Theories as to the origin of the Spanish tapa snack are as varied as the tapa itself. The favoured theory appears to be that of an order by Philip III in the early seventeenth century which decreed that a drink in a bar had to be served with a small amount of food covering the receptacle. The idea was that, by eating the food, the effects of the alcohol would be soaked up. A tapa is literally a cover.
Other theories suggest that early tapas were specifically high in salt, designed to have precisely the opposite effect that Philip III hoped to limit, namely that the salt content activated even further drinking. The makers of the potato crisp have long understood the same tactic; or rather, British pub landlords have.
Whatever the origin of the tapa, it has long ceased to be a mere small snack to accompany a sherry or, more recently, a caña of beer. It has become, in its collective form, a whole meal. It has been put on wheel-shaped whole-meal trays and categorised according to its meatness, fishiness, veggie-ism and even dessertness. It has appeared on specially made tapa mini-tables to sit atop a regular restaurant table. It has become authenticated, in that different locations brand their tapa fare as authentic to the location (which is rarely the case). It can still sit in metal trays under a glass canopy and be covered with newspaper at night (and if you want, I'll tell you where this used to happen), but it has become altogether more sophisticated. The nouvelle tapa.
The rot set in when the same compulsion to rip pubs up and turn them into that abomination of drinking establishments, the wine bar, turned its metro attention to the tapa. It would have been some time in the early '80s I suppose. Tapas bars emerged in the aspiring-to-chicdom outer parts of British towns and cities as well as in the urban centres; they became the after-work nosheries for the yuppie, where the exotic, concept-exported nosh was swilled down with another Spanish escapee, the bottle of Rioja.
The exporting of the tapas concept then underwent a coals-to-Newcastle return and reinvention. The tapa was no more a casual side plate customarily served free in a Spanish bar. It became business. Which is where we are today. And today, the tapa has become required eating even if it isn't any good or particularly remarkable (though many a tapa is). Among the tourist class, there is one sector that wanders the streets emitting the enquiry "tapas?" as it approaches a waiter in waiting. Everything else, food-wise, has been junked. The tapa has assumed the world-of-Mallorca-food domination.
The Germans are great tapas followers, by which one means that they follow the edicts of guidebooks to the very letter. If the guidebooks say they must eat tapas, then eat tapas they most certainly will. The Scandinavians are not necessarily as guided as the Germans, but tapas culture has consumed them to the extent that they consume tapas in vast quantity. A tapas restaurant owner of my acquaintance once lent over my shoulder, rubbed his fingers and whispered through a barely concealed grin: "Scandinavians. They like tapas very much". From where I was standing by the bar, all I could see was a sea of blondness in disgustingly rude health with plates and plates of tapas being brought by a constant, fast-moving caravan of waiters and waitresses.
The British, much though they are to blame for the Great Tapas Reinvention, have only lately discovered the tapa whilst away from British shores. What was all a bit foreign is no longer. Tapas culture has gone global, or as global as you can get among the different nationalities who still fortunately do leave hotels to eat out.
The roots of the origins of the tapa in its Habsburg past (and Philip III was apparently a bit of a misery, though he inadvertently founded a tradition not associated with being miserable) have passed through their re-rooting by the out-of-Spain tapas movement and to what is another local tapas phenomenon - the tapas route.
Palma has its route (more than one in fact). Manacor has one, Artà acquired one earlier this year. There are tapas routes at fiesta time, for example in Muro or Vilafranca. And now Puerto Pollensa has its own tapas route, one that stretches from the pinewalk end of town to the nautical club part and slightly beyond. On Thursday, the route will be trodden for the first time. It remains to be seen if it becomes well-worn. You would hope so. And the challenge will be whether those on the route march can cover all the tapas. Cover, tapa ... oh, forget it.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Friday, March 04, 2011
The Great Taste Of Sausage: The sobrasada
Let's just say that you were to pick up a copy of an English newspaper and in it you were to read about hotels in England making a big deal about having pork pies, Cumberland sausage and scones on their menus. You might think, so what. Or you might think, that doesn't sound like something to brag about. You would of course be right to think this.
