Gofio

One morning many years ago, on our way out of the village, we paused beside a cloud of blue smoke billowing from the patch of land on the street corner. At the centre of the cloud was Dolores, perched on a rusty kitchen stool before an upturned dustbin lid. The lid was balanced on two brick columns and beneath it was an unruly fire of logs, twigs and leaves.

Peering through the smoke, all I could see in the dustbin lid was what looked like dark sand from a Gomeran beach. Now, why would anyone...?

From the stone shed behind Dolores a cockerel greeted our arrival with a subdued cock-a-gloogle-gloo while its harem of hens clucked excitedly around it. A clutch of turkeys gobble-gobbled next door and at the far end, two goats looked on from their tin outhouse in goatly disdain, chewing. A compact little tribe of fellow travellers on a leisurely passage to the dinner table.

We bid Dolores good morning and asked politely why she was heating sand in a dustbin lid. She beckoned us into the enclosure to look more closely. Ahah! Right. Mixed in with the sand were grains of maize, also known as corn. The sand was there to surround the maize with an even heat so it didn't scorch. Clever!

'You're roasting the maize,' I ventured, 'to make gofio?'

Dolores nodded - got it on one. Not too difficult because if you live in La Gomera you know about gofio. Gofio is what for centuries has enabled little Gomerans to grow big and strong, Gomeran women to bear fifteen children without blinking and Gomeran goatherds to leap across hillsides using long poles. Gofio thickens your breakfast milk and your lunchtime soup, gofio dumplings sustain you in the fields, honey-sweetened gofio balls are a treat for the kids and toothless grandpa.

Once the maize grains were well roasted, Dolores would sift them from the hot sand and take them up the hill to the gofio mill, where for a small fee they would be finely ground into flour. Very finely ground. On my first introduction to gofio I made the near-fatal mistake of sniffing it. I've since wondered if a lungful of gofio could spontaneously explode, as powder aerosols sometimes do, but the effect is in any case similar. Don't ever sniff gofio.

At a New Year's day family gathering to which we'd been invited, a particularly enthusiastic advocate demonstrated how to make gofio dumplings in the authentic manner. The first requirement is a rabbit. There are many rabbits in the Gomeran hills and Luis had obtained one, or rather its skin which is the key component for this purpose.

You sew the skin up again (nicely cleaned of course) to make a long bag, open at one end. If you ignore the dangly legs it now looks fairly innocuously like a Scottish sporran.

Into this bag you pour your gofio, being careful not to sniff, along with water or perhaps goat's milk for a richer dumpling. Close the end of the bag and tie it tightly with string then - here's the skilful bit - start rolling it like a big heavy sausage across your knees, backwards and forwards, applying pressure with the palms of your hands as in deep massage. You will be subjected to rude jokes while you're doing this, as Luis was, but ignore them and keep massaging.

After the proper length of treatment you can untie the rabbit bag and peel it away from what is now a large roll of slightly squidgy gofio dumpling. Slice it into bite-sized discs as required.

Nobody does this in real life any more, of course. They just mash up the mixture with a wooden spoon or, more probably, bung it into an electric dough mixer, but the end result is much the same and just as healthy.

Gofio forms part of a beautifully integrated system of self-sufficiency. You grow the maize on your family finca or smallholding. Being tall, the maize plants shelter other crops such as beans and potatoes from the strong winds which are a known feature of Gomeran weather.

Having consumed the maize cobs, either sliced up in soup or turned into gofio, you donate the rest of the plant to the goats or the pig. In return the goats give you milk and, in due course, meat, and the pig gives you ham, bacon and blood sausages as well as a friendly honk every morning when you go to feed it, except for the last time.

The goat milk - a litre or more every day - you can drink fresh from the udder or turn into cheese, to eat with your slices of gofio dumpling. Gomeran goat cheese is wonderful, tasty but mild, not at all goaty like the French stuff.

Meanwhile, back at the smallholding, your potatoes are coming along nicely in fertile volcanic soil enriched by nitrogen from the beans growing between them and by manure from your goats and pig. The beans will later form the basis of a nourishing soup called rancho canario into which you sprinkle your gofio...

It's not as satisfyingly circular as that nowadays with our frozen foods, takeaway pizzas and spit-roasted chicken, and there are fewer goats and pigs around than before, but you will be hard pressed to find a family without its own finca and somebody still making good use of it.

Dolores doesn't grow maize herself now because her joints have let her down, but her sons do. And gofio, although now produced mainly by companies rather than individuals, you will find on the shelves of every supermarket. Buy it, eat it and grow strong!