Sunday, July 12, 2009
Café Con Leche
Spain has always had an interest in milk, even if, until recently, you couldn’t find a cold glass of it anywhere.
The old milk was a definite bluish colour and came in a 1.5l glass bottle with a short and narrow neck and a metal cramp, like a coke bottle. This stuff could sit in the sun for weeks without losing its taste and often did. The blue colour came, apocryphally, from the formaldehyde that kept the mixture quiet. It didn’t taste good, which probably explains why breakfast cereal came late to Spain.
Pour that stuff over your Frosties – the milk would eat ‘em up before you could….
Later UHT milks from different companies, now in the tetrabrik box, became acceptable for coffees and so on. An English tea-bag, smuggled out in the carry-on luggage by someone coming-to-stay, would be pretty badly shaken by being diluted by this stuff, but you can get used to anything. Nowadays, we even have sippin’ milk in the supermarkets. Tastes pretty good, too.
While milk has never been considered a serious drink (despite the best efforts of some of the producers to tell us different in the usual kids adverts), it has certainly spawned a whole slew of versions. We have milk with vitamins, milk with calcium, skimmed milk, partially skimmed milk, milk with royal jelly, milk with acidophilus (a handy bacteria apparently found in drool), milks with Omega three, phosphorus, folic b and fibre, specially flavoured chocolate, vanilla and strawberry milks, rice milk and soya veggy milk. All competing for your attention on the shelf. How many times have you brought home the ‘wrong’ one? Bertha, what the hell’s this stuff?
The hardest one of the entire lot to find on the shelf of the supermarket seems to be ‘full bog-standard milk’. It’s like ordering Vanilla in an Italian ice cream shop.
In point of fact, I doubt any of those UHT milks (with additives or indeed subtractatives) ever loitered under a cow. Certainly Mrs Rambeau’s pet calf, Petit Suisse, refused point blank to drink one particular brand, the Valencian-produced ‘Leche Ram’, a sort of ‘can’t believe it’s not milk’ product. I see it’s since gone pear-shaped. Perhaps the calf knew something.
At the same time, yoghurt has done just fine. I think I first tried yoghurts here in Spain as a child. The Danone people (a company from Barcelona), were putting out their early flavours by the time I first arrived here in 1966 (they actually started in 1919, selling the stuff in farmacias) and apart from the plain one (add jam and sugar), there was at least a strawberry one going strong. A strapping young fellow called Danon, after whom the product was named, died the other day at the impressive age of 102, so the stuff can’t be all that bad for you.
Forget dithering between the strawberry and the banana varieties: in these modern times, there are an untold number of flavours clogging up the nation’s cold-shelves, with anything that grew on a tree or a stalk being processed into a yoghurt cup. You can now even get ‘Greek yoghurt’ (thicker than the usual stuff). Currently in three flavours and sales, by all accounts, growing through the roof.
Spain is not, with this notable exception, very kind to Greece, preferring for some odd reason to pretend that it doesn’t exist (try and find a Greek restaurant, a pair of crapcatchers or a decent bottle of ouzo).
Together with yoghurt, another milk-based little number on the shelves is guajada, rennet made from sheep’s milk. It comes in a little stone pot. With a squirt of honey, it’s pretty good in an ‘ummm, this tastes healthy’ sort of way.
Ice Cream
Spain triumphs with its ice creams. The main area for ‘artesanal’ ices is the interior of Alicante and Valencia provinces, notably Jijona (also famous for its nougat). Across the country, heladerías dot the main streets and offer dozens of alternative flavours. They (thank goodness) are all licensed, so you can always put a shot of whisky on top of your tart. In fact, tarta al guisgüi is one of the best and most august of Spain’s postres, together with the traditional old block of hard ice-cream with two or three flavours (vanilla, strawberry and chocolate) that you make a sticky sandwich out of. In regular Spanish bars across the nation, there is usually a deep freeze full of cornets and lollies together with one of those large cardboard signs on the wall above advertising the different flavours, shapes and styles of ice cream, available or not.
In the milky dessert range, we find the crema catalana (a custardy thing with a crunchy topping of burnt sugar), arroz con leche (an oversweet rice pudding), the natilla (another custardy thing) and the ubiquitous flan, the crème caramel. Then, there’s leche frita, or ‘fried milk’ – it comes in caramel covered chewy lumps – to try as well.
The cheeses available in the past used to either be that dreadful Dutch bola – a large red ball of tasteless dry queso, or a thin slice of cream cheese in silver foil from those fine people at (I hope appropriately called) The Laughing Cow, or the remarkably good Manchego, made from a mixture of milks from goat, cow and sheep. No doubt in the old days topped up with a drop of formaldehyde. More recently, we can add blue cheese, processed slices of industrial pseudo-queso, babybelle and cheddar, plus a few shy home-made Spanish cheeses from the north (Idiazabal for example) edging onto the shelves.