Compare this non-news with what you get served up locally. As an example - forty hotels in Mallorca now include sobrasada amongst their other delicacies, which could well include ensaïmadas and empanadillas. Fantastic, you might think. Better get yourself off to one of these hotels for some sausage, some lard cake and a pie that bears a relationship, sans spud, to the Cornish pasty.
While it would be most unlikely that you would dash off a hotel reservation on the basis of this gastronomic mix, you would, were you to have booked in to one of these 40 hotels, be able to sample some traditional and basic Mallorcan grub. And it would be, so says the president of the geographic identification of the sobrasada, "fundamental" (basic, if you like) that, as a tourist, you get to "know and try the most traditional" of the island's sausages. It would be even more fundamental, if you happened to be German, so goes a different line of geographic identification from this head sausage-maker, because Germans of course eat nothing else other than sausages.
The sausage, of whatever variety, is still a sausage. I have never been able to look one in the eye in quite the same way since the time that an old friend, climbing the managerial ladder at Sainsbury's, once regaled me (if this is the right term) with his story of a trip to the sausage factory. Despite what might be said to the contrary, you can be reasonably assured that any sausage contains parts of a pig you'd rather not think about.
Ah yes, but there's sausage and then there's sausage. Plastic-wrapped and pink abominations and superior, haute-hype-cuisine, stuffed with paprika and with a geographic identification, making it sound like it's under surveillance by satellite-positioning technology. Step forward, please, the sobrasada.
To be fair, and assuming you can ignore what it is you might actually be putting inside you, the sobrasada is pretty damn tasty. But it can't get over the fact that it remains what it is - a sausage. And there's tasty and there's tasty. A Cornish pasty can be pretty damn tasty, too, but there is not the same hullabaloo surrounding a pasty as there is the sobrasada, even if it is also identified geographically.
Maybe there are presidents of the pasty society in Cornwall, of the Cumberland sausage guild or the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association going around, insisting that it is "fundamental" that tourists scoff the local fare. But if there are, I suspect they are not doing so with quite the same pretensions or demands as the sobrasada propagandists. Fundamental, fundamental - you will try our sausage. You will like it.
This insistence comes with a business dimension, especially where Germany is concerned. So enamoured of sausage are Germans that the sobrasada league is eyeing up the German market as a way of beefing up (well, you don't pork up) sobrasada sales. Which is fair enough, but how much sausage can one nation, even one as porker as the German nation, smother in mustard and wash down with lager?
Placing the sobrasada, or indeed the ensaïmada or empanadilla, in front of a tourist is perfectly reasonable. Each is representative of the current, touristically-correct philosophy of local sourcing by hotels. But which are these 40 hotels? I fancy I know which ones they are not. Ones at which the clientele would take one look and dismiss the sobrasada as "foreign". It wouldn't go down too well as it doesn't lend itself to being covered in HP or dipped into a cold and congealing egg yolk. Whichever these 40 hotels might be however, is the fact that they are offering sausage really worthy of news? Weirdly, it is.
The sobrasada cannot disguise its essential and simple sausageness. It is, regardless of its authenticity, geographical stamp and paprika, a basic food. It is fundamental, to a Mallorcan culinary tradition, but its basic nature is one that it shares with other local specialities, about which a ballyhoo is made above their station in the gastronomic food chain. Bread and oil, for example. As with pa amb oli, sobrasada can be tasty, tasty, very, very tasty, but it's not unique in being tasty. Sausage sarny, anyone?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Compare this non-news with what you get served up locally. As an example - forty hotels in Mallorca now include sobrasada amongst their other delicacies, which could well include ensaïmadas and empanadillas. Fantastic, you might think. Better get yourself off to one of these hotels for some sausage, some lard cake and a pie that bears a relationship, sans spud, to the Cornish pasty.
While it would be most unlikely that you would dash off a hotel reservation on the basis of this gastronomic mix, you would, were you to have booked in to one of these 40 hotels, be able to sample some traditional and basic Mallorcan grub. And it would be, so says the president of the geographic identification of the sobrasada, "fundamental" (basic, if you like) that, as a tourist, you get to "know and try the most traditional" of the island's sausages. It would be even more fundamental, if you happened to be German, so goes a different line of geographic identification from this head sausage-maker, because Germans of course eat nothing else other than sausages.
