It's a franchise

Murcia City has changed a lot over the years. It feels citylike now - it hustles and bustles. The first time I went there I thought it was a dusty hole. If I tell you I arrived in a friend's Lada Niva you'll realise just how long ago that was.

We were there yesterday and we wanted something to eat. The place is alive with tapas bars and trendy looking eateries. I quite fancied a place called Tiquismiquis (which means something like fusspot) or maybe Moshi Moshi (I don't speak Japanese so I don't know what that means) but by the time I'd found a bank machine we'd passed those places by and we were footsore so we went to a Lizarran instead.

Lizarran is a franchise. They have little tapas, generally bread mounted snacks, stored inside cooled display cases. each tapa has a toothpick driven through it. You bung a few tapa on your plate and when you're settled a server asks you about drinks. When the place is realtively busy they usually come around with additional hot tapas. Other things are available for order too but basically the fare is tapas on sticks. When you're done they count up the number and style of toothpicks on your plate and charge you accordingly. It's hardly cordon bleu but it's usually pretty acceptable and it's easy.

We considered 100 Montaditos as well. Cien Montaditos is also a franchise. In there you choose a table and in the centre of the table is a pen and a list of the montaditos which are basically mini rolls or sandwiches. You mark how many of which you want on the list and hand it in at the bar. They fill the drinks order straight away and give you a shout when your montaditos are done. Cien Montaditos is also usually pretty acceptable and it's easy.

Searching, as ever, for a blog entry it struck me that both were franchises. I did a bit of Googling and I was amazed how many everyday Spanish businesses are, in fact, franchises. It's not just the opticians, dentists, fast food chains, parcel carriers and quick jobs on the car businesses. One of the big supermarkets, Día, is a franchise and there is apparently a bread shop with over sixty varieties of bread - never seen one of those but it sounds good. There's another one that sounds like an equivalent of Wetherspoons with dirt cheap beer; never seen that either or I would still be there. But my favourite on the currently booming franchise list has to be a language school. If I were to work there maybe I could have a uniform and a zero hours contract like those people who work in the burger bars.

Form and function

I think it was John who told us there was a nice new bar in La Romana so, as we were passing, we dropped in for a coffee. He was right. Lots of right angles, tonal furniture, predominantly white, nice clean lines, modern looking, warm welcome and it was warm in the heated sense too,

The majority of Spanish bars and restaurants are very everyday. There's seldom any attempt to do what they've been doing with Irish style pubs for twenty five plus years in the UK - fishing rods, sewing machines and soap adverts or what all of those coffee shops that sell lattes, mochas and espressos do with overstuffed bookcases, creaking floorboards, chesterfield sofas or roaring log fires. They try to add a certain style. Ambience, well ambience not centred around handwritten notices for lottery tickets, crates of empty bottles and piles of detritus by the cash till, is in short supply in most, though not all, Spanish bars and restaurants. Bear in mind that I spend most of my time in Fortuna, Culebrón or Pinoso rather than Madrid or Barcelona.

On Saturday, as a birthday treat, Maggie took me to an eatery that we have never dared venture into before - partly for price and partly for the Porsches, Ferraris and  two a penny Beamers and Audis parked outside. It's in Pinoso and it has a reputation province wide, food guide wise and nationwide amongst cognoscenti for being a temple to the local rice dish made with rabbit and snails seasoned with wild herbs and cooked over burning bundles of scent giving twigs. The restaurant sees no need for a sign outside and makes do with a discreet nameplate so that diners know they have found the place.

The inside of the restaurant was nothing special. The tablecloths were cloth, the cutlery and glassware were clean and the servers were smart and civil but it looked like thousands of other eateries in Spain. I think it had tiles half way up the wall but then it had the stippled paint, it's called gotelé here but it's like painting over anaglypta in the UK. I wouldn't have been too surprised if there had been a telly on the wall showing the Simpsons. I don't think you could get a similar reputation for being quality eating in the UK without doing something about the decor. Different philosophy.

Down the road, in one of the villages, there's another restaurant with a growing reputation for rice. They have glass walls to the kitchen so you can see the paella being cooked, they have a printed menu (we weren't offered a written menu) and I think the waiters have some sort of modern uniform. The whole place looks like someone had a concept in mind when they talked to the builders and furnishers.

It was a good experience in Pinoso though. We had a good time and although the prices were high they were not frighteningly so. We saw another couple stick to beer and water, a pair of simple centre of the table starters, the rice of course and coffee and they got to pay with a single fifty euro note. Perfectly reasonable. To be honest though it wasn't the best rice I've eaten - a bit over salty and a bit greasy for my taste. The bread and ali-oli, also one of my yardsticks, was good but not exceptional and the salad was served a tad cold.

Now I have an idea for a place that looks great, has good looking young staff and serves only variations on egg and chips. What do you reckon?

Bread cartel

When I couldn't get a beer in Tarragona many years ago I decided to learn Spanish. I did a few years of those one or two hour a week Spanish classes at the local Adult Education Centre. I also took a lot of holidays in Spain. As a consequence I started to notice things about Spain in newspapers and magazines. Spain speaks Spanish and so do Nicaragua, Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica - twenty countries in all as I remember if we don't include the USA. It was all the same to me - they were all interesting, all linked in some way. Spain was first but I bought cumbia, son and salsa music (on cassette), I read books by Garcia Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende and Elena Poniatowska. I drank piscos, canelazos and malbecs. I hunted out Dos Equis beer. I crossed the Atlantic a few times heading for Mexico or Cuba and I still have a hankering to visit Argentina and Chile as a hangover from that interest in the 1980s.

But if I thought that there was a link between Spain and lots of America I don't think it's a view shared by most Spaniards. The only conversations I have had with Spanish people about Latin Americans have usually centred on their strange use of the Spanish language rather than the quality of their beer, food, football or music. The Latin American food section in the international part of Carrefour has no more stock than the British section. There aren't many TV imports from Latin America nor are there lots of celebrity Latin Americans here in Spain - at least so far as I know.

