CA
CHO
PO
These are not isolated cases. They represent what is happening in Asturias in
recent years. Rare is the restaurant that
has no cachopo in his meu. Hard to find
a butcher who does not offer it prepackaged. It is a phenomenon that has caught
many off guard. Good time to analyze the
state on the issue of cachopo.
From where does it come?
Two fillets of meat stuffed with cheese and ham, breaded and fried. No one
is aware that this combination of ingredients and techniques has little of Asturian. Several national and international
recipes exploit the possibilities of some
ingredients that are not distinctive of
any particular region. The president of
the Asturian Academy of Gastronomy,
Eduardo Méndez Riestra, is clear: “It’s not
a Spaniard invention. It continues to be a
derivation of the San Jacobo, the Cordon
Bleu and others. It is an adaptation of an
European dish. The funny thing is that
outside of Asturias did not work. Where
it rooted was here. In this sense, all the
dishes have spurious origins, no matter
where they come from, but where are
consolidated. “And cachopo was consolidated in Asturias.
The issue is therefore to get closer to the
time when this recipe started to become popular in Asturias. The germ is in
1943 in a small restaurant in Oviedo. In
that year, today disappeared Pelayo opened. It was located in an area of arrival
and departure of buses, so it was used,
according to Méndez Riestra, by “common people who came with money and
wanted to spend it.” By that time ham
was a luxury, and Olvido Álvarez, Pelayo’s cook, thought that to fill a couple of
steaks with that ingredient could have
acceptance. She called her invention cachopo and began serving it in individually coated with a blonde mushroom sauce. It wore no cheese, that was left for the
San Jacobo also offered in the menu. The
dish was a success and began to be imitated in several establishments in the region.