Form and substance

In the run up to Christmas we bought a couple of coca from the women running the Caritas stall outside the Parish Rooms in Pinoso. The coca were cooked as we watched and wrapped in silver paper. For two we paid one Euro. I like coca and I wolfed mine down. My companion was not so keen. Mind, she's the sort of woman who doesn't like digestive biscuits. She likes something a bit fancier. She calls coca fat pies.

Coca has nothing to do with soft drinks or narcotics. Coca is a sort of thickish pancake made with flour, water and olive oil, salted to taste. You make a dough, separate off a small ball shaped lump of it, squash it down with the heel of your hand to make a vague circular shape before frying it up on a plancha which is an oil coated flat hot surface. You couldn't get much simpler. There's another traditional food around here called gachamiga made with just flour, oil, water and garlic. In most of the village fiestas there will be competitions (traditionally for men) to cook gachamiga in a big wok like pan over an open fire. Indeed lots of the traditional regional dishes of Spain are based on what's to hand. Think fabada from Asturias, paella from Valencia, migas in Extremadura, cochinilla in Segovia, calcots in Catalunya or tortilla de patatas everywhere. It's a bit unlikely that Jijona would have become famous for Christmas turrón if they hadn't had access to plentiful supplies of local almonds, honey and eggs.

Peasant food, simple food, cooking with what you have to hand applies equally well in the UK and, probably, all over the world. Think Yorkshire pudding - flour, eggs and milk. Fry instead of bake and the Yorkshires become  pancakes. Shrove Tuesday, Pancake day, is the feast day before the God fearing population plunged into the denials of Lent on Ash Wednesday. The food of the feast being so simple says something of the society in which that tradition was forged. I don't suppose most young English people would have a clue about Pancake day now. Young Spaniards like pizzas and burgers too but they seem happy to eat both the traditional fare and the more recent introductions. I have no idea whether that will last. Everywhere we see example after example of invasive species driving out the local species.

I was reminded of the coca though when we went to the artisan Christmas Market in Murcia city. We bought some little biscuits. There were four or five in a pretty cellophane bag tied off with a ribbon - they cost four or five Euro. The biscuits were multicoloured, they had patterns iced onto them, there were various different fillings; they looked really scrumptious. They were nice enough but they definitely looked better than they tasted.

I understand that substance over form is an accounting term but it does seem that so often nowadays that form is much more important than substance. Double plus good to the women of Caritas and their coca then.

Making do, eating and mending

I maintain an impression that our bit of rural Spain is still quite traditional; a society that repairs things. Just check the roads at the moment with the tractors out for harvest. Most of the small ones look nearly as old as the blokes driving them! Whenever I think of this make do and mend culture I think of my sunglasses. In Cambridge, in 1984, I bought my first pair of Ray Ban Aviators. At the time the company was still Bausch & Lomb and their sunglasses were a superior product. So twenty years later we're new to Culebrón and one of the pad arms came loose on the sunglasses. I went to the local optician to see if the specs could be saved. The optician soldered the piece back in place whilst I waited and charged me nothing. Last year I threw the same sunspecs on the floor and trampled on them. The nose pad came away again. I went back to the same optician. This time she sucked on her teeth, suggested I bought new and only grudgingly sent the Aviators away for repair. They took a couple of weeks to come back and cost 15€. Still not a bad result.

A couple of weeks ago we went on a walking tour around Yecla. The historical story telling was complemented by music. Lots of the sites to be visited were in a maze of narrow winding streets. The guide, and the flautists, were repeatedly drowned out by noisy mopeds with pizza delivery boxes strapped behind the saddle. I reckon everybody in Yecla was eating pizza that Saturday. In Pinoso there is a points scheme which eventually earns you a free pizza for returning the empty box. It's obviously to curb the problem of boxes littering the streets.

