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I'm sure there is plenty of useful information and opinion about this subject on the Wine board, Judith. We're encouraged to stick to food on this one.

I believe Hofmann is the first cooking school-cum-student-staffed-dining-room that has ever been awarded one Michelin star anywhere in Europe.

Best anchovies from Santoña are by the Consorcio Conservero. Seek out that brand, it's worth the effort.

I think you've hit it on the head, Jesús. Smaller than the regular carabinero, but scarlet-colored. Also, and importantly in this context, this is easily available in North America, deep-frozen and exported from Mozambique and South Africa...

The place to look for good olive oil is the Club del Gourmet, at El Corte Inglés. They have a top-notch selection. Most if not all the following brands can be found there. I've had blind tastings of these oils with the Grand Jury Européen, a professional wine tasting group that also dabbles in oil, and in those they've ranked with the best Italian extra virgin olive oils (oil-wise, Spain is now where Italy was in 1990, but catching up fast - among other things, using a lot of Italian technology and know-how!): Dauro de l'Empordà. The Rotllan-Daurella family has two estates, and this is the one you've been referring to. Near El Bulli, the Pyrenees and France in the northeastern corner of Spain. This is a blend of arbequina, hojiblanca (one of the top Andalusian varieties) and koroneiki (the great Greek variety from Kalamata, giving very green, very aromatic oils). Their other estate is: Dauro de Aubocassa. This olive grove, and the oil mill, are in the middle of the island of Majorca. This is 100% arbequina. Also outstanding. It's interesting to taste and compare the two; the Aubocassa is perhaps a bit more pungent. Marqués de Griñón Capilla del Fraile. From Toledo, about three miles from the Marqués de Griñón's wine-producing estate, Dominio de Valdepusa. This is a model operation, with a small mill that's among the most technologically advanced in the world, avoiding all contact of the fresh olive juice with air (designed and run by prof. Marco Mugelli, Tuscany's oil guru). My favorite Spanish olive oil, with a lot of personality. A blend of arbequina, picual and manzanilla. Molino de San Nicolás y San Esteban is made by my friend Nicolás Gómez-Marín in Huelva province, not far from Jabugo, in Spain's extreme southwest. A blend of arbequina, hojiblanca and picual. Amazing oil, both delicate and 'piccante', as the Italians like it to be. Hard to find (production - about 10,000 50cl bottles.) La Boella. This sensational, delicate oil from Tarragona is made with 100% arbosana olives - a minority Catalan variety that's been obscured by arbequina's success. (The names, BTW, refer to the villages which are considered to be the points of origin - Arbeca near Lleida for arbequina, L'Arboç near Tarragona for arbosana.) My latest discovery. I'm becoming addicted to it... Abbae de Queiles. From southern Navarre (also, as almost always around the Mediterranean, a wine-producing area - the excellent Guelbenzu winery is right around the corner). A 100% arbequina oil, very fragrant.

It certainly won't be on putting down one of the world's ablest and most honest wine writers...

I am afