Life in Culebrón

We had a couple of pals who moved from Pinoso to the coast. One of the reasons they gave for their move was that the food in Pinoso was a bit boring. Its true that if you're after Mexican or Thai or French cuisine then Pinoso isn't the perfect spot. I suppose it's a matter of taste (sic) but I definitely like the local offer. And you'll know, if you've ever got past the most basic conversation with a local, that food is a safe, and always interesting, conversation in Spain. If Brits talk about weather then the Spanish talk about food. Every area of Spain has its specialities and every region is quite sure that they have the best food. The one thing that all Spaniards agree on is that Spain has the best food in the world.  There is something very purist about Spanish food. If you're British, and you eat meat, then your Shepherd's Pie is not quite the same as your mum's or your brother's. You add garlic or tomato or mushrooms and they don't. This d...

People, in general, seem to be very interested in food. Spaniards certainly are. I think I've said before that the first time I ever managed to catch the drift of a conversation in Spanish, when I presumed that the discussion would centre on Wittgenstein or Nietzsche or, perhaps, the novels of Kafka it turned out to be an impassioned debate about the pros and cons of adding peas, or not, to some sort of stew. Spanish food tends to plainness. Spicy is, generally, not seen as good. Recipes are often traditional and made from the ingredients to hand. It's permissible to argue about whether tortilla de patatas should have onion or not but basically the recipe is eggs, potatoes, oil, salt and nothing else. Woe betide the TV chef who thinks a clove of garlic or a couple capers might spice it up a bit. That's why Jamie Oliver got so much stick about chorizo in paella. Paella and arroz (rice) are interchangeable words in some situations but paella has fixed versions. If you want to...

I don't know if modern, young Britons still eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday but I'm pretty sure that Yorkshire Pudding is alive and well on the Sceptred Isle. As I remember it pancakes and Yorkshires share the same simple mix - eggs, flour, milk. The sort of things that any self respecting house would have had in the larder at almost any time in British history. A lot of traditional Spanish food has a similar backstory. When we lived in Salamanca pig products were big in the local cuisine, up in Asturias they use the local beans for one of the traditional dishes and all over Spain there are variations on bread crumbs fried up with tiny scraps of meat which, folk tale has it, was a food for shepherds who ended up with a lot of stale bread. Combining the ingredients readily to hand. It works for speciality foods too. Xixona makes turrón, a sort of nougat essential to celebrate Christmas, and turrón comes from combining eggs, honey and almonds all of which abound near Xixona. ...