The sausage, of whatever variety, is still a sausage. I have never been able to look one in the eye in quite the same way since the time that an old friend, climbing the managerial ladder at Sainsbury's, once regaled me (if this is the right term) with his story of a trip to the sausage factory. Despite what might be said to the contrary, you can be reasonably assured that any sausage contains parts of a pig you'd rather not think about.
Ah yes, but there's sausage and then there's sausage. Plastic-wrapped and pink abominations and superior, haute-hype-cuisine, stuffed with paprika and with a geographic identification, making it sound like it's under surveillance by satellite-positioning technology. Step forward, please, the sobrasada.
To be fair, and assuming you can ignore what it is you might actually be putting inside you, the sobrasada is pretty damn tasty. But it can't get over the fact that it remains what it is - a sausage. And there's tasty and there's tasty. A Cornish pasty can be pretty damn tasty, too, but there is not the same hullabaloo surrounding a pasty as there is the sobrasada, even if it is also identified geographically.
Maybe there are presidents of the pasty society in Cornwall, of the Cumberland sausage guild or the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association going around, insisting that it is "fundamental" that tourists scoff the local fare. But if there are, I suspect they are not doing so with quite the same pretensions or demands as the sobrasada propagandists. Fundamental, fundamental - you will try our sausage. You will like it.
This insistence comes with a business dimension, especially where Germany is concerned. So enamoured of sausage are Germans that the sobrasada league is eyeing up the German market as a way of beefing up (well, you don't pork up) sobrasada sales. Which is fair enough, but how much sausage can one nation, even one as porker as the German nation, smother in mustard and wash down with lager?
Placing the sobrasada, or indeed the ensaïmada or empanadilla, in front of a tourist is perfectly reasonable. Each is representative of the current, touristically-correct philosophy of local sourcing by hotels. But which are these 40 hotels? I fancy I know which ones they are not. Ones at which the clientele would take one look and dismiss the sobrasada as "foreign". It wouldn't go down too well as it doesn't lend itself to being covered in HP or dipped into a cold and congealing egg yolk. Whichever these 40 hotels might be however, is the fact that they are offering sausage really worthy of news? Weirdly, it is.
The sobrasada cannot disguise its essential and simple sausageness. It is, regardless of its authenticity, geographical stamp and paprika, a basic food. It is fundamental, to a Mallorcan culinary tradition, but its basic nature is one that it shares with other local specialities, about which a ballyhoo is made above their station in the gastronomic food chain. Bread and oil, for example. As with pa amb oli, sobrasada can be tasty, tasty, very, very tasty, but it's not unique in being tasty. Sausage sarny, anyone?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Gives A Meal Man Appeal
Well, I forgot to mention on Sunday that Winner's Dinners made a meal of Mallorcan cuisine - actually, a very good meal, the master of the sarcastic scraping into the waste-bin of restaurants announcing that "foodie heaven" is to be found in Mallorca. Yes, Michael did duly pen a piece following his celeb thrash-visit for Andrew Lloyd-Webber's 60th. Ah, how the other half live. Well, not the other half, the other very small minority, but be that as it may. I prefer it when Michael's being scathing; that's when he's at his best, his most obnoxious and his funniest. But Mallorcan cuisine, or more specifically, cuisine in restaurants in Deia, for which most might require a mortgage, came out smelling of roses, if food can be described in such a way, which - generally - it can't, so forget that.
But will the Winner seal of approval mean anything? Does anyone actually take any notice of him? Even if they do, his positive remarks are hardly general to the whole of the island. That there may be some cracking restaurants does not - of itself - mean that hordes of well-heeled foodies or even slack-heeled foodies will be hot-footing it to Mallorca for some expensive or more economical nosebag. It may be reassuring to know that one critic thinks a few restaurants in Deia and one in Puerto Portals can serve up some good scoff, but it doesn't mean anything for the rest of the island. Here we are again, in delusion land, picking over the exquisite bones of a minority tourism market, aimed at the few, and, in the case of both Deia and Portals, we are talking a minted few. Michael Winner says yes to Deia and its food. So what? In fact, what he also said was - "keep away". Doesn't want any old riff-raff turning up. Quite right, too.
