As far as I was concerned, though, the real main event in Segovia is the roast suckling pig, called cochinillo. Because of its proximity you can easily do Segovia as a day trip from Madrid, but I planned to actually stay there to make sure I’d have plenty of time to have roast piggy.
While expensive, it was pretty damn tasty. They roast the things so that the skin get’s incredibly crisp and brittle, almost getting a consistency akin to a hard-shelled candy. The meat also becomes incredibly tender, reaching the kind of pull-apart tenderness you get with a really good roast chicken that allows you to just pull the chicken apart at the joints. Because of these two factors, the true mark of well-executed cochinillo is that you can cut the pig into serving portions using only the side of a plate. Apparently, if you are an asador and you need a knife to cut your roast suckling pig, then you suck balls. I didn’t think I was going to be able to see this as I was dining by myself and thus couldn’t spend the $150 on a whole pig, but fortunately a table next to me was a group of 4 and pulled the trigger. The waiter comes up with the cochinillo and a regular porcelain dinner plate, finds the natural separation point where the joint is between the hind leg and the body (I’m a little fuzzy on exactly where as I’ve never butchered a whole pig myself), and just forcefully shoves the plate in. The skin makes and incredibly satisfying “CRRAAACK” sound when the plate shatters it, and the flesh just pulls apart when the plate is forced through. They then serve the cochinillo simply with its jus. In addition to the piggy, the other big local delicacy here are the massive white beans from the region which are about the size of silver dollars. Aside from being about the size of my head, they were also pretty tasty.For such a small city, Segovia was also a pretty happening place. Apparently there’s a university in town, and everybody was out hitting the tapas bars on Thursday night, and I took the opportunity to get completely bombed. This wasn’t really deliberate. I had eaten dinner at a restaurant that served a prix-fixe menu which included drinks. Normally you have to have at least two people to get it, but I guess the let me get it by myself because I’m such a nice guy. (Or more likely because a pair of women sitting next to me also got it and I could piggyback off them.) I guess they couldn’t divide the wine, so with the meal I ended up getting an entire bottle of Ribera del Duero, and entire 375-ml carafe of dessert wine, as well as a large double-shot of a house-made liqueur, all for myself. So let’s just say I was feeling pretty damn social by the time I get done with dinner.
I then went out and got in a conversation with a couple locals at a bar, and of course continued drinking. I actually only got one more drink, but it was one of Spain’s signature quadruple pours of brandy. This is something that has made boozing up quite economical on this trip. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, and in this case it means I drink Spanish brandy when I go out. Some of them are quite good, and the bourbon they have here is trash, anyways. For whatever reason, whenever I order a straight up brandy, I get these monster quadruple pours that fill up half to two thirds of a regular Napoleon glass (not that I’m complaining). Well, apparently not many of the Romans here drink straight booze—the only explanation I can think of as to why I get such gigantic portions is because nobody here takes their liquor neat, so when they get the strange foreigner asking for it they fill the glass to the same level they would for a regular mixed drink. (A wrinkled brow and “Nada más? Sin heilo?” is often what I get from bartenders here, to which I have to confirm that yes, I just want straight brandy without ice.) So I had a pretty interesting time, although it was also interesting watching the room spin when I laid down to go to bed later. I suppose the entire bottle of wine plus the entire half bottle of dessert wine on top of the digestive and my venti sized brandy proved to be a bit ambitious for just one evening.
So that pretty much wraps up the show. I head back to Madrid for one more night before flying out early Saturday morning. As I am wont to do when returning from Europe, I’ll just stay up all night long and sleep on the plane in order to start re-adjusting to the time change. However, I’m sure there won’t be anything worth writing about happening that evening…
