirring mechanically (the only mechanized process in the production phase) until all the ingredients are integrated.
A mortar for the 21st century
Things have changed at Delicias Eladio, but his mortaruelo continues to be his best ambassador. They confess that now finding hares is an impossible task. Or that they have a recipe for a special client who asks that the mortaruelo be made with Iberian pork. Even that they elaborate for some white mark of distributor.
They also know that there are many restaurants that serve their mortaruelo even if they don’t recognize it. “For us it is a source of pride, just like the people who tell us that our mortaruelo reminds them of the one their grandmother used to make,” they comment.
In addition, they open the ban on a gourmet mortaruelo that has gone beyond Cuenca. “It is not a product that only Cuenca consumes, although it is our main client, but we are also in gourmet points where people want to try other things,” acknowledges Crescen.
Meanwhile, the Escobars leave a few clues so that the mortaruelo continues to rise and we not only consume it with bread —which is wonderful like that, obviously— leaving clues as seductive as some Morteruelo croquettes or serve as a filling for empanadas and cannelloni.
The one who writes to you, since he sees that the resemblance, although thicker, with the world of pulled pork, cannot help imagining a world of snacks, sandwiches, tacos and everything refillable that exists on the face of the Earth and can be just as ‘conquered’ as Eladio’s Delicias style.
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