Spain of course has strong trading links with Latin America and there are daily news stories from that part of the world. I've had Argentinian, Venezuelan, Mexican, Peruvian, Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian students in my English classes because they work for Spanish firms here. There are lots of people who look South American out and about in the towns and cities. Surprisingly though there isn't much obvious South American influence in High Street businesses. I'm not saying there is none. At one time there were lots of locutorios - cheap phone, Internet and money order places - which were South American owned though they seem to be disappearing. Otherwise there is a smattering of South American businesses. Every now and again you will see a Venezuelan or a Peruvian craft shop, an Ecuadorian bar or a Mexican restaurant but they are far less noticeable than the range of Chinese ventures for instance. Perhaps it is a sign of the socio economic situation of the majority of the South and Central Americans. They tend to be workers rather than entrepeneurs. Murcia, for instance, has, I understand, the largest Ecuadorian population outside Ecuador but the only Ecuadorian business I know of is a bar that sells intersting food in Jumilla and another bar that failed in Cartagena.

We were in Elda today. I'd gone to sign on for dance classes (it's a long story and I couldn't so you will never know) and as we strolled the streets we noticed a sign that said Colombian bakery. So we went in for a loaf. Inside it was like Greggs, well with a bit more character. Caracol Internacional was on the TV with a story from Venezuela. We decided to get a coffee and the chap behind the bar talked us into eating some sort of chicken and egg pasty and a beef and rice and potato pasty and a cheese and soft dough ball thing. "Hot sauce?" he asked, "Yes, please," I replied. That seemed to surprise him. Spanish people aren't generally keen on spicy so maybe it was an unusual answer. I was tempted by the spongy sweet looking cakey thing but I decided investigation was turning into gluttony so we paid up and left.

It made me think though that we Brits maybe got a better deal from our old Empire than the Spaniards got from theirs.

Tales of turrón

Turrón is made from almonds, honey, egg whites and sugar. It's an Alicante speciality which is now produced all over Spain. Turrón, has no specific English equivalent, though for shorthand I often describe it as nougat. It's not much like the pink and white chewy nougat I knew as a youngster though. Turrón is associated with the town of Jijona which is about 70 km up the road from us. I wrote about it ages ago in a blog.

So we were going back to the UK for Christmas. I'd made a pact with my family about not exchanging gifts. We did, nonetheless, take a few Spanish Christmas goodies - mantecados, polvorones and of course turrón. I'd forgotten that I hadn't made the same pact with Maggie's family who showered me with expensive gifts whilst I had neither socks nor bubble bath in trade - it was terribly embarrassing.

The make of turrón that Maggie bought was called Pico which is a good quality if everyday brand - she bought the hard stuff and the soft one. It's maybe a bit less than half the price of the best brands which can cost as much as 9€ for a 300g bar. It was traditional enough though for me to notice something that I've missed in ten years of wolfing it down. I realised they had different names. The crunchy stuff was called Turrón de Alicante and the sort that oozes almond oil was Turrón de Jijona. Nowadays there are tens of flavours of "turrón" most of which have nothing to do with the original concept. So we have chocolate flavour, milk flavour, crema catalana flavour, strawberry flavour etcetera - the list is nearly endless. It was seeing the two traditional types side by side in matcing packets that made me realise the simple difference.

For some now forgotten reason turrón came up in the conversation with our builders. They sang the praises of a turrón produced by a local factory which processes nuts. It's obvious enough when you think about it. They work with almonds, there is lots of local honey and chickens live everywhere so the raw materials were to hand.

Intrigued I bought some when I went to pick up a gas cylinder (excellent isn't it? - nuts and butane in the same shop) and I notice that it has the quality mark to say that it's made to the standards of some regulatory body. That was news to me too and it explains why some of the most famous brands are made in places like Santander and Gijón which are miles from Alicante.

The trouble is I can't eat it. I gained two and a half kilos in the four days in the UK. It's time for penance - the hair shirt and flagellation of portion control. Mind you Christmas is far from over in Spain and just a little each day couldn't do much harm could it?

Tap, tap, tapas

As far as I remember the first ever time we got involved in a tapas trail was in Sax which is a small town about 20 km from here. It was probably in 2005 and I remember it well because afterwards we went on to a meal in the village hall organised by the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association. Certain members of our party had had a little too much to drink and they were unable to fully participate in the village AGM afterwards leaving me as the sole speaking British representative.

Tapas trails, rutas de tapas, are a simple idea. Somebody, usually the Chamber of Trade or the local Shopkeeper's Association persuades a number of bars and restaurants in their town to sell a bite sized snack and a drink, usually either beer or wine, for a bargain set price. They persuade other sponsors to cough up a prize. Then they produce a route map cum leaflet and, within the set dates, punters skip from bar to bar eating the tapas and drinking the drink. Each time the participants have something on the trail they get a stamp on their leaflet. The punters have a good time, the bars get more trade and the towns look busier.

In Sax I think each bar gave clues to a puzzle. Solve the puzzle and win a prize. In Cartagena, where we lived the tapas trail was a big deal with about seventy places taking part and thousands and thousands of tapas served. Everyone who handed in a leaflet with at least six stamps got a free entry to one of the city museums and there was a draw for a bigger prize.

Earlier Pinoso trails may have passed me by but, to the best of my knowledge, the first tapas trail here was this summer. It was tied in with the performances of a couple of classical Greek plays. We made a bit of a half hearted attempt to get involved but we hadn't checked the leflet properly and asked for one of the tapas on a Tuesday when the route only ran from Thursday to Sunday. We felt so stupid we threw the leaflets away and skulked at home till it was over.

