A Flavour of the Campo: Letter from Andalucia by David Clement Davies
Featured Hotel in Andalucia
Hacienda La Boticaria
See all hotels in Andalucia >
November 2000: I’m failing to penetrate into the dark interior of Andalucian cooking - to bring back, like a portly Conquistador, the culinary wealth of Granada, Seville and Jerez. I’d meant to sweep down off my hilltop into Malaga, to the liveliest seafood restaurant in town, where they auction the dishes, platter by glistening platter. Or drive west to Antequera, where you can dine in the awnings of the Bullring, and guzzle steak to your heart's content.
But I don’t want to do anything but gaze, silent upon a peak... Light rain has made the hills of Axarquia look like a miniature Peru. Breathtakingly clear days have everything in brilliant focus; poplars turning chestnut-gold, the crack of a rabbit gun down the valley, the cloud topped slopes of the Sierra Tejeda. From here you can almost see to Africa, and even the endless olive groves look interesting. And I’ve never had the slightest interest in olives.
That’s obviously absurd in Spain so, dutiful to the last, I’ve found out that you can only harvest the angry, bitter little fruits once every two years, and green and black grow on the same tree. Well, it’s a portion of the meagre fare I can share with you, along with my shopping list. I mention the supermarket only to balance out the romance, because it’s there that you taste the horrors of the Costa del Crime, 40 minutes away. Forget the Supertanker holiday apartments or Spanglesa, the Andalucian equivalent of Franglais; blush at the Helmann’s Mayonnaise, Cranberry Jelly, Brown Sauce and McVities digestive biscuits, stacked in over loud abundance.
Trying to brush England aside I lit a wood fire in my house and attempted to cook ‘autentico’ on my farmer's griddle. It was a charming idyll, until the sitting room disappeared under a spitting carbon cloud and I found my cutlets so rusticated I could only serve them to Mowgli, the always appreciative black mongrel. Mowgli has to snuffle around for anything he can get up here so admittedly, he's no judge.
Mind you, in terms of food, I’m not entirely sure Axarquia isn’t a region as mythical as El Dorado. Down at the bar, Raphelito’s aubergines with honey are excellent, but limp chips draped with lemon slices can hardly compare to El Rincon which I read, with twinges of frustration, is already raising a red cape to bullish London restaurateurs.
Undeterred, I set out all of twenty yards to ask at the bar. I thought it was heroic, challenging four such rugged chins with a question like "what’s the speciality of the campo?" If you ever want a signifier of Andalucian manhood, just stop in a petrol station and buy a motoring pack of ‘Decorative Lingerie’, (pink bra or blue knickers) instead of the furry dice, to hang over the rear view mirror.
But low and behold - Ortega y Gazet - the whole swarthy crowd donned their metaphorical pinnies. Goat, Gaspacho, asparagus and Migas, breadcrumbs in garlic, were flying about as though they'd forgotten the sun also rises. The decidedly amused debate didn’t stop there. Pepe, and quite such a toothless charmer is yet to prop up a local bar, suddenly disappeared and began to beat up a blameless vat of olive oil, with a livid looking egg yoke.
In the shake of a donkey’s tail, bowls of Gaspachuelo had appeared, a true peasant dish. It’s really oily egg with bits of bread, floating about in mayonnaise-flavoured hot water. At two in the morning it was a shock to the central nervous system, and I’m still not sure who the yoke was really on, me or them. But they seemed to enjoy it and I’d savoured a real flavour of the countryside. There are truer wonders in Axarquía to be sent back to civilisation, but at least the Mayonnaise was home grown. And, for now anyway, when the sun sets here over ribbons of pink cloud, and the moon hangs off the stars like a paper cut-out, frankly the olives can get ... estuffido.