Cultural differences.

I have just come back from a drink with my young friend Craig, an ex-pupil who has been working here and there around Europe since he graduated from university. We swapped stories of life in Spain and elsewhere, in his case bemoaning the difficulty of getting employment at embassies or airports here. Oddly enough the jobs, which might benefit from the services of a bilingual Brit, appear to be reserved for Spaniards who know someone already working there. What a surprise! We agreed on the wonders of the menú del día and how great it is to be able to eat well for under €10, usually with a drink thrown in. 

He's a little disappointed with the weather which managed to change in time for his arrival. Having come from Barcelona, where he works at present, he was hoping to enjoy Galician beaches and possibly show some of his English friends the Islas Cíes and it's not working. Not that it's cold, just that the sunshine seems to have gone walkabout. 

I watched that happen yesterday. We went out to meet a friend for lunch. The sky was blue. The sun was shining nicely. When we left Vigo centre in the late afternoon the sun was still shining splendidly but from the site of the old railway station (eventually to be the site of the new AVE station) we could see a huge bank of cloud that had made its way up the ría and enveloped all the are around our block of flats in grey dampness. That was it for the day! 

We had met a friend for lunch, as I said. I had a mixed salad followed by chipirones encebollados - baby squid with caramelised onions - absolutely delicious. Phil had been undecided and had got as far a choosing to share my salad and order a portion of calamares. If he was still hungry, he would order more later. Just as well, for my chipirones encebollados dish was so enormous that you could have fed a whole family. So I shared it around. Splendid stuff. 

Later I read an article about how the British are receptive to the cuisines of other countries. We are happy to borrow wholesale from places all around the world. This is perhaps why there is no real famous British cuisine. We're too busy enjoying everyone else's. 

The article went on, however, to say that foreigners are often appalled with what we do to their cuisine and quoted the blog Guirilandia by the Spaniard Jorge Ruiz, which has a section devoted to "atrocities committed under the name of Spanish food". He particularly objects to the fact that many people think that simply adding chorizo to a recipe makes it Spanish, even adding it to dishes such as paella which have nothing to do with chorizo whatsoever. 

 He reserves special disgust for paella "ready meals" sold by supermarkets in the UK and especially the production of "paella sandwiches", fortunately just a limited edition. Mind you, I suppose a nation that eats chip butties would see nothing wrong in making sandwiches from paella or lasagne, another offence against cookery which has been perpetuated. oddly, however, i have not heard of sweet and sour chicken sandwiches! 

Describing restaurants that make "paella" with Chinese style rice and simply throwing in a mix of vegetables, shellfish, cooked ham, chorizo and pepper, Jorge Ruiz is horrified. He comments, "El responsable de semejante afrenta debería ser fusilado, o peor aún, obligado a comerse toda la paellera." (The person responsible for such an affront should be shot, or even worse, made to eat the whole paella-panful.) 

Neither is he impressed with what British restaurants can do to the Spanish "tortilla". Personally, I find it hard to understand how you can mess up a Spanish potato and onion omelette. Some people do insist on adding odd ingredients or doing strange things to the potatoes though. I pass my recipe and instructions around. In my way I am doing my culinary bit to educate the British. 

The only thing I can truly say in our defence is that Mr Ruiz should investigate the atrocities that are served up as cups of tea in Spain. It may not be quite so enormous a problem but the fact remains that the Spanish, like the French, have no idea how to make a good cup of tea!