There is another Pinoso tapas trail running at the moment. It is blessed with a name in Valencià. It started last Thursday and runs for the next three weeks with afternoon and evening sessions from Thursday to Sunday. Top prize is a weekend in a spa hotel and there are meals out to be won too. There are just fourteen bars involved but each one is producing a couple of tapas so the range isn't bad for a town with 8,000 people.

We asked a couple of sets of our British chums if they fancied doing a bit of the route with us. I think it was a new experience for both couples. It was a good evening. They got tapas in four places but, because I had to come from work I was a little later and just did three. The tapas weren't bad but they weren't inspired either. Most were a bit samey, something on a bit of bread, toast or cracker. Maybe I'm being a bit hard because I was denied the more amusing half of the experience as I had to drive home afterwards. Nonetheless it was excellent to be doing something on home turf

We were in good company too. There were lots of gangs of friends and couples with the leaflets doing just the same as us. Which bar next? We kept seeing the same people strolling from one bar to another just as we were.

Menorca

We've just been to Menorca an island about the same size as the Isle of Man and the most easterly point of Spain. Ryanair had an offer on cheapish flights and, as we've only ever done Mallorca in the Balearics, it seemed like a good opportunity. We went for a long weekend.

I have this marking system for films that I go to see. The scale is from one to five. I work on the assumption that if someone manages to finance and release a film in ordinary cinemas it will be perfectly OK. So the natural score for any film is three out of five. If it's better than expected it gets four or very rarely a five and if it's not so good a two or even a one. The problem with this system is that some perfectly well made Hollywood romcom will get the same score as a well made art house film. To solve the problem I added a couple of grades, three plus and three minus, to allow for a bit of personal comment on a film. Basically three plus is for a well produced film that I enjoyed and three minus for a well made film that wasn't my cup of tea.

Menorca gets a three. Everyone told me that it was beautiful. There were certainly plenty of us tourists there from all over Europe and farther afield. A lovely coastline they said and it's true but I wasn't that impressed to find it littered with retirement developments and overly twee housing. We were told that the two main towns, Mahón and Ciutadella, had a real historic feel to them with lots of architecture left behind after the 18th Century occupation by the British. True again; quite a lot of nice buildings and I noticed some sash windows as billed but I've seen places on the mainland that are much more impressive.

Menorca is dotted with things described as talayots - pre Christian stone mounds often with the remains of stone circles, altar pieces and houses close by. I'm a big fan of sites like Avebury, Carnac or Castlerigg but somehow the Menorcan sites we saw failed to light my imagination in the same way.

Acting on the advice of at least three "Top ten things to do in Menorca" that I found on the internet I dragged Maggie along to eat caldereta de langosta which turned out, as the name suggests, to be a lobster soup. It was fine but not so different from the seafood soups you get as part of cheap set meals. Maybe we only got sub standard examples of Menorcan cheese too but despite it being touted as a rare pleasure it all tasted a bit bland to me. Prices were generally relatively high for drinks and snacks wherever we went and despite being used to Spanish prices we constantly found that the banknote we had ready wasn't big enough, Service was remarkably friendly (for the most part) but it was also often notably slow.

I don't want to go on and sound negative. Maggie has already decided that I had a horrible time and I didn't. I thought it was jolly nice, I'm glad we've been there, I had a perfectly pleasant time but I'd hoped and expected to be impressed and I found it all a bit ordinary.

Maybe we just didn't have enough time there to get the real feel of it but much more likely is that I'm just a grumpy old man nowadays.

Tortilla de patatas

What's tortilla to you? Is it that Mexican pancake or is it a thick and unfolded potato (and onion) omelette?

Tortilla Española or tortilla de patatas is a Spanish classic. Basically you fry some spuds cut into slices and maybe some onions too. With or without onion is a debate - cubed or sliced potatoes too. Whilst the potatoes are softening you beat some eggs into a bowl - usually adding a pinch of salt. Then, when the frying is done, you drain off the oil and add the potatoes (and onions) to the beaten eggs. You return the mix to the frying pan, cook on one side till the "pancake" starts to firm up and then you either flip it over, a la Shrove Tuesday, or you use a plate or lid over the frying pan to help  you get the sticky side back into the pan to fry. When it has set to your preference you slide it out of the pan and set about eating it.

Of course you could set it aside to cool, Tortilla is nice cold too. It goes well in bread rolls. I'm not absolutely sure whether it gets wrapped in silver paper when it's going to be eaten later as part of a mid morning snack, on the beach or even as you sit at your lunchtime desk but if not silver paper then it is cut into wedges and popped into plastic containers, always called tupper here, for the snack to come.

It was one of my little language exercises to get students to tell me the ingredients and method for making a tortilla. Everyone had some subtle variation. The students were convinced that we Brits, out of Spain at least, call the dish Spanish Omelette. I'm not sure, it's a long time since I lived in the UK, but I'm pretty sure that a Spanish Omelette was something from the 1960s or 70s that was a normal omelette loaded with veg - things like peas and peppers.

We're trying to lose weight at the moment and I picked up one of the ready made tortillas in Mercadona to check the calories. I put it back quickly. The surprise though was not the calories. The shock was that there were two new recipes to add to the standard with and without onion varieties. One with peppers and one with chorizo. Had Jamie Oliver had a word with Mercadona about how to "improve" a classic? 

Good Lord I thought. What is the world coming to! Is nothing sacred?

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INGREDIENTS:

4 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced

6 eggs

1 onion, chopped

¼ litre olive oil

salt

RECIPE:

First, heat the oil in a large frying pan and then gently fry the sliced potatoes until almost soft, stirring from time to time so that they don't burn on the bottom of the pan. Add the onion and continue frying until all the pieces are soft. Drain the vegetables in a colander to get rid of the excess oil.

Beat the eggs in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Add the potatoes, etc. and mix well and check seasoning.