I'm coming apart at the seams and my feet hurt most of the time. People spoke well of sandals made by a local Ilicitano firm called Pikolinos. I forked out a good number of Euros and bought some. They were fine, comfy and classic, perfect for an old bloke. I'm not easy on shoes though and, disappointingly, after a couple of months the stitching gave way in a key area and the sandals became unwearable. Now Pinoso is a shoe making town so I wondered where I could get them fixed. I didn't know a cobbler and my questioning of quite a few locals about the whereabouts of a shoe repairer drew a blank. I'm still sure there will be somebody but I didn't find them. More than one person laughed at the idea of repairing shoes instead of just buying new. In the end I got them fixed in one of those franchise places alongside a hypermarket.

I quite like the adverts on the telly. I mean, how did they know that I needed something to clean the gunk from the rubber concertina seal on the washing machine? On those TV adverts, amongst the cars and mobile phone networks, there are lots of ads for food. I've mentioned legions of time that Spaniards are deeply interested in food. The adverts on the telly aren't for quality products, they're for the sort of stuff that comes in packets, the food, loaded with sugar and grease, of industrial conglomerates. For instance one of the Spanish MasterChef hosts is currently advertising pasta. He suggests that the perfect complement to the pasta is a Bolognese sauce. Even with the perfect lighting of TV advertising the sauce looks like the sort of stuff blasted by high pressure hoses off the broken bones of nameless animals and reconstituted into meat shaped meat in a factory full of infernal machinery. There are adverts for Just Eat where happy families grin at perfectly shaped hamburgers, colourful salads and pizza slices that seem to make people show off their teeth in Julia Roberts style smiles. Children swoon and whoop with joy before non chocolate eggs and young adults find their enjoyment of video games and sporting competitions greatly enhanced by crisps made from reconstituted potato or instant noodles flavoured with powder from sachets.

It's not the end of the world or anything, though actually it might be a small example of the route there, but we older people notice change more.

The washing machine cleaner doesn't work by the way.

Food habits

Patricia and Jason have just opened a new Bed and Breakfast business here in Culebrón - the Sunny Vista Casa Rural. They've done a really nice job on it too. It looks great. As a double celebration, for both the opening and for Patricia's birthday, the owners hosted a party. Never ones to miss out on a knees up Maggie and I turned up at around 3.30 pm, in the middle of Spanish lunchtime, when most locals would be eating at home. Later I was both surprised, and pleased for the Batram's, that so many of the villagers put in an appearance.

Forty some years ago I had a Spanish couple stay with me in Peterborough. They flew into Heathrow so I took them for a pub lunch in Windsor. "You'll have to try British beer," I said, to Jaime. He literally spat it out. "It's hot," he said, "like broth." For the rest of the holiday he would only drink lager. He never complained about the taste of that terrible, 1980s, fizzy, British lager but he did complain about its temperature over and over. Oh, and he was nearly as peeved at all the spicy food we ate like English mustard, horseradish, chilli sauce, curry and brown sauce. More recently my pal Carlos took a holiday in the UK. He and his family enjoyed themselves. Carlos was really impressed with the concept of pies and he thought gravy was a splendid invention. They couldn't understand why there was no bread on the table though - there nearly always is in Spain. He said they had to ask over and over again. We all have our ways.

Back at Sunny Vista I was talking to someone alongside the table loaded with food: quiche, potato salad, coleslaw, ribs, cocktail sausages, crisps, nuts, salads, burgers, enormous prawns, chilli con carne and lots more. Several of the Spanish neighbours were there too, plate in hand, eyeing up the food. I explained a few things - sausage rolls for instance - but I thought most of it was obvious enough. I realised afterwards, when someone asked me if there was any ham (Spanish type ham), that they thought it was quite an exotic spread. They were as lost as I am when friends in the know order up lots of Indian side dishes and I have no idea what they are.

Food is a common topic of conversation here. Spaniards like eating and generally have a poor opinion of British food. When I'm asked, by Spaniards, about food in the UK I used to rack my brains for the traditional foods, the sort of stuff that I ate when I was a lad, the sort of stuff that my dad liked. Shepherds pie, apple crumble, bangers and mash, steak and kidney pudding, trifle, cauliflower cheese, corned beef hash, Irish stew and the like. But that's not really what Britons eat nowadays is it?  We eat food from everywhere.