The butter used to come in a sturdy round can from Morocco. Probably started out as camel’s milk. You needed a tin-opener to gain entry. Which explains why we still mainly use margarines for our pieces of toast.
Before the fridge came along, and those fat blue bottles of Puleva were still being used for arcane cooking reasons, Spaniards would often put condensed milk (which I think came from Holland) in their coffee. They still do, and as a ‘bonbón’, one of over a hundred different types of café you can order from the bar, your ‘black n’ white’ coffee will give you a pretty good kick-start in the morning.
The old milk was a definite bluish colour and came in a 1.5l glass bottle with a short and narrow neck and a metal cramp, like a coke bottle. This stuff could sit in the sun for weeks without losing its taste and often did. The blue colour came, apocryphally, from the formaldehyde that kept the mixture quiet. It didn’t taste good, which probably explains why breakfast cereal came late to Spain.
Pour that stuff over your Frosties – the milk would eat ‘em up before you could….
Later UHT milks from different companies, now in the tetrabrik box, became acceptable for coffees and so on. An English tea-bag, smuggled out in the carry-on luggage by someone coming-to-stay, would be pretty badly shaken by being diluted by this stuff, but you can get used to anything. Nowadays, we even have sippin’ milk in the supermarkets. Tastes pretty good, too.
While milk has never been considered a serious drink (despite the best efforts of some of the producers to tell us different in the usual kids adverts), it has certainly spawned a whole slew of versions. We have milk with vitamins, milk with calcium, skimmed milk, partially skimmed milk, milk with royal jelly, milk with acidophilus (a handy bacteria apparently found in drool), milks with Omega three, phosphorus, folic b and fibre, specially flavoured chocolate, vanilla and strawberry milks, rice milk and soya veggy milk. All competing for your attention on the shelf. How many times have you brought home the ‘wrong’ one? Bertha, what the hell’s this stuff?
The hardest one of the entire lot to find on the shelf of the supermarket seems to be ‘full bog-standard milk’. It’s like ordering Vanilla in an Italian ice cream shop.
In point of fact, I doubt any of those UHT milks (with additives or indeed subtractatives) ever loitered under a cow. Certainly Mrs Rambeau’s pet calf, Petit Suisse, refused point blank to drink one particular brand, the Valencian-produced ‘Leche Ram’, a sort of ‘can’t believe it’s not milk’ product. I see it’s since gone pear-shaped. Perhaps the calf knew something.
At the same time, yoghurt has done just fine. I think I first tried yoghurts here in Spain as a child. The Danone people (a company from Barcelona), were putting out their early flavours by the time I first arrived here in 1966 (they actually started in 1919, selling the stuff in farmacias) and apart from the plain one (add jam and sugar), there was at least a strawberry one going strong. A strapping young fellow called Danon, after whom the product was named, died the other day at the impressive age of 102, so the stuff can’t be all that bad for you.
Forget dithering between the strawberry and the banana varieties: in these modern times, there are an untold number of flavours clogging up the nation’s cold-shelves, with anything that grew on a tree or a stalk being processed into a yoghurt cup. You can now even get ‘Greek yoghurt’ (thicker than the usual stuff). Currently in three flavours and sales, by all accounts, growing through the roof.
Spain is not, with this notable exception, very kind to Greece, preferring for some odd reason to pretend that it doesn’t exist (try and find a Greek restaurant, a pair of crapcatchers or a decent bottle of ouzo).
Together with yoghurt, another milk-based little number on the shelves is guajada, rennet made from sheep’s milk. It comes in a little stone pot. With a squirt of honey, it’s pretty good in an ‘ummm, this tastes healthy’ sort of way.
Ice Cream
Spain triumphs with its ice creams. The main area for ‘artesanal’ ices is the interior of Alicante and Valencia provinces, notably Jijona (also famous for its nougat). Across the country, heladerías dot the main streets and offer dozens of alternative flavours. They (thank goodness) are all licensed, so you can always put a shot of whisky on top of your tart. In fact, tarta al guisgüi is one of the best and most august of Spain’s postres, together with the traditional old block of hard ice-cream with two or three flavours (vanilla, strawberry and chocolate) that you make a sticky sandwich out of. In regular Spanish bars across the nation, there is usually a deep freeze full of cornets and lollies together with one of those large cardboard signs on the wall above advertising the different flavours, shapes and styles of ice cream, available or not.
In the milky dessert range, we find the crema catalana (a custardy thing with a crunchy topping of burnt sugar), arroz con leche (an oversweet rice pudding), the natilla (another custardy thing) and the ubiquitous flan, the crème caramel. Then, there’s leche frita, or ‘fried milk’ – it comes in caramel covered chewy lumps – to try as well.
The cheeses available in the past used to either be that dreadful Dutch bola – a large red ball of tasteless dry queso, or a thin slice of cream cheese in silver foil from those fine people at (I hope appropriately called) The Laughing Cow, or the remarkably good Manchego, made from a mixture of milks from goat, cow and sheep. No doubt in the old days topped up with a drop of formaldehyde. More recently, we can add blue cheese, processed slices of industrial pseudo-queso, babybelle and cheddar, plus a few shy home-made Spanish cheeses from the north (Idiazabal for example) edging onto the shelves.
The butter used to come in a sturdy round can from Morocco. Probably started out as camel’s milk. You needed a tin-opener to gain entry. Which explains why we still mainly use margarines for our pieces of toast.
Before the fridge came along, and those fat blue bottles of Puleva were still being used for arcane cooking reasons, Spaniards would often put condensed milk (which I think came from Holland) in their coffee. They still do, and as a ‘bonbón’, one of over a hundred different types of café you can order from the bar, your ‘black n’ white’ coffee will give you a pretty good kick-start in the morning.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
No Straight Lines
There’s an exhibition of sculptures by Bruce Cameron, a Londoner who now lives in Oria in north eastern Almería, in the nearby town of Olula del Río. Olula del Río (there’s an Olula del Campo nearby) turns out to be a bit of a dump, although it has one of th
e most astonishing art museums, the Museo Casa Ibañez, where the exhibition is being held. Bruce is a spry 70 year old and has been working with wood, ceramics and metal – here driftwood from a 1987 flood in Dorset – since his first exhibition in 1975.The exhibition is being held in the Museo Casa Ibañez, which is a large private museum owned by Andrés García Ibañez who, as the pictures here show, can’t half paint! He has an international following and favours grotesque portraits of curas, policias and politicos (and sometimes royalty as here) together with delicate portraits of women. The twelve room museum also houses a collection of XIX and XX Century Spanish art, including Sorolla, Villegas and Fortuny.
In the presentation (first picture above) Bruce is on the left. The woman, second from left, is the councillor for culture from the diputación de Almería (the county council). On the right is Andrés García Ibañez, who in his speech, noted that the public authorities spend almost nothing on culture and the arts. García Ibañez actually covers most of the cost of the museum himself.The exhibition and museum are open to the public evenings from 7.00pm - 9.00pm Tuesday through Sunday. Mornings (with a guide) call 950 441 000 (español).
Monday, July 06, 2009
Wall of Sound
It was a noisy week, between the fiestas from our village, starting at 11.30pm the other Friday and running through to the Sunday evening, and those celebrated in the town next door, which managed to raise five nights of music and party-time from the Saturday until the final bonfires of San Juan the following Wednesday, whence, I must add, our village returned to the fray, hung-over but defiant.
We had undergone the Moors and Christians bash, an annual tradition stretching back all the way to 1988 when someone thought of a merry way to attract some extra tourism, and to loose off the town-hall’s collection of fireworks while getting everyone to dress up as Moors (granny’s night-shirt), or Christians (old army clothes).
Or rather, it was the time to rent some expensive and amazing costumes from those places in Alicante that stock the different outfits and to try not to get beer or pinchito-juice all over them. It was a chance to remember, or indeed to re-invent, the story of Mojácar’s fall to the invaders in 1488.
The town was taken by the idea and enthusiastically divided itself up into supporters of the two faiths. The socialists donned Moorish garb and the conservatives went with the Christian outfits. The town’s under-employed pyro-technician, who until then had scampered about on the church’s roof on New Year’s Eve, blasting powder off to celebrate the occasion, or during the fiestas in August blowing tens of thousands of euros in thunder-flashes and other delights of the ancient art of keeping everyone awake, was naturally ecstatic. Moors and Christians means flashes, crashes, explosions, bombs, booms and bangs. Powder under the fingernails as he and his acolytes fire great chains of fireworks that will light up the sky (traditionally from the glowing nub of a cigar), or launch those ear-splitting rockets so beloved by fiesta-goers in Andalucía.
There are six bands or record-thumping lunatic DJs in the six barracks plus another band in the main square during this particular fiesta, together with the disco-bars with their terraces and open windows. More explosions. In all, a cacophony of sound that shrivels the soul. In Andalucía – or probably for that matter in the rest of Spain – a party that begins at 10.30pm, or half past one in the morning, won’t stop until ‘late’ – which usually means ‘sometime the following afternoon’.