Heat a little oil in a frying pan on a moderate heat. Pour in the potatoes and eggs and shake the frying pan from time to time so that the omelette doesn't stick to the bottom. Once the bottom of the omelette has set, turn the heat down low and cover the pan. After about ten minutes, turn the omelette by placing either a flat plate or saucepan lid on the frying pan and quickly turning over. Gently slide the omelette back into the frying pan and continue frying, once again shaking the pan from time to time so that it doesn't stick to the bottom, until it has set all the way through.

With Nevil Shute and Chris Rea

On the beach that is.

Maggie's Mitsu is nine years old but Miitsubishi Spain phoned us about getting a software update. I suspect that they have come across some sort of fault but when I asked they said it was nothing more than customer support. Anyway we agreed to get it done at a dealer in San Juan which is the next coastal town along from Alicante city.

So we were at the beach. Now I don't care much for the beach. I'm obese so taking off most of my clothes and displaying myself for all and sundry to see in a public place is not something I do willingly. Add to that the fact that beaches are often made of sand. Sand is a powdery substance but the individual grains are usually hard quartz. This sand not only gets into your sandwiches and your hair it sneaks into every nook and crevice of your body no matter how intimate. I was eating sand all the way home. I generally keep out of the water too. I quite like water but as I wear contact lenses I always fear that they will be swept away to sea. Anyway what do you do about the bag with your wallet and mobile phone? Like shrouds there are no pockets in swimwear - well no waterproof ones at least.

Going to the beach though is a Spanish passion. I don't think that Spaniards behave particularly differently on the beach to us or the Germans or anyone else. There are the young ones who turn up with the minimum of equipment - towels, suncream, a book and the mobile phone and the three generational family groups who arrive with a veritable encampment - chairs, sunshades, windbreaks, beach games and an epicurean feast packed into coolboxes. Fat, old men and women queue up early in the morning on the busy beaches waiting for the beach cleaners to finish their work. At the off they head for the waterline and set up chairs and sunshades to bag their spot, which the families will later occupy, before heading back to their summer digs for a leisurely breakfast. Towels and Germans spring to mind.

If we are away from home and we tell Spaniards that we live in Alicante they always presume we live on the coast. They will congratulate us on the quality of the Costa Blanca beaches. Ask my students where they went over the weekend and the answer is to the beach. Question the families of Alicante or Murcia as to whether they have a summer house at the beach and the answer will almost certainly be that someone in their family does. Turn on the TV and go channel hopping and you will find a programme where people are being interviewed about their beach experiences.

The tourist figures are up for Spain. Once again it's tourism that's the motor for the economy. Where are those tourists heading - the landscapes of Galicia and Aragon, the marvellous Andalucian or Salmantino cities? No, they're headed for the beaches of Catalunya, Andalucia and the Islands. The Sunday supplements may be full of the voguish delights of rural tourism but it's on the beaches where it's standing room only.

As traditional as...

We were in Jumilla today for a while. Jumilla is a town just over the border into Murcia. They have "always" produced wine in Jumilla but it just keeps getting better and better. Today we were there for a very small part of their Fiestas de la Vendimia -the wine harvest festival.

So wine is a traditional crop in Jumilla just as pelotas and gazpacho are traditional food. We Pinoseros also claim wine and gazpacho as our own but as we are only 35km away I suppose that's fair enough. After all it's Yorkshire Pudding not Barnsley, Ripon or Cleckheaton Pudding though thinking about it we do have Bakewell Tart and Caerphilly Cheese. Anyway.

So when do things become traditional? Family names, surnames, generally pass from generation to generation. Surnames like Thompson, son of Tom, are equivalent to the Arabic ibn or bin names whilst the Spanish tend to use -ez endings, as in Dominguez. But why did it stop? My Dad was John so why am I not a Johnson? And if it's Fletcher and Barber and Smith why not Mr. Web Designer?

Although they are quite different outfits Spanish bullfighters, the ones who fight on foot, wear costumes based on 18th Century dress as do their horse mounted counterparts. Why did it stick at the 18th Century - why not the 16th or why aren't they dressed, like cyclists or swimmers, in the latest technologies?

So. Just 35kms between Jumilla and Pinoso but in Pinoso the traditional dress for women, in the Fiestas at least, is an incredibly ornate affair The local women folk dancers wear a much simpler skirt that seems to be of circle of cloth made to work as a skirt by multiple pleats. In the Villazgo festival in Pinoso traditional dress for women is more practical, less ornate and the men wear a black smock and neckerchief. Over in Jumilla the costume is much simpler again. It actually looks like something that people may have worn everyday at some time in the past. Cloth and woven grass shoes, simple skirts or trousers, white shirts for both sexes with shawls for the women and waistcoats and cummerbund like sashes for the men

This traditional clothing is only trotted out for traditional events. Women heading for the supermarket wear everyday skirts and jeans and shirts and tops. If anythinng were traditional summer dress for women at the moment it would be shorts and vests. For men shorts and T-shirts. Flip flops or sandals and not the traditional rope soled alpargatas.

I'm pleased to say that this divide between what's trotted out as traditional and what people actually do is not true of the wine or food. Just as Lancashire Hotpot is alive and well so are local traditional foods. In fact maybe it's time for a nice longaniza sandwich with a drop of monastrell to wash it down?

Still in business

Facilities in Culebrón include a post box, a social centre and a dusty basketball cum football area. Business wise we have the bodega and oil mill and rather surprisingly we still have two restaurants. For me these restaurants have the huge advantage that they are only a few hundred metres from our front door. Drinking alcohol with the meal becomes a possibility.

The Nou Culebrón opened in December 2012 and it's still open. Three separate bar restaurants have failed in the same building whilst we've been in the village so congratulations to Amador, the boss, for keeping it going.