We Britons have been happy to plunder the world for food for ages. Chicken chasseur, Wiener schnitzel, sashimi, goulash, paella, souvlaki, chana dal and the rest are there on the supermarket shelves. Finding a Vietnamese, Lebanese, French, Greek, Mexican, West Indian or Italian restaurant is child's play in the UK. The student Spag Bol and the Thai green curry are just another recipe in the "Come around to dinner," cookbook.

Indian food, for instance, is hugely popular amongst Britons. My guess is that your average, middle class Indian, living in Mumbai, wouldn't recognise the food on offer in most UK High Street Indian restaurants. Indeed, whether it's a High street restaurant, a Waitrose ready meal or a Jamie Oliver recipe the food with an Indian name is really, very much, British food. It's the same with the rest. Even if chilli con carne were Mexican (it's from the USA isn't it?) then the British version would be British. That's probably why a full English is so disappointing in Torremolinos.

That's not true of Spanish food - Spanish food is till largely something that past generations would recognise. Not that I'm suggesting Spain is some isolated culinary backwater. Spain has lots and lots of Michelin stars and there are gastrobars in any town with any population. Domino's, McDonalds and KFC are everywhere. Most Spanish youngsters seem happy to eat pizza and pasta till the cows come home. Generally though, away from high class restaurants, the multinational fast food chains and cosmopolitan cities Spanish food has maintained its traditional flavour.

And that's why there was so much Spanish attention to the food on offer at Sunny Vista yesterday.

Comings and goings

We were going to try out the new Indian restaurant in Pinoso yesterday lunchtime. Maggie works till three and getting lunch around that time in Spain is absolutely standard. Nonetheless, on a slow day in a small town it's just possible that the kitchen will close if a restaurant is short of custom. I put my head around the door, to check. I was greeted in English. Open till six he said. It turned out that we'd had a bit of a communication problem. In fact they opened at six, not closed, presumably for we early dining Britons.

I knew about the Taj Mahal from simply passing by. The other day though, when I was quizzing, as one does, a student about toppings on pizza, they told me that they preferred pizzas from el Punto to the ones from Riquelme. According to the student the shop was about 300 metres from where I work. I'd never heard of them, I'd never seen their soiled napkins dancing in the swirling leaves, never seen their pizza boxes abandoned on the floor. Their Facebook page was created in July 2016 which suggests I've had plenty of time to notice them. Their takeaway offer seems to be traditional Spanish food as well as burgers and pizzas. I made a short detour from work and, right enough, there they were. They don't open Thursday lunchtime though.

Indian and takeaway denied us then. I wondered about La Picaeta. We went in there a couple of weeks ago. They gave us a business card with a new name and a new address. I'd heard an advert on the local radio to say that the restaurant was under new management but I think their launch day was today which wasn't much good yesterday lunchtime.

Maggie came up with a cunning plan. The dining room at Mañan has been putting out a blackboard advertising their lunchtime set meal for months now. Despite our thirteen year residence in Pinoso we'd never been there before today. We finally righted that wrong. Perfectly acceptable; nothing fancy but good and obviously well established - salad, starter, barbecued meat, pudding, coffee and a drink for a massive 9€.

So we've still got the Indian and the takeaway and the new Picaeta to try whilst the old Picaeta management, according to their card, are now running, los Coves. Ages ago we went to a bar/restaurant with that name up in Santa Catalina so I presume it's the same place. We need to check. Actually talking about Santa Catalina, we were up there last Friday and we found a bar with live music that we didn't know about - we knew the bar but not about singer - we must go back. At least we did manage to get into Estem Ací - the name for the new restaurant being run by the Uruguayan twins who formerly ran Oasis - shortly after it opened back in October. And, the other day I hesitated outside the bar in Rodriguillo, one of the outlying villages of Pinoso. I last went there in about 2006, shortly after that it closed for a long time but I'd heard it had re-opened. The hissing of the coffee machine and the chatter of voices emanating from inside the bar bore that out as I dithered on the threshold.

We're not exactly stay at home types so it seems just remarkable to me that there can be so many restaurants or bars that we haven't spent money in. After all the town, nay village, of Pinoso has only just over seven and a half thousand people!