Food heresy

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 cook rice with things in it that's fine - to each their own - but if you want to call it a paella the ingredients are limited and unalterable. The Spanish thinking is that you should not tamper with perfection. That perfection may be in anything; there are strong opinions about everything from black pudding, ham, cheese, cherries and oil through to how to serve suckling pig or what the perfect squid sandwich looks like.

Given this interest and passion for food the quality of the fare in run of the mill restaurants is really surprising. The menú del día, the daily menú, the set meal, is a Spanish institution. It's becoming less fashionable in big cities but it's still available all over the place. They're cheap enough and they're usually fine. There are (routinely) three courses and the price varies but let's say that they're about 10 or 11€. I can't remember though the last time that I ate a menú that really impressed me. Let me say again that they're fine. Perfectly edible, occasionally imaginative, extremely good value and plentiful. For me a bloke in a restaurant in a restaurant in Elda summed up the usual situation. To the habitual question, from the server, asking if the food had been good the chap avoided the equally inevitable reply and said "normal" which translates as fine, fine in that not wishing to get involved way, fine with the provisos of mass catering, fine in the way that someone with persistent arthritic pain answers the question as to how they are.

The prompt for this post came because we had our first menú for over three months this Sunday, in Santa Pola. The 12€ included a salad which was fine, a bit overcold and lacking in the usual spoonful of tuna top centre. The mushrooms in a such and such sauce sounded great but turned out to be deep fried McCain type jobs. Blindfolded I wouldn't have known what I was eating but they were fine. I had the cachopo as a main which is a dangerous choice - it's basically a battered steak, cheese and ham fritter - they can be quality food and yet so many times they taste like something out of a freezer at Iceland. The watermelon was nearly frozen but fine and the coffee was okey dokey too. Uninspiring, forgettable and perfectly acceptable. I wouldn't ever go back to the eatery out of choice but if that were all there were then, well, fine.

Now lots of people would disagree with me and I plead guilty to being old and grumpy. We have a local Indian restaurant. People keep reporting how good it is both face to face and in the social media. We thought it was average to poor when we first tried it within days of its opening. We listened to the rave reviews and we thought, maybe, they'd needed to get into their stride so we tried again. I thought it was poor. Covid 19 strikes and the restaurant is quick to take advantage of the rules and pushes its takeaway menu. The reviews from Brits are eulogistic. It must be me, I think, so we spend with them again. Terribly boring and rather unpleasant was my critique. Now maybe it's just me. Then again no, because, every now and again we bump into a restaurant, and it's never a menú place, where the nuances of the food are important, a place that reminds me of that conversation about the rightness, or not, of peas in a stew.

Funeral in Santa Pola

David Collins died this week. He was cremated today in the Santa Pola Tanatorio. We went along as old friends.

David used to live in Pinoso though he's lived in Catral for years now. I think, because I gave him a hand with his computer, he suggested me as a possible worker to his daughter Julie. At the time she ran a furniture shop called RusticOriginal. I ended up working there and it remains my favourite job of those I've had here in Spain.

It's the first time I've been inside a tanatorio in Spain - the translation in most dictionaries is funeral parlour but a good number of them seem to have the facilities of a crematorium too. I've never quite worked out the system for Spanish funerals and cremations and I decided against doing the research and describing it here. I get the idea though that the tanatorio is where close family stand vigil as it were and receive other family members, friends and colleagues. Someone in Cartagena told me that they often used the bar in the local tanatorio for a late night drink as it is always open.

When we turned up in Santa Pola today I noticed that another family were camped out in one of the side rooms off the main entrance of the building. Some of David's golfing pals were there before us and together we waited. The family turned up at the appointed hour in one of the undertaker's limos. They came with a couple of Spanish friends of David's who had helped the family make all the arrangements for the cremation and the transfer of the ashes back to the UK.

Together we all went into a chapel with David's sealed coffin on a trolley. Two of David's daughters, Julie and Tracy, looked after the proceedings. They arranged some photos on and around the coffin and there were a couple of David's favourite songs on CD. Jules and Tracy read their own tributes and a piece from the other two daughters, who were not able to be there because they live in South Africa and New Zealand. There was no "official" input either lay or religious and I wondered if that were the normal routine at a tanatorio. I have this vague idea that in more routine funerals the priest conducts a service before the body is moved on to the tanatorio but doesn't officiate after that. I could well be wrong though.

With the talking over, a chap, in a blue work coat, wheeled the coffin away. A few moments later we were called to join him. The coffin was now behind a glass screen and the lid was lifted so that we could see David for one last time. The second of David's two songs was given a reprise as the coffin was sealed and then set on an apparatus which slid the casket into the furnace.

I wondered if the last look and such a close up view of the final act had a history behind it as though to prove that there was no last minute skulduggery.

And that was it. Goodbye for ever to David. A little discussion about the paperwork and the choice of urn for the ashes before the family went off in the waiting car.

We went off to have a coffee and stare at the Med.

Tabarca

I couldn't help it. My gaze kept wandering to the man sitting to my right. He was shirtless and his belly was so huge that it was squidged onto the table even though his chair was pushed well back. I also noticed the young women in bikinis in the restaurant but Maggie must never know.

We were in Tabarca. It's an island just off the coast from Santa Pola though we'd travelled over on the boat from Alicante. Considering that the Med. is nothing more than a big lake and given that we were hugging the coast it was remarkably choppy.  The crew were handing out sick bags willy nilly. I expected to succumb but despite the sweat dribbling from my forehead I reached terra firma with breakfast still somewhere in my digestive tract.

The island, it's actually an archipelago, is a place that locals and tourists go to get a bronzy and to eat. In the summer heat the main things you smell in the air are hot cooking oil and sun protection cream. Lots of the home team take everything bar the kitchen sink and set up bedou style, on the beach. They carry army feeding amounts of food. Most people who go there though eat in one of the several restaurants. Menus are principally fish and seafood based. Rice dishes, paellas, are de rigeur.

The island  was used as a base by pirates to raid the coast so, in 1760, Carlos III used a group of shipwrecked Genoese as a garrison on the island. They came from the islet of Tabarka and so the Spanish island, our island, got a new name. The remains of the fortifications, like the church are somewhere to stroll in your flip flops and swimwear before or after eating.

I think I was the only visitor on the island with full length trousers.