The other restaurant Casa Eduardo was open when we arrived in the village and it still is. Eduardo's is best described as singular. The décor, the furniture and the tableware have not, to my knowledge, changed in the nine or so years we've been eating there. My chair was a bit wobbly. The man at the next table tried to find one that wasn't but gave up. The culinary offer is usually local rice or stews but not always.

I quite like going to Eduardo's. The man shows fortitude. I like the idea of supporting a local business. In his way Eduardo is always pleased to see us. He does tend to mumble a bit though and the imprecision of some of his offers along with my faltering language can cause misunderstandings. Maggie is less taken with the place than I am. She remembers the time when we played the inevitable game and she got a sausage.

It usually goes like this. Eduardo lunges; what would you like to eat? We parry; what have you got? For several years it used to get quite vague at this point. Only when you'd not ordered something did you realise that it was available. Mussels, for instance, used to be a regular on the unwritten menu but we were never offered them.  Working on the principle of ask and you shall receive Maggie asked after the availability of the local sausages. Her daring was rewarded with a single sausage served in splendid isolation on a well worn side plate.The last couple of times though the vagueness has gone.  I have been firmly guided towards the correct decision. The answers are restricted to yes or no. "Would you like a nice lamb chop?" I suspect that the kitchen is not overstocked.

Geoff and I went there today. Our meal included the inevitable fried almonds mixed with plain crisps, a basic salad and toasted bread served with sobrasada. Main course was a selection of perfectly good grilled meats with chips. For puddings we were given a choice of two, some hesitation on my part so Eduardo offered both on the same plate. I suppose there may have been very little of either left as we were given very small portions. Coffee too and the whole lot for the two of us was just 20€. Can't complain.

I'm sure Eduardo will still be there when Maggie gets back home in the summer. Something I am sure she is looking forward to

It's just rice

I was going to say that we had a famous restaurant in Pinoso then I thought about it. Obama is famous and Shakira too but I don't think that even restaurants as well known as el Celler de Can Roca are really famous. Well known maybe?

So there's a restaurant in Pinoso that's quite famous and it's famous for the local rice dish. I worked for a couple of years in a street very close to the restaurant. Time after time some big Audi or Porsche or Bentley would pull up alongside me, roll down the window and ask politely for the restaurant. My reply was word perfect I'd done it so often

This well known Pinoso restaurant is renowned amongst the locals for the unpleasantness of its owner and the outrageous price of its food. After all it's just rice. I've heard that said by Britons and Spaniards alike. I've never been. Too expensive for my wallet.

I need to take a moment here to make sure you're OK on this rice/arroz concept. Paella and rice are virtually synonymous. The big flat pan that rice is cooked in is called a paella and so the food cooked in it came to be called paella. In reality though paella/rice can vary significantly from the original Vesta recipe. In Valencia paellas seem to have a lot of seafood, chicken and veg. There's a rice, traditionally for Fridays, to comply with the once common "no meat on Friday" of good Catholics. It's made with cod and cauliflower. The rice cooked in fish stock has lots of names - in Cartagena it's called caldero. Down in Elche I think arroz con costra has loads of sausages and maybe chickpeas as well as the rice and the whole is topped off with an egg crust. Arroz negro is coloured with cuttlefish or squid ink. In Albacete they seem to like quite gooey rice, arroz meloso. And so it goes on. And on.

So around Pinoso our rice is thin, quite dry and with rabbit and snails. With my mum being here we've been to a lot of restaurants. Most of them cheap and cheerful. She wanted something better when we were in Culebrón. I took her and her pal Sheila to a restaurant called Elías in Chinorlet village very close to our house. Our welcome was very iffy and we were finally given a terrible table but once we were under way the service was excellent and the food a revelation.

Good wine is wasted on me. I'm of the "I like what I like" school. It's normally the same with food. But as I tucked into the traditional all i oli and tomato paste on toast I wondered if I could ever eat the normal supermarket all i oli again. I'd seen the cooks preparing it (If you don't know what all i oli is think of it as garlic mayonnaise) in the glass fronted kitchen as we waited for a table and I thought the whole rigmarole of rice cooking over wooden twigs and garlic being ground in a pestle and mortar was a bit pretentious. I have to admit though that it tasted fabulous. When the rice came it looked just as usual - not like the stuff you get in a ten Euro menú place - like the stuff from a decent mid range restaurant. It didn't taste like it though. I could actually taste the wood smoke that they go on about, the mix of tastes was just right, the rabbit and the snails (hunted not reared - yes they breed snails too!) were, well, just right too. It was a taste experience, a revelation. I now understand all the fuss about paella being the pièce de résistance of Spanish cuisine. Even my mum, who had suddenly declared that she didn't like rice after we had ordered the food but before it came, was won over.

Pinoso featured on a TV programme about the rice and other local foods in a programme called "Cooks without Stars." The man talking about Fondillon wine is Roberto from Culebrón. What a media star.

Finger dribbling fat and a diet coke please

To mark International Women's Day a local group - Pinoso against gender violence - organised a showing of a film, La fuente de las mujeres, which is about a group of North African women who, fed up of having to slog up a difficult path to collect water whilst their men folk sit around drinking tea, go on a sex strike until they get the water piped to the village.

The projector was one of those things you use to do a Power Point presentation so the image was small, very dark and affected by stray light. The sound wasn't great either so, although it seemed like a decent enough film, my understanding of the details of everything, apart from the main plot, was pretty rudimentary.

It used to happen to me as I wandered home up Huntingdon High Street and it happened to me tonight. Some sort of fat lust would draw me, inexorably, towards Bunter's. I fancied a kebab or kepab as we Spaniards usually say.

I'm not often in Pinoso at 11.30 on a Friday evening so I was a bit surprised at the long queue in the kebab shop at the bottom of Constitución and I went to the one in Colón instead. Even then I was, like Lady Louise Windsor, tenth in line.