That was on the right hand. On the left, Garrucha was enjoying its five-day run up to San Juan (the fireworks and bonfire on the beach with a sandy and agreeably raw sardine as the excuse - another modern festival designed, once again, more for the visitors and their fat purses than for the residents). Five days of ‘battle of the DJs’. Our house is located somewhere equidistant between these two towns, in an area described by the previous owner as ‘quiet and bucolic’.
So, I had to stay in with the windows closed and a clattering fan from that strange shop on the beach attempting to cool things down, tormented by some erratic but persistent explosions and the bass-beat from a hundred discos passing easily through the doors and down the chimney; the dogs going nuts, barking and throwing themselves at the door or whimpering under the bed as I curled up on the soaking mattress munching sleeping pills, or then there was the Plan B: a breathless walk up to the main square following the ‘if you can’t beat them’ philosophy. What's a person going to do?
The idea of Phil Spector’s ‘wall of sound’ must have come from a fiesta. It’s to keep the spirits away. Or, if your spirits come in a bottle, then judiciously mixed and drained repeatedly. Only the Spanish can claim a ‘hangover’ as a reasonable excuse to miss the following day’s work.
Down in the Bar
Now, I’m the type who can normally hear a pin drop – well, a fairly large pin, a rolling pin for example – but once there at the bar having pantomimed for a beer, with music coming from one side, a specially loud coffee grinder in action on the other, several televisions with different football matches going on, or a bullfight, together with a dozen different conversations typically held in high bellows, roars of motorbikes outside and a few explosions across the street to help wash things down, I find that my directional hearing is starting to falter, either that or I always end up having my drink with someone like Whispering Dave.
Have you ever grinned, nodded, grimaced and twitched at somebody in a loud bar without having a clue as to what is being said? This is, in fact, a popular pastime (despite the raised voices) and, to encourage this, bars have tile floors, hard surfaces, and walls and ceiling with as little decoration (which might in some way ‘eat’ or deflect the sound) as possible. Since everyone knows that the only interesting person in a bar is oneself, it’s not worth wasting too much time attempting to listen to other people’s views. Anyway, there’s a really good show about fireworks just started up on one of the tellies.
It is said that Spain is the second noisiest country in the world, after Japan. The only reason that Japan manages to be noisier, and this is something which Spain feels is a bit unfair, is because of the paper walls used in construction by Japanese builders and promoters. An intriguing idea indeed: the Murcians are said to be making tests. That and people shouting ‘banzai’ at odd hours. It all adds up.
But we have much to be proud of. The children here are encouraged to stay up late and really let rip with their lungs. Most of the people dancing in the square the other night at three in the morning when I got there were under nine. A small child’s bellow, given full and frank encouragement, is a wonder to behold and it is here, as the kids attempt to accompany the over-dressed singer’s stellar version of ‘Pajaritos por aquí’, that the citizens of the world’s second noisiest country begin to lose their hearing – and, come to think of it, their taste in music.
Which is why, to truly communicate in Spain, one needs to gesticulate heavily. It helps the flow.
The cinemas – especially the summer open-air ones with their open bars and loud conversation – are good places for guests to this country to learn the language and catch up with incipient hearing loss. Lip-reading doesn’t work, since the characters on the screen have been dubbed. They’re also probably saying something more interesting than the original script-writers ever imagined anyway.
I’m not complaining, having now lost most of my hearing from living here so long, I suppose that I would feel completely isolated in Switzerland, where everybody whispers.
To really get the best out of Spain, you must speak up!
We had undergone the Moors and Christians bash, an annual tradition stretching back all the way to 1988 when someone thought of a merry way to attract some extra tourism, and to loose off the town-hall’s collection of fireworks while getting everyone to dress up as Moors (granny’s night-shirt), or Christians (old army clothes).
Or rather, it was the time to rent some expensive and amazing costumes from those places in Alicante that stock the different outfits and to try not to get beer or pinchito-juice all over them. It was a chance to remember, or indeed to re-invent, the story of Mojácar’s fall to the invaders in 1488.
The town was taken by the idea and enthusiastically divided itself up into supporters of the two faiths. The socialists donned Moorish garb and the conservatives went with the Christian outfits. The town’s under-employed pyro-technician, who until then had scampered about on the church’s roof on New Year’s Eve, blasting powder off to celebrate the occasion, or during the fiestas in August blowing tens of thousands of euros in thunder-flashes and other delights of the ancient art of keeping everyone awake, was naturally ecstatic. Moors and Christians means flashes, crashes, explosions, bombs, booms and bangs. Powder under the fingernails as he and his acolytes fire great chains of fireworks that will light up the sky (traditionally from the glowing nub of a cigar), or launch those ear-splitting rockets so beloved by fiesta-goers in Andalucía.