That there are some excellent restaurants in Mallorca is not the stuff of significant tourism per se, and I wish there would be some reality here. It's the same with golf. "The Bulletin" runs an interesting piece today, in which it states that the island would be at a sort of golf-saturation point if seven planned courses were built. These would make the island the most densely golfed-out part of Spain. Yet, and this is a very interesting point, the number of registered players in Mallorca is, by some way, lower than in the likes of Alicante. Does Mallorca need more golf courses? No, it does not. There is not the demand on the island, and I seriously doubt that there is sufficient demand from overseas, given the competition from other golfing destinations. The environmental argument against more golf courses is not one that persuades me to question the building of more courses, but I am with the likes of the spokesperson for the Albufera nature park when he says - in the context of the argument over the controversial plan for the course on the Son Bosc finca - that there are already enough courses close by. And he's right. Once more, there is the delusion at play, delusion and a strategy (if you can call it such) of providing something (in this case, more golf courses) and expecting that a host of tourists will turn up on the first tee. They won't. Food, golf, not insignificant maybe, but neither is the generator of significant numbers of tourists as part of a drive for greater diversity in the island's most important economic sector.
QUIZ: Yesterday - Pet Shop Boys. Today's title - well, here's one for Michael Winner; where does this come from (it wasn't a song)?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
But will the Winner seal of approval mean anything? Does anyone actually take any notice of him? Even if they do, his positive remarks are hardly general to the whole of the island. That there may be some cracking restaurants does not - of itself - mean that hordes of well-heeled foodies or even slack-heeled foodies will be hot-footing it to Mallorca for some expensive or more economical nosebag. It may be reassuring to know that one critic thinks a few restaurants in Deia and one in Puerto Portals can serve up some good scoff, but it doesn't mean anything for the rest of the island. Here we are again, in delusion land, picking over the exquisite bones of a minority tourism market, aimed at the few, and, in the case of both Deia and Portals, we are talking a minted few. Michael Winner says yes to Deia and its food. So what? In fact, what he also said was - "keep away". Doesn't want any old riff-raff turning up. Quite right, too.
That there are some excellent restaurants in Mallorca is not the stuff of significant tourism per se, and I wish there would be some reality here. It's the same with golf. "The Bulletin" runs an interesting piece today, in which it states that the island would be at a sort of golf-saturation point if seven planned courses were built. These would make the island the most densely golfed-out part of Spain. Yet, and this is a very interesting point, the number of registered players in Mallorca is, by some way, lower than in the likes of Alicante. Does Mallorca need more golf courses? No, it does not. There is not the demand on the island, and I seriously doubt that there is sufficient demand from overseas, given the competition from other golfing destinations. The environmental argument against more golf courses is not one that persuades me to question the building of more courses, but I am with the likes of the spokesperson for the Albufera nature park when he says - in the context of the argument over the controversial plan for the course on the Son Bosc finca - that there are already enough courses close by. And he's right. Once more, there is the delusion at play, delusion and a strategy (if you can call it such) of providing something (in this case, more golf courses) and expecting that a host of tourists will turn up on the first tee. They won't. Food, golf, not insignificant maybe, but neither is the generator of significant numbers of tourists as part of a drive for greater diversity in the island's most important economic sector.
QUIZ: Yesterday - Pet Shop Boys. Today's title - well, here's one for Michael Winner; where does this come from (it wasn't a song)?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Friday, December 21, 2007
So Here It Is Merry Christmas
The Mallorcan Christmas. Like other fiestas, there is not just one day, there is a whole series of days, nearly two weeks in the case of Christmas. The Mallorcan Christmas is, in effect, from 24 December to 6 January.
But what of this Mallorcan Christmas? There is a fascination among those from the UK who don’t live here as to what it is like. And because the UK Christmas is a festival of gluttony and goodwill to all men so long as they come bearing gifts with a sizeable price tag, there is no more fascination than in how that aspect compares.
