CAMÍ nº4 / Quermany

The CAMIs offer me the great opportunity to meet and rediscover great people. In the case of Iolanda Bustos, we met through our shared interest in the vegetable kingdom and love for the landscape. Doing this CAMI together has been our way of celebrating that shared curiosity and enthusiasm. We were not alone. We were accompanied by Iolanda’s husband, Jacint, and Sueño, the son of a good friend of mine Belgian, who studies biodynamic gardening and who is doing internships in Bravanariz. We were a small group of more or less strangers, united by our love of plants (Jacint is an orchid specialist).

Here is the menu designed by Iolanda Bustos, inspired by our experience together walking through Quermany.

menu wild walk in quermany

But with Iolanda, you’re continuously surprised. It is impossible to take two steps without her teaching you something. And even better, without you learning from her hand. Iolanda explains things, like someone telling stories. Good stories. There isn’t erudition in her tone, nor a desire to lecture to you. Everything is spontaneous, vital, necessary. That’s how it comes to you.

A lot of what Iolanda knows (especially the way of explaining things) comes from her parents. Her father, a pastor (great storytellers and poets, sharp observers). Her mother, a cook from the south, accustomed to collect and cook with what is available, and to make the most of the mountain. With time, Iolanda has managed to combine that popular wisdom with academic knowledge, but she has never stopped being self-taught, which to me, is an important quality of a wise person who forms their own opinion. Her point of view is so authentic, that it only takes you a few seconds to stop looking for other references. She is a reference.

Suddenly, she stops in front of a heather bush in bloom. I comment that, unfortunately, we cannot make use of the heather bush (Calluna vulgaris) aromatically, that it would be wonderful to put it to use (apart from the brooms), because the mountain is full of them. She responds to me by waving the flowers in her hands, and then passing them over her face, which shines in the light of a clear Tramuntana morning.

– Ja veuràs, proba-ho (You’ll see, try it)

She tells me. I do it. The sensation is like talcum powder. Smooth, and refreshing. A marvel. It doesn’t even occur to me to ask her where she got it from, if there is a scientific basis that confirms that heather flower pollen is good for the skin or something similar. I have tried it, and it works. So it is. She teaches what she knows, what has passed through her body, not just her intellect. She doesn’t cite others (even though she has read them all). She touches, experiments, and sticks her nose inside. Her emotional intelligence is evident.

Like how you know that a hawthorn has thorns, not because of its name or botanical description, but because your fingers have bled a thousand times picking its wonderful flowers, which you then turn into a jelly to flavor game dishes.

We passed the morning like this. Putting our noses everywhere. Letting ourselves be affected by the landscape, new to me, of Quermany. In this way, I discovered the calendula (Calendula arvensis), the decliate smell of the marfull flower (Viburnum tinus), the carolina (Coronilla valentina), the rue (Rutacee) and the Shepherd’s dial or Herb of Saint Robert (Geranium robertianum), the seeds of which, upon falling to the ground, twist to better penetrate the earth. Its flagella (the seed looks like a sperm) take exactly 1 minute to rotate 360º, which is why shepherds (like his father) used it to calculate time. Amazing!

However, what I will forever be grateful for, is that the myrtle (myrtus) discovered me. I had been looking for her for a long time in the Empordà without knowing how to identify her. I looked for her like crazy around the Menhir de la Murtra, until Bárbara (from Celler La Gutina) told me that this area’s name did not come from the plant, but from a word that designated an area of marshy land. I was resigned to finding her only in Mallorca, when Iolanda me dice. –Ara anirem a Aigua blava, a veure si la murtra ja esta florida (Now we will go to Aigua Blava, to see if the arrayán has already bloomed). My heart jumped. Indeed, we found some isolated bushes on a rocky ground, next to the road (it was evident that Iolanda had also searched for them at the time, conscientiously). They were not in bloom, but to me, it felt like we had discovered a treasure. I was looking and observing the plant for a long time, to capture its shapes, not to forget the appearance of her intense green leaves with pointed ends, her reddish stems when they are younger, and her smell. Especially that particular smell, which I had never experienced before.

Later, in the cove, in front of a sea of radiant blue, Jacint told me that when you see seagulls hovering in a particular and scrambled area, it is because the tuna are feasting. They surround the smaller groups of fish, in order to catch them better. The seagulls know this, and they take advantage of it. While he told me this, I looked at the sea, and I could note his desire to be there and not here, with me. But it wasn’t annoying at all. I could understand it, and he conveyed it to me with such sincerity and a level of intimacy that I was extremely flattered. I can perfectly imagine what it would be like to go out to sea with him. Another festival of learning without academics, without ostentation. Moments with a simple and delicious sea.

With the Land Rover full of plants and scents (in addition to those mentioned, we brought wild garlic flower (Allium vineale), cap d’ase (Lavandula stoechas), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), black and white steppe (Cistus monspeliensis and cistus albidus), pine, orris root, laurel, thyme, and lentisk (Pistacia lentiscus), not too bad!), we went to our operations center in Pontós, where we put everything together to distill. I was very nervous because I had to cook for an artist of the kitchen. I think that this was the first time in my life that a famous chef ate in my home. The day before, I prepared, not without some distress, one of my most popular dishes: rabbit with prawns. A traditional sea and mountain dish from the area that a neighbor of the town had taught me. When Iolanda and her husband went for the third course, along with my son Pitcho and Sueño and many others, I started to relax. Test passed. Now I can say it. My conill amb escamarlans has the approval of Iolanda Bustos! That was another gift.

In the patio, the distillation was running its course. The hydrolate was very intense and with very green and camphorated notes. A found potpourri, of young and vigorous nuances. The oil we got (34ml) was even more intense and much more dense, with depth. Equally green, but with more nuance. An explosive beginning, with rue and myrtle edges but with the softness of cap d’ase, rosemary and pine in flower. After the spring explosion, it plummets to a more animalic base, no doubt because of the cistus. It is a bit like a roller coaster, abrupt and unexpected. It is a bit adolescent, changeable, deeply spring (very rhythmic with the gusty wind that whipped us at the Quermany viewpoint). Again, a faithful capture of the place, the day and the moment. We won’t forget that day we launched spring, after crossing the equinox the night before, coinciding with the full moon. Therefore, an aroma of restless mood, of change and some internal agitation. It is not poetry, it is something that could be perceived, both in people and in the environment. Plants (more than anyone else) are no strangers to these changes, to full moon nights, to the seasons that mark their life cycles.

CAMI/Quermany, captures the kickoff of a nature that has been lying low. It supposes the concretion of a potentiality that has been incubating for months, in silence, waiting. But also, it contains the force of the inner light that leads to learning. That physical pleasure (and intellectual, of course, but in this case above all physical) when you are fully aware of having learned something. To learn it with the body, which is how it is truly understood.

Thank you Iolanda (and Jacint) for having participated in something so important.