There are six bands or record-thumping lunatic DJs in the six barracks plus another band in the main square during this particular fiesta, together with the disco-bars with their terraces and open windows. More explosions. In all, a cacophony of sound that shrivels the soul. In Andalucía – or probably for that matter in the rest of Spain – a party that begins at 10.30pm, or half past one in the morning, won’t stop until ‘late’ – which usually means ‘sometime the following afternoon’.
That was on the right hand. On the left, Garrucha was enjoying its five-day run up to San Juan (the fireworks and bonfire on the beach with a sandy and agreeably raw sardine as the excuse - another modern festival designed, once again, more for the visitors and their fat purses than for the residents). Five days of ‘battle of the DJs’. Our house is located somewhere equidistant between these two towns, in an area described by the previous owner as ‘quiet and bucolic’.
So, I had to stay in with the windows closed and a clattering fan from that strange shop on the beach attempting to cool things down, tormented by some erratic but persistent explosions and the bass-beat from a hundred discos passing easily through the doors and down the chimney; the dogs going nuts, barking and throwing themselves at the door or whimpering under the bed as I curled up on the soaking mattress munching sleeping pills, or then there was the Plan B: a breathless walk up to the main square following the ‘if you can’t beat them’ philosophy. What's a person going to do?
The idea of Phil Spector’s ‘wall of sound’ must have come from a fiesta. It’s to keep the spirits away. Or, if your spirits come in a bottle, then judiciously mixed and drained repeatedly. Only the Spanish can claim a ‘hangover’ as a reasonable excuse to miss the following day’s work.
Down in the Bar
Now, I’m the type who can normally hear a pin drop – well, a fairly large pin, a rolling pin for example – but once there at the bar having pantomimed for a beer, with music coming from one side, a specially loud coffee grinder in action on the other, several televisions with different football matches going on, or a bullfight, together with a dozen different conversations typically held in high bellows, roars of motorbikes outside and a few explosions across the street to help wash things down, I find that my directional hearing is starting to falter, either that or I always end up having my drink with someone like Whispering Dave.
Have you ever grinned, nodded, grimaced and twitched at somebody in a loud bar without having a clue as to what is being said? This is, in fact, a popular pastime (despite the raised voices) and, to encourage this, bars have tile floors, hard surfaces, and walls and ceiling with as little decoration (which might in some way ‘eat’ or deflect the sound) as possible. Since everyone knows that the only interesting person in a bar is oneself, it’s not worth wasting too much time attempting to listen to other people’s views. Anyway, there’s a really good show about fireworks just started up on one of the tellies.
It is said that Spain is the second noisiest country in the world, after Japan. The only reason that Japan manages to be noisier, and this is something which Spain feels is a bit unfair, is because of the paper walls used in construction by Japanese builders and promoters. An intriguing idea indeed: the Murcians are said to be making tests. That and people shouting ‘banzai’ at odd hours. It all adds up.
But we have much to be proud of. The children here are encouraged to stay up late and really let rip with their lungs. Most of the people dancing in the square the other night at three in the morning when I got there were under nine. A small child’s bellow, given full and frank encouragement, is a wonder to behold and it is here, as the kids attempt to accompany the over-dressed singer’s stellar version of ‘Pajaritos por aquí’, that the citizens of the world’s second noisiest country begin to lose their hearing – and, come to think of it, their taste in music.
Which is why, to truly communicate in Spain, one needs to gesticulate heavily. It helps the flow.
The cinemas – especially the summer open-air ones with their open bars and loud conversation – are good places for guests to this country to learn the language and catch up with incipient hearing loss. Lip-reading doesn’t work, since the characters on the screen have been dubbed. They’re also probably saying something more interesting than the original script-writers ever imagined anyway.
I’m not complaining, having now lost most of my hearing from living here so long, I suppose that I would feel completely isolated in Switzerland, where everybody whispers.
To really get the best out of Spain, you must speak up!
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Sticky n' Steamy
It's hot here in Southern Spain. The electricity bill has just gone up (again) and we can't afford, and don't have, aircon in the house. So, we get up early and we have a good siesta during the afternoon. We drink lots of fluids, including cold beers, and move slowly, except when transfering ourselves from one piece of shade to another. We are in Orange Alert, although, contemplating the tourists on the beach yesterday, I think it should be better known as 'Pink Alert'.
So, early each morning, before the day starts in earnest, I check the Internet. Just like you do. I see the Spanish news sites, I answer my e-mails and I check the forums, blogs and other interesing sites about Spain - all available on my The Entertainer Online, updated daily.
Dang, wouldya look at that - suckered in on an advert!
