The Guisanderas' Club

This question is especially meaningful for the Guisanderas' Club, as it inadvertently led to the club's foundation. The question came up while they were chatting after a meal at the restaurant Casa Pepe in Oviedo. “Nobody knew what formigos were,” says Mayte Álvarez, of Casa Lula in TineoMayte was very familiar with the recipe, having learned it from her mother-in-law, Adina González, who in turn must have known about it through her own mother-in-law, Lula.

“When we first started getting together, it was just for a bit of fun, but you know how restless we women are,” says Amada Álvarez, who has been the club's president since the year 2000. Their husbands were used to them staying at home in the kitchen, "while the men went out and had fun," but that first meeting changed everything for good.

Thirteen Guisanderas turned up, becoming the club's founders, and they were soon joined by several others. Today, the group has 42 members and has become so much more than a cooking club. The club represents real friendship and mutual support. At that first meeting, the Five from Tineo began setting out how they were going to go about things. Mayte recalls that, when their husbands went out, they used to tell them not to drink too much, spend too much, or come home too late.

However, when Pacita García's husband (of the restaurant Casa Pertierra) gave her a lift to join the others on a trip to Oviedo, he waved them off with instructions to "drink whatever you want, eat plenty, come home when you like … and, if possible, bring back more money than you've left with." She tells us the story in peals of laughter. That story has become legendary, as has the day that they gave a copy of their recipe book to the chef Ferran Adrià, and he said that thanks to them he could now finally learn how to cook.

They can barely contain their laughter as they tell these stories. It's an absolute pleasure to watch them. Not content with allowing the group to be no more than a way of letting off steam, these irrepressible women decided to undertake an invaluable project on the region's culinary memory.

Amada explains that, at those meetings, as well as forming close friendships, they came up with the idea of recovering the traditional Asturian cookery that had been passed down from generation to generation, by word of mouth only.

It was a compendium entitled The Book of the Guisanderas of Asturias: Traditional Cookery (El libro de las guisanderas de Asturias, la cocina legendaria). They funded it themselves and it was published in 1999. The first print run, with 12,000 copies, was a huge success. Not only did it include the recipe for Adina's formigos (a type of flatbread), but also others such as bollo de griñispos (a cake made with lard), pantruque (dough made with cornstarch, bacon, onion, and egg), pitu con arvejos (chicken with peas), and sopa de matanza (pork broth). As the book's subheading neatly explains, it is about recipes from the past, their history, and how to make them.

Amada says that "many of the recipes would have been lost if it hadn't been for us," such as the dish known as gurupo, traditionally made by the nomadic people of the mountain meadows of Alzada. It is made with toasted cornstarch, and leftovers of Asturian stew.

“It's a type of thick paste,” she explains, "which was bulked out with water and flour, and then, depending on what they could afford, they would have added a spoonful of sauce, made using what they had, whether that was oil and paprika, or pork marinade, and eaten from the outside in, dipping into the well that they made in the middle."

It's a little slice of history, saved from oblivion and recorded in writing, thanks to their efforts. "There are dishes that deserve to be recorded, because they stopped people from going hungry in the years following the Spanish Civil War."

Not content with just one book, in January 2019, the Guisanderas decided to publish another. The second edition was published in May. Recipes by the Guisanderas of Asturias (Recetas de las guisanderas de Asturias) is also a manual for exploring Asturian regional cookery.

In this book, however, the focus is less on the recovery of ancient recipes, and more on what Asturian restaurants cook now. Particular attention is given to the numerous restaurants in rural areas.

Each of the Guisanderas has her own appetizer, first course, second course, and dessert in the book. There's no shortage of recipes such as croquetas de compango (croquettes with sausage and black pudding), alcachofas con almejas (artichokes with clams), and repollo relleno de caza sobre puré de patatas y castañas (game-filled cabbage served on mashed potatoes with chestnuts).

They have their own particular brand of cooking, influenced by the produce and traditions of each area. “We've been invited to every local council, we've given talks on our book right across Spain's northern coast!" Lola Sánchez, of the restaurant Yumay in Avilés, tells us, enthusiastically.

“The secret of the cuisine of the future lies in the recipes of the past." That's the club's motto, proudly heralded by its members. After all, they argue, trendy confections such as foam of Asturian stew would be meaningless without Asturian stew itself.

That's why they are proud to be known as Guisanderas: a word that refers to the women who lived in the villages of Asturias (there was usually one per parish) who cooked for events, such as weddings or baptisms, and who offered their services in return for other jobs that they needed someone to do.

However, guisanderas were not just cooks. They were also healers who used food for its medicinal properties. “If someone got sick, for example, they would always ask them what they should be eating,” says Pili Ramos of the Los Pomares cider bar in Gijón.

Why did pregnant women eat olives? Why were babies given cornstarch after breastfeeding? Why was chocolate recommended to menstruating women? The women are keeping this story alive and working on a written version that will take the form of a third book, for which they already have plenty of ideas.

The women are fondly regarded and will gladly go to any event to which they are invited, without hesitation. Since that first trip to Barcelona, there have been many others: they have cooked in Segovia, Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, and Villajoyosa, a town in Alicante—even once traveling as far as Switzerland.

They have taken Asturian cuisine wherever they could, demonstrating their in-depth knowledge of the region's traditions: from soup, to the main course, right through to dessert.

Their work has earned them several well-deserved awards, but the prize that is most closely associated with the club is the Golden Guisandera (Guisandera de Oro). This is awarded by the club itself to individuals or institutions that meet the criteria. Winners have included the aforementioned Pepe, who encouraged them right at the start and helped them in their early days...

...and the journalist Ramón Sánchez-Ocaña, who wrote the preface to their second recipe collection. He describes them as follows: "This has been the Guisanderas' great contribution: recovering something that lived alongside us, but that was pushed aside as life gathered speed."