Late Dinner My Search for Spanish Food

Chapter One: Levante The Spanish have a phrase, leyenda negra, to indicate a bad reputation so obstinately perdurable that it takes on the quality of myth. And there have been few legends blacker, if you discount the Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews by the Catholic kings, and the atrocities of the Spanish empire in the New World, than the abominable food supposedly served in the fondas and posadas of Spain. What was attractive about this country to foreign writers and artists was the exotic archaism of a place out of step with the rest of Europe, its wild and little-visited landscapes, its immense wealth of architectural and artistic treasures, but never or almost never the quality of its food. Generally speaking, when writers on Spain have turned their attention to the national cuisine, it has been to cast aspersions. Literary travelers of all eras turn up the same catalog of shocking hygiene, primitive installations, and general ignorance of the culinary arts. Spanish food was thought to be monotonous, poorly prepared in foul conditions, swimming in rancid oil, and stinking of garlic. The French, while thrilling to the passionate wildness of their southern neighbor, have traditionally turned up their noses at Spanish cuisine. A saying popular in nineteenth-century France declared of Spain:Des milliers de pretres, et pas un cuisinier("Thousands of priests, and not a single cook"). One of the earliest literary incursions by a Frenchman in the field of Spanish gastronomy is an account by Jean Muret, priest and diplomat, of dinner at a posada in Tolosa in 1666. The meal is presented as tragicomical: it begins with a bowl of thin soup which is intended not to be drunk but to have bread dunked in it. On so doing, the priest burns his mouth. The second course is a salad of "grasses" with oil and vinegar, followed by a piece of goat which needs to be chewed for half an hour in order to be swallowed. The account of a visit to Spain, a few years later, by the comtesse d'Aulnoy, a lady of mode, exercised a powerful influence on subsequent writers on the subject -- despite the distinct possibility that she may not actually have traveled to many of the places she described -- contributing in large measure to the popularity of Spain and Spanishness among several generations of French romantics. The countess foundla cuisine espagnoleso repulsive, so excessively flavored with saffron, garlic, and spices, that, she said, she would have died of hunger were it not for the French cook she brought along with her. She did approve of the fruit, especially the figs; she adored the muscat wine; and she thought Spanish lettuces sweet and refreshing. The favorite meal of her trip was a collation offered by an upper-class household in Madrid, at which she happily nibbled at fruit conserves served on gold paper, and drank hot chocolate with milk and egg yolks. With almost everything else, however, the comtesse found fault. In Spain, she pronounced, the roast partridge was "usually" burned to a cinder. The lamb was tender enough (the quality of local lamb is often mentioned by early travel writers), but ruined by being fried in filthy oil. Spanish table manners, or the lack of them, horrified the comtesse: in some establishments she found no cutlery or napkins, her fellow diners burped openly at the table, and their custom of picking their teeth with a stick seemed to her beneath contempt. Taken as a whole, the image of Spanish food over the centuries is rather like that of the country itself: primitive, crude, and so strongly flavored as to be shocking to delicate palates. Even Richard Ford, whoseHandbook for Spain(1845) is possibly the best-researched (as well as the most opinionated) travelers' guide to the country ever written, describes the national cuisine as "by no means despicable." The worst stumbling block, for Ford, as for most of the earlyRichardson, Paul is the author of 'Late Dinner My Search for Spanish Food', published 2007 under ISBN 9780743284936 and ISBN 0743284933.