So, early each morning, before the day starts in earnest, I check the Internet. Just like you do. I see the Spanish news sites, I answer my e-mails and I check the forums, blogs and other interesing sites about Spain - all available on my The Entertainer Online, updated daily.
Dang, wouldya look at that - suckered in on an advert!
Friday, June 26, 2009
Don't Let Them Eat Cake
Do you remember ‘the Twinkie Defence’? This was the story of some mad bastard who ran into the mayor of San Francisco’s office many years ago and shot several people to death, including Hizzonor. The Californian police, failing for once to shoot the ‘alleged perpetrator of this heinous and unprovoked attack', carted him off to clink where, no doubt, he was treated to ‘advanced interrogation techniques’. All correctly administrated and in the nicest possible way.
Well, the pesky defence lawyers got hold of him and discovered that he had ingested a couple of cup cakes before bursting through the doors of City Hall. Their defence was based on this simple meal – the sugar in the cup cakes (or ‘Twinkies’ as the Americans call them) had gone to his head.
Imagine what he might have done if he had eaten an entire box of them.
Here in Spain, cakes are to be seen and admired, but never, ever eaten. They vary from the ones made out of (some white stuff that looks like) confectioner’s cream, with sugar added, some extra squirty stuff from a can, some more sugar, and some sugar. The better ones have a glass of sticky rum splashed over them to make them scrumptious (I’m beginning to sound like the Sol Times). No, I’m kidding. They’re horrible.
We had to buy one the other day for a child’s birthday. ‘Hapy Birhtday to Jonhathon’ was lovingly picked out in vermillion paste across the top of this monster. Luckily Jonhathon isn’t much of a reader and failed to notice the errata. He nevertheless picked up a valuable lesson after finishing his second piece of the confection.
Always sit near the door.
At home, we disagree about cakes. I like a fruit cake prepared several months before, stuffed with cherries and whatever else it is they put in those things and covered with marzipan and icing; while my wife prefers something dry and chocolaty with a wisp of sickly ‘frosting’ dabbed on top. She’s American of course.
But the Andalucians. OMG. The best place to start with local cakes is at the Bédar fiesta where you can admire a range of er, sweet things usually covered in enthusiastic if incautious wasps. These marvels of the cakemakers' art are usually designed more for show than for tell. They will be old, hard and stuffed with ‘angel hair’, also known as sugared pumpkin mush. The icing will remind the gourmet of the stuff the Turre barber uses after finishing your haircut – sets like cement, crackly at first but later turning into powder. The entire cake, built to both look good and to last, should never be eaten on an empty stomach.
There is a local version of a Christmas cake; it’s made with bread-flower and small chewy bits which turn out to be chicharrón – pig’s crackling. These are mixed in with some other bits of angelica and other dried fruit. Which leads to a question for the ‘Ask the Reader’ page. What does fresh angelica look like? The Christmas cakes also follow the dangerous British custom with the sixpence by putting a small metal virgin somewhere in the mix. A fashion no doubt invented by dentists.
Sweetmeats
Andalucía, under the control of the Moors for many centuries, enjoys something a bit heavier than a sponge cake covered with silver crunchy things. The usual fillings (which in Morocco or the Middle East can be quite delicious) include dates, nuts, dried fruit and lashings of honey. One of those babies and the Twinkie Murderer would have settled for a good sleep.
But the most likely place to find a cake is with one’s breakfast. We have ‘Napolitanos’ which are buns filled (or rather ‘spray-painted’) with ‘cream’ or ‘chocolate’. They vary from warm and good to dry, old and rancid. You can dip them in your coffee – sometimes, indeed, you are obliged to. The most popular bun is the ‘Madalena’ which is a simple and rather tasteless sponge scone. Well, spongy anyway. It comes in a plastic sack. The ‘Cruasán’ is the Spanish croissant, made with pork fat rather than butter. Not very good as a rule, especially when it’s been on the cake-shelf for a couple of days. There are a few brand-name cakes in plastic packets, chocolate Swiss-roll types of things, including an frightening looking pink one called a ‘Pantera Rosa’ which I both imagine and hope is banned in the Greater San Francisco area. Lastly, the ever-popular and industrial doughnut, the ‘Donut’, which comes in assorted flavours and a truly alarming collection of chemicals, food additives, colourings, flavourings, preservatives and conservatives. Personally, I love ‘em.
As our area has enthusiastically grasped the nettle of the Twenty-first Century, where you can no longer find a simple salad on the menu, or pig n’ chips without an endless complication of sauce and adornment (I had slices of strawberry surrounding my lamb chops the other evening in a Mojácar hostelry), so, too, our coffee shops have improved in the cake department. We have Italian, French and British cakes, scones, pies and doughnuts which are a far cry from the Bédar fiestas. Places where these are served are usually heavily patrolled by diabetic sparrows, anxious to die at an early age in a blissful sugar-rush.