The impression one may have is of a wholly more low-key affair in which the religious aspect, the true meaning of Christmas if you will, far outweighs the commercialism. Even I have had that impression, but I’m not sure it obtains. Go to the hypermarkets such as Al Campo and see the trolley-loads of toys and gifts being wheeled out. Observe the “cestas” (hampers) for sale in the supermarkets, the shelves of specially brought in chocolates, nut-and-biscuit selections – could just as easily be Manchester as Mallorca.
By way of appreciating the “meaning” of a Mallorcan Christmas, there is a good indication in the form of a supplement to a recent “Ultima Hora” – a 64-page pull-out Christmas special; traditional Christmas yes, but far from only. Fashion for men and women; funky hairstyles for the festive season; perfumes; decorations; crackers and designer wrapping; exclusive gifts and gift ideas; CDs and books; how to keep fit having gorged on Christmas pastries, croquettes, cheese and cold-cut collections, Balearic sausages, herb liqueurs, wines and other produce, gourmet delights, fresh seafood, special recipes to try at home. And then those traditions, one of them being the celebrated “Gordo” that can be traced back to the start of the nineteenth century. Gordo is? The mega lottery just before Christmas. Yes there is also more tradition besides, but let’s adjust this rather sanctimonious notion that at Christmas Mallorca (and Spain) is in some way less in thrall to the shopping mall and supermarket shelf than Britain. I’m not so sure it is.
And with this, I am going to sign off for the festive period. No more blogging till the new year, probably around the 4th of January. So let me wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. When I return, hopefully I will have had time to put together the annual awards and annual turkeys, but don’t bank on it. I might just have spent the intervening period gorging, visiting shopping malls, pushing a heavily-laden trolley around a supermarket …
QUIZ
Yesterday – Bob James wrote the theme. Danny de Vito was the connection. Today’s title – every shopping mall plays it.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
But what of this Mallorcan Christmas? There is a fascination among those from the UK who don’t live here as to what it is like. And because the UK Christmas is a festival of gluttony and goodwill to all men so long as they come bearing gifts with a sizeable price tag, there is no more fascination than in how that aspect compares.
The impression one may have is of a wholly more low-key affair in which the religious aspect, the true meaning of Christmas if you will, far outweighs the commercialism. Even I have had that impression, but I’m not sure it obtains. Go to the hypermarkets such as Al Campo and see the trolley-loads of toys and gifts being wheeled out. Observe the “cestas” (hampers) for sale in the supermarkets, the shelves of specially brought in chocolates, nut-and-biscuit selections – could just as easily be Manchester as Mallorca.
By way of appreciating the “meaning” of a Mallorcan Christmas, there is a good indication in the form of a supplement to a recent “Ultima Hora” – a 64-page pull-out Christmas special; traditional Christmas yes, but far from only. Fashion for men and women; funky hairstyles for the festive season; perfumes; decorations; crackers and designer wrapping; exclusive gifts and gift ideas; CDs and books; how to keep fit having gorged on Christmas pastries, croquettes, cheese and cold-cut collections, Balearic sausages, herb liqueurs, wines and other produce, gourmet delights, fresh seafood, special recipes to try at home. And then those traditions, one of them being the celebrated “Gordo” that can be traced back to the start of the nineteenth century. Gordo is? The mega lottery just before Christmas. Yes there is also more tradition besides, but let’s adjust this rather sanctimonious notion that at Christmas Mallorca (and Spain) is in some way less in thrall to the shopping mall and supermarket shelf than Britain. I’m not so sure it is.
And with this, I am going to sign off for the festive period. No more blogging till the new year, probably around the 4th of January. So let me wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. When I return, hopefully I will have had time to put together the annual awards and annual turkeys, but don’t bank on it. I might just have spent the intervening period gorging, visiting shopping malls, pushing a heavily-laden trolley around a supermarket …
QUIZ
Yesterday – Bob James wrote the theme. Danny de Vito was the connection. Today’s title – every shopping mall plays it.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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