In some ways it was just what I'd expect. The décor was characterless and basic. The man slicing the meat was a tad overweight, wore a striped fat stained shirt outside his trousers and had a close cropped haircut. His assistant was one of those young men best described as a youth. Spaniards were having trouble with his Spanish just as he had trouble with mine.

I've usually had my doners in versions of pitta in the shopping centre kebab houses I've been to here. When I asked for the 5.50€ Doner menu he waved hamburger rolls at me, which I declined. I realised I didn't have the faintest idea what the bread I wanted was called - neither pita nor tortita worked but, by a process of elimination, we got to a wrap. I thought the ones in wraps were called Durums but who knows?

Meat, if that's the right word for the stuff they put in kebabs, comes in either chicken or beef flavours - no lamb. I asked for beef but he gave me a mixture anyway which was what everyone else had asked for. It wasn't shaved into nice long slices, more torn into shreds. So the meat was spread on the circular wrap, the usual brown tinged lettuce and sad looking cucumber was loaded on. Sauce? Yes please, white and red sauces from those plastic bottles that make a sucking sound before they glug and spit - Chilli sauce? Yes please. That was squirted on with a flourish from at least a metre away then the whole thing was rolled very tight and wrapped in silver paper which proved remarkably effective at stopping all the filling from falling out as I ate. The chips got the same sauce treatment and, because I'm being careful about my weight, I asked for sugar free Coke.

The other diners were wearing coats because the door was open and it was only 3ºC outside, the lighting was fluorescent tubes. The table wasn't exactly clean, the plastic chair was very hard, the various coloured sauces oozed onto the polystyrene dishes through my fingers whilst the telly appeared to be speaking Turkish.

An authentic kebab experience.

'Til the only dry land were at Blackpool

I've been to some cold places in my life. England in January isn't that warm; the Isle of Lewis and Stockholm are often colder but they are not uncomfortable places. Culebrón on the other hand is uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. Outside it's about 7ºC and it's midday. The house isn't set up for it. Wind whistles under the doors, through the windows. Marble and tiled surfaces don't help. Built for summer, not for winter. The only warm place in the house is under the shower. Outside, the sky is blue, the sun is shining. Wrapped up, with gloves it's warm enough. But inside the chill soaks through your bones. Down in La Unión I haven't yet started to close the windows at night or use a heater but here. Brrr!

Our local petrol station has no petrol, no diesel and no gas bottles. Everyone says that the owner can't pay his bills so the oil company won't deliver except for cash payments. The next nearest petrol stations are at least 10kms away. The car wash is still in business though. I used it today rather than plunge my hands into a bucket of cold water.

The local bodega on the other hand was doing a roaring trade on Sunday. I think, though I'm not sure, that the farmers who produce the grapes which make the wine, have a running account with the bodega shop. They buy things on tick against the money they are paid for the grapes they harvest. The shop sells groceries, things for around the farm, workwear etc. It's an interesting place.

In the Santa Catalina district of the town, one of the older and possibly poorer parts of Pinoso they are having a fiesta because it's her day on the 25th. I plain forgot to go to see the street bonfires on Friday evening. Yesterday I was going to go and watch the flower offering and have a look at the mediaeval market as I drove back from the cinema but I changed my mind when I noticed that the temperature was hovering around 2ºC and there was a chill wind blowing. What fun in drinking a micro brewery beer or eating a chorizo roll with hands frozen by the cold? I did pop in today though.

There's a circus in town. I half wondered about going. The camel and the strange long horned cow type beast parked outside the big top looked very mangy and very out of place. I arrived to take a few snaps just as the Sunday matinee crowd came out. There wasn't much of an audience.

I'm just back from lunch down in the village hall. It was the Neighbourhood Association AGM. We always have one of the local paellas with rabbit and snails and gazpacho, a sort of rabbit stew with a flat form of dumpling. It's always the same. The meal started late, there was applause when the metre and a half paella pan was brought into the hall from the outside kitchen where it has been cooked over wood. There was plenty of drink and the actual meeting was sparsely attended and very disorganised. For the first time ever, and despite being the only foreigner in the place, I didn't feel too lost. I laughed when I didn't understand and I voted knowing what I was voting for despite the chaos. It looks like we're off to Benidorm again in March. Everybody else was drinking the very fashionable gintonics (gin and tonic) but someone found a bottle of whisky for me. I drained it. My typing may have suffereed.

The title, by the way, is from three ha'pence a foot by Marriott Edgar. Snaps on the Picasa link at the top of the page.

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It rained and it rained for a fortni't, 

And flooded the 'ole countryside. 

It rained and it kept' on raining, 

'Til the Irwell were fifty mile wide.

The 'ouses were soon under water, 

And folks to the roof 'ad to climb. 

They said 'twas the rottenest summer 

That Bury 'ad 'ad for some time. 

The rain showed no sign of abating, 

And water rose hour by hour, 

'Til the only dry land were at Blackpool, 

And that were on top of the Tower.

Welcomed into the bosom of our adopted family

I'm not much of a dancer. I don't care for it anyway but then I hurt my hip dancing in 1973 so there was a bit of a hiatus till I tried it again. That must have been the mid 90s. I hurt myself again then though I can't really blame the dancing. I was so drunk that I was a tad unsteady and I cracked my head on the wall when I was in the urinal. I didn't notice at the time but Maggie was apparently put off dancing by the trickle of blood running down my forehead. Anyway I don't dance.

So last night at around 2am I was the only person left seated at the big long table where we'd just eaten. Several people tried to persuade me to dance. I said no, I always say no. Looking at my actions from the outside I must be a bit of a party pooper. I never dance, never sing, never get involved in the hilarious games. Stand offish. I'm better when I've been drinking but I had to drive last night so there was no liquid help to hand.