Many alcoholics, when they give up the demon drink, are said to turn to sweets. Cakes, ice cream (delicious in Spain), chocolates and sticky things in plastic cups. I wonder if they have an effect. Did George Bush turn from booze to Twinkies – and was the War on Terror the unhappy result?
Well, the pesky defence lawyers got hold of him and discovered that he had ingested a couple of cup cakes before bursting through the doors of City Hall. Their defence was based on this simple meal – the sugar in the cup cakes (or ‘Twinkies’ as the Americans call them) had gone to his head.
Imagine what he might have done if he had eaten an entire box of them.
Here in Spain, cakes are to be seen and admired, but never, ever eaten. They vary from the ones made out of (some white stuff that looks like) confectioner’s cream, with sugar added, some extra squirty stuff from a can, some more sugar, and some sugar. The better ones have a glass of sticky rum splashed over them to make them scrumptious (I’m beginning to sound like the Sol Times). No, I’m kidding. They’re horrible.
We had to buy one the other day for a child’s birthday. ‘Hapy Birhtday to Jonhathon’ was lovingly picked out in vermillion paste across the top of this monster. Luckily Jonhathon isn’t much of a reader and failed to notice the errata. He nevertheless picked up a valuable lesson after finishing his second piece of the confection.
Always sit near the door.
At home, we disagree about cakes. I like a fruit cake prepared several months before, stuffed with cherries and whatever else it is they put in those things and covered with marzipan and icing; while my wife prefers something dry and chocolaty with a wisp of sickly ‘frosting’ dabbed on top. She’s American of course.
But the Andalucians. OMG. The best place to start with local cakes is at the Bédar fiesta where you can admire a range of er, sweet things usually covered in enthusiastic if incautious wasps. These marvels of the cakemakers' art are usually designed more for show than for tell. They will be old, hard and stuffed with ‘angel hair’, also known as sugared pumpkin mush. The icing will remind the gourmet of the stuff the Turre barber uses after finishing your haircut – sets like cement, crackly at first but later turning into powder. The entire cake, built to both look good and to last, should never be eaten on an empty stomach.
There is a local version of a Christmas cake; it’s made with bread-flower and small chewy bits which turn out to be chicharrón – pig’s crackling. These are mixed in with some other bits of angelica and other dried fruit. Which leads to a question for the ‘Ask the Reader’ page. What does fresh angelica look like? The Christmas cakes also follow the dangerous British custom with the sixpence by putting a small metal virgin somewhere in the mix. A fashion no doubt invented by dentists.
Sweetmeats
Andalucía, under the control of the Moors for many centuries, enjoys something a bit heavier than a sponge cake covered with silver crunchy things. The usual fillings (which in Morocco or the Middle East can be quite delicious) include dates, nuts, dried fruit and lashings of honey. One of those babies and the Twinkie Murderer would have settled for a good sleep.
But the most likely place to find a cake is with one’s breakfast. We have ‘Napolitanos’ which are buns filled (or rather ‘spray-painted’) with ‘cream’ or ‘chocolate’. They vary from warm and good to dry, old and rancid. You can dip them in your coffee – sometimes, indeed, you are obliged to. The most popular bun is the ‘Madalena’ which is a simple and rather tasteless sponge scone. Well, spongy anyway. It comes in a plastic sack. The ‘Cruasán’ is the Spanish croissant, made with pork fat rather than butter. Not very good as a rule, especially when it’s been on the cake-shelf for a couple of days. There are a few brand-name cakes in plastic packets, chocolate Swiss-roll types of things, including an frightening looking pink one called a ‘Pantera Rosa’ which I both imagine and hope is banned in the Greater San Francisco area. Lastly, the ever-popular and industrial doughnut, the ‘Donut’, which comes in assorted flavours and a truly alarming collection of chemicals, food additives, colourings, flavourings, preservatives and conservatives. Personally, I love ‘em.
As our area has enthusiastically grasped the nettle of the Twenty-first Century, where you can no longer find a simple salad on the menu, or pig n’ chips without an endless complication of sauce and adornment (I had slices of strawberry surrounding my lamb chops the other evening in a Mojácar hostelry), so, too, our coffee shops have improved in the cake department. We have Italian, French and British cakes, scones, pies and doughnuts which are a far cry from the Bédar fiestas. Places where these are served are usually heavily patrolled by diabetic sparrows, anxious to die at an early age in a blissful sugar-rush.
