tourismPallarsSobirà
From faraway times, lamb has been, together with pork, the meat in store. Every part of the animal has some good use: the thighs of the lamb become the palpís, a piece of meat cooked without the bone. The palpís is a very old dish usually roasted in June, during the shearing of the animal; the ribs taste deliciously when barbecued on an open fire; the girella is made with the lungs and filled with a mixture of meat, rice and raisins; from the blood and the liver, the freginat is prepared; the tail etc.
It takes quite some time to prepare the girella, it is a painstaking preparation for a typical dish one will find in any major festivity and can be sampled in some of the restaurants of the region. It is tasty tried in any way: cooked, just heated and ready to eat; fried, and once it has cooled down, together with cap i potes...
The freginat was done on the lamb or sheep's slaughtering day. The blood and the liver were fried with onion and a sweet and sour sauce made of honey and vinegar. The meat of bèstia viva is basically the tail of a one-year-old sheep, a yearling female that has the tail clipped, firstly to draw the male to her and make coupling easier, but secondly for aesthetical reasons and to avoid getting caught up in the bushes.
Here, in El Pallars, we have an original breed of sheep called xisqueta or, sometimes, Montsetina. The name would have some relation with the small herds in El Montsent de Pallars, lintel of the Valley of Àssua, where they have been pasturing for centuries. The animal is slightly small, but very strong, sinewy and perfectly adapted to the territory. A grown-up male sheep may weight between 40 and 50 kg., and between 30 and 35 kg. the female.