The events leading up to the non dancing were odd. Last year as we wandered the Pinoso Fiesta we saw hundreds of people having a meal in the car park next to the Town Hall. It looked like good fun. So, this year when I read somewhere that to go to the Cena de Convivencia, something like the Living Together Dinner, you had to register at the Town Hall for a seat that's just what we did. At the time we were told that we had to provide our own food. Fair enough we thought, a late night picnic.

One of the leading lights in the Culebrón village hierarchy is a young woman called Elena. She works on the local radio and, if I understood what she told me correctly, she was reading out, on air, the names of the people going to the Cena and she saw our names there. It turns out, and we didn't understand this at all when we booked up, that the dinner exists principally for the groups that participate in the floral offering which takes place earlier on the same evening.

By sheer chance Elena saw our lone names and invited us to join her and a few other people we knew. At this point we were still under the impression that it was individuals, or groups of chums, taking the meal together. So began a series of WhatsApp messages as I tried to wrest the information from Elena about our part in the jollities. Pretty early we learned that the key element the food was going to come from a local roast chicken takeaway but in lots of ways we were still completely in the dark. When and where exactly would we meet, did we need to take plates and glasses, how was the food being bought, did we need starters, puddings or drinks to accompany the meal? In an English way I wanted full chapter and verse and in a Spanish way it was all in hand because it would be "as always."

It is ages since I have felt quite so confused about what was going on. My WhatsApp messages used lots of words like confused, lost and foreigners.

On the night of course it ran like clockwork. The villagers had everything under control. We were directed to the appropriate seats to make sure we weren't left out of anything. Maggie joined in without any problem. She was grinning, chatting and dancing.

Of course I wasn't dancing, I'm so old that my tenuous grip on the Spanish slipped away as the multidirectional conversation had to be shouted above the noise of the live band providing the dance music. Not much chatting then but I did do my best to grin.

 "Now you don't feel so lost, do you?" said Elena to Maggie.

Time

Knowing what time to go to something can be quite tricky. We've been celebrating in the village the last couple of weeks and by arriving about twenty minutes late for the Neighbourhood Association meal for instance we were something like an hour early. This isn't always the case. On sure fire way to make sure that you are late is to presume that the event will start late. It almost certainly will but you can't presume and if you do expect a punctual start. Lots of things do run to time, or at least more or less, but time has an elasticity in Spain that is sometimes surprising to we Brits. I'm still amazed for instance that TV programmes can start both late or early.

Away from punctuality there is a time for things. Like the way that lunchtime starts at around 2pm or evening meals around 9 or 9.30pm. When I'm working this timetable which involves most businesses closing in the mid afternoon and then re-opening for an "evening" stint suits me fine. That's because I run to the same schedule but during the summer break it's dead easy to get up a bit late, set off a bit late and find that the boat ride or museum or whatever is just about to close for lunch as you arrive. Lots of businesses by the way have summer opening hours which means opening earlier than usual but then closing for the day at lunchtime whereas they would normally re-open after a two or three hour break for another three or four hour slot.

During the summer most outdoor events start late simply because it's a bit cooler as well as giving people time to finish their evening meal. We went to a British organised event the other evening that started at 7.30pm. and it felt very early. On the other hand it was a good thing too because we were able to go on to a Spanish organised event at 11pm without having to leave early or worry about a time clash. Meeting people at midnight or later isn't unusual by any means and during the summer Pinoso is much more lively at 2am than it is at 7pm - which, by the way, would be seven in the afternoon and  not seven in the evening to the Spanish way of thinking. Evening, like afternoon is loosely governed by eating times.

We're going to see the Melendi concert, in the picture, just because it's happening in Pinoso. Notice the start time. The tickets are more precise though and say 23.59 just to avoid any doubt about which evening it is!

The Real Spain

We were probably as guilty as anyone. We wanted the Real Spain. That's the one where dark skinned men ride donkeys and raven haired señoritas swirl their skirts. Houses should probably be whitewashed and bougainvillea trimmed. A BMW xD35i would be a cause for young boys to point. Benidorm and Torremolinos would, like Bhopal or Fukushima, be places to avoid.

Not a lot of donkeys in Cartagena.  Though we did get the Friday off work because it was Dolores  - Nuestra Señora de los Dolores - Patron Saint of Cartagena. There were bands marching up and down the street getting ready for the processions, fine tuning their timing for Holy Week. They were surrounded by shoppers. All next week it will be big time Catholic ritual as the brotherhoods, dressed in robes that became the model for the Klan, parade around town carrying huge religious statues. One of my students told me that he dislikes the religious parades but he loves being in Cartagena for Holy Week. The town's alive he says.

On the way home to Culebrón we stopped in the industrial estate between Santomera and Abanilla to go to the restaurant that shares a metal box type industrial building with a sweet manufacturer. Lovely sugary smell as we left. We reckoned the restaurant would have a cheap set meal because there were lots of production line workers sitting at the tables outside having a smoke. We were right; the bar was heaving and the food was cheap. There were maybe five blokes behind the bar and the waiter dealing with our section was actually running between tables. It was as typical a bar as you could possibly want though there wasn't a whiff of bougainvillea.

We've got builders in. There are a couple of blokes plastering as I type. They'd said they'd be here around 10.30 and one of them did show up pretty punctually for a builder at 11.10. Before coming here they'd been to check that the solar powered hot water system they'd installed somewhere else yesterday was working properly. One of them couldn't come straight here after he'd checked that job because he had to take his daughter to her swimming class.

So, you see, we got the real Spain after all.

Bean there, done that

As we waited in the queue to pay, there in the place normally reserved for those last minute temptations - the sweets that have children tugging on their parent's sleeves and the diet breaking choolate bars - was a big box full of habas, broad beans. Maggie, can we have some broad beans Maggie, can we? She said no of course but a touch of petulance and the beans were mine.