Many alcoholics, when they give up the demon drink, are said to turn to sweets. Cakes, ice cream (delicious in Spain), chocolates and sticky things in plastic cups. I wonder if they have an effect. Did George Bush turn from booze to Twinkies – and was the War on Terror the unhappy result?
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The Club Taurino Mojácar
The other day, the British Bullfight Club, more properly the ‘Club Taurino Mojácar’, gave a talk at the Vera Bullring. I was joining in to see the building, which stands sentinel on the edge of the city. A rather large crowd was inside playing with the wheelbarrow/bull’s head thingy as I arrived. Shrieks and photographs. It turned out to be a busload from the Imserso old people’s club. From Barcelona or somewhere. The Spanish are great believers in having a jolly time when on their hols. Waiting round the corner near the statue of Juan Belmonte, a bullfighter who gave his last fight before retirement here in Vera (apparently amongst other places), was the rump of the Club Taurino, decked out in shorts and sunhats. The president of the Vera bullfight appreciation club - where there’s a bullring there’s a peña - wearing a wondrous expression on his face (the Vera club is easily eclipsed in numbers by the Mojácar CT), said a few words about how we were all invited for a glass of fino, just as soon as the builders were out of his club, which was undergoing repairs. Mike Hathaway, head, and with his wife Audrey, organisers of the various activities of the club, took over the microphone as we trooped in. Here is where the main gate is, that’s the infirmary and the chapel and so on. There’s a capote (yellow and purple cloak used for bullfights) – see how heavy it is. We all paused to try and lift it. Those matadors have strong arms!
Inside as you enter through the main gate through the gloom and up some stairs passing under one of two arches into the stands of the main arena, as your eyes suddenly adjust to the bright light, you find yourself in a piece of emotion and history. Mike knows a lot about his subject and, by now sat on a cement bench overlooking the plaza, continued with his talk
I’ve always liked bullrings, even the Vera one which is apparently ‘third class’ (to do with its size, not its character). The Vera plaza de toros starred in the final scenes of Antonioni’s ‘The Passenger’ when Jack Nicholson, who has taken the passport of a dead man, lies dying in his room in a grotty hostal, ‘built’ for the occasion just outside the bullring.
I left Mike and his group of aficcionados and disappeared into a nearby bar. It was getting very hot in the bullring, where the primary colours of blue and yellow were waiting to be joined by the red. Sometime in September.
The CTM has an event every Thursday, which is to be commended. There are around 140 members which is quite astonishing, and the club is apparently the only ‘English’ taurine peña in the business, apart from one in London – the Club Taurino de Londres and another in New York
Trip to Huescar
Several weeks after the visit to the Vera bullring, Ángel Medina – the councillor for tourism in Mojácar, organised a trip to Huescar, a small town in Granada, for a tour around the pueblo, lunch, local product-tasting, some serious boozing and a bullfight.
Around 55 of us took the early morning coach-trip and, by 11.30, we had arrived in the town and had wandered into the nearest bar for a coffee. A guide from the tourist office called Juan would take us around the sites, the new and old parts of the town (Christian and Moorish, you could say), through some exotic town-gardens, down narrow touch-both-walls streets and into some impressive buildings, including the ‘Little Cathedral of Toledo, in Granada’, the Iglesia Colegiata de Santa María la Mayor – a church which until recently, was under the tutelage of the Bishop of Toledo. It had taken 250 years to build, starting in 1600 as a gothic church and ending up with renaissance influences. The tour through this church was given by Brother Carlos, a missionary from the ‘Heraldos del Evangelio’, dressed magnificently and supremely knowledgeable on the church and who appeared to be fortuitously between trips to the heathen.
Lunch followed in a large restaurant on the edge of the town, a joint clearly prepared for coach-parties. Most of us had the local speciality – a haunch of lamb. Delicious. We were taken by bus to the tourist office to try and buy local produce, including mead (well, it’s been a while for me. Not since school, I think). Then to the bullring, a modern but arrestingly beautiful plaza de toros in the middle of a quiet street, with just a small entrance to mark its position.
The bulls were ‘novilladas’ – two and three year olds – and the matadors were young fellows, between sixteen and eighteen. We had a large sign announcing our club which we had tied to the rail, opposite the Canal Sur cameras. Well, it’s not every day a party of slightly pink Britons descends on a small-town bullfight.
To find out more about the club, go to www.club-taurino-mojacar.com.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Nicked
Who needs to employ some foreign SOB when we've got those clever programs on the Internet to help with translations, or better still, Young Bertín, who once spent two weeks in Bristol?
Whaddya mean, we look like stupid rubes? We're the Guardia Civil!
Whaddya mean, we look like stupid rubes? We're the Guardia Civil!