I always associate raw broad beans with one of the first times that we took the MG out for a run with the Orihuela Seat 600 club. It was a sunny but nippy Sunday morning and the MG was parked up in a school playground along with lots of other classic cars. It was referendum day for the European Constitution and the school was acting as a polling station so there were quite a lot of people about one way and another. The car folk were breathing smoke with the cold air as they chewed on the obligatory breakfast of silver paper wrapped baguettes and canned drinks. From the back of an old Merc I think, but it may have been a Renault, someone was doling out part of their crop of home harvested broad beans. We were offered some but Maggie has never been one to take her mother's advice about eating her greens and, without Maggie's support, I was too shy to take any.

At this time of year the beans are all over the place. The first time I actually dared to join in and eat a few pods worth was when we were in some quite trendy bar somewhere. On the bar, completely out of place, was a big glass bowl full of broad bean pods. People were helping themselves and I finally did the same. I often eat things like sprouts and cabbage raw but I think it was the first time ever for broad beans. They were good.

I know, I know. Eating raw beans is hardly noteworthy but, then again, if we were down the Dog and Duck or Spade and Beckett would there be raw broad beans for the delectation of the customers? I think not. Something Spanish then.

We eat lupin seeds too but I suppose you know that.

This is not my beautiful house

Quite a strange experience today. We went for a meal. The odd thing was that it was in somebody's living room. A chap and his wife, who used to run a restaurant in Pinoso until they retired, now do meals to order from their home in the countryside.

A pal booked eight of us in. We ate quite a lot of very decent food for a rock bottom price sitting on green plastic patio chairs. Plenty of booze as well though some of us were driving and stuck to water.

At one point I was outside the chap's house having a cigar and staring at the sun bathed scenery. In the distance was the village of Algueña overshadowed by the huge marble quarry that produces so much of Pinoso's wealth. The man told me he'd worked there for 26 years before setting up his restaurant. He remembered me as an occasional customer from the time I worked in the furniture shop. I asked him if he didn't miss the convenience of town living. He didn't. He'd been to see his grandaughters dancing ballet in Pinoso the evening before and the day before that other members of his family had been to his house. What more could he want - a peaceful existence with friends and family close by?

I talk to a lot of Spanish people because of my job and it's one of the recurring themes. They have plenty of complaints about how things are but, when push comes to shove, the great majority seem very happy with their lot.

Sorry, I missed that

We've just been to the opening of a new bar - or, more likely, a bar restaurant - in Culebrón.

It's the same bar we went in when we were looking around the village before buying our house. That bar folded. We had a meal there when it re-opened, briefly, as a Uruguayan Steak House. That closed too but, with new people, it re-opened as Casa Pepe for a while. I seem to remember we managed three visits before they pulled down the shutters.


Now I know I'm quite forgetful but I'm surprised what I've already forgotten about the new bar. I've forgotten its name for instance, or when it will be open or what it will be serving.

Actually, come to think of it despite having a house in the village I don't remember being invited to the inaugral event. I do remember that Eduardo (the owner of another restaurant in Culebrón) mentioned that his sister intended to let out the bar/restaurant again and I recall that people at the Neighbourhood Association meal mentioned the opening to us. I don't remember seeing any official publicity though and although I've often been told that the sum of all human knowledge is on the Internet our new bar doesn't feature.

Whilst we were drinking the free drink and eating the free food tonight we were told that the family who will be running the business have been running a successful community bar in the nearby village of Chinorlet. I really do hope that they manage to repeat that success in Culebrón. Having a community meeting point in Culebrón, especially one with beer, would be a huge plus.

I'm not sure though, from what I've seen so far, that my hopes will be realised.

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We went back today. It's called Nou Culebrón. We went in around 4pm with the intention of getting a quick coffee, just to show willing. The restaurant was full, there were lots of staff most of whom seem very occupied. Well at least they seemed too occupied to say hello or  to serve us.

Bread and tomato

Here in Alicante and just across the border into Murcia we eat a lot of toast with grated tomato  - particularly at breakfast or brunch time. It's also very common to get either bread or toast served along with little dishes of grated tomato and all-i-oli as a free appetiser before a substantial meal. Easy enough, nothing too complicated. Then I came across this piece written by a Catalan. You will see that they take the whole thing pretty seriously. The writer is disparaging of our ready pulped tomato - the devil's work!

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The ingredients to prepare it couldn't be easier – bread, ripe tomatoes, olive oil and salt. There is a second option which is to toast the bread and rub garlic on it but that's a matter of choice.

In Catalonia which, claims this snack as its own, they use “pa de pagès” or “peasant bread” which is the typical rounded loaf found in bakers the length and breadth of Spain. It's usually described as “village bread” or “farmhouse bread” or sometimes as “a drum loaf” - the important thing is that the bread should have an open grain and not be too compact. The bread is cut into slices and theses can be used as they are or they can be toasted a little. Should you decide to use garlic to flavour the bread or toast don't use much and just rub the garlic once or twice along the length. If you don't have access to the correct shaped bread wood baked bread of any sort does nearly as well.

Cut some ripe juicy tomatoes in half and rub the open face of the tomato onto the bread until the juice and the pulp give a nice pink colour to the bread. Never use tomato purée or ready pulped tomatoes – that's just not right – always rub fresh tomatoes directly onto the bread. The best tomatoes are “hung vine tomatoes” or “tomates de colgar” which are soft, juicy and have a lovely red colour.

Afterwards we add a little sprinkle of salt and a generous squirt of good virgin olive oil. Eat immediately.

The secret is not to prepare the dish beforehand because the bread will absorb the juice and become too sloppy and flabby. You have to prepare it as you're ready to eat it before the tomato and the oil soak into the bread.

In Catalonia it's very common to eat the bread and tomato with good mountain ham or with one of the the many varieties of local sausages. It goes well with a potato omelette too, with French omelette and indeed with any number of dishes.

It's a typically Mediterranean dish – bread, tomatoes, olive oil and garlic – healthy and easy to make. But the best thing is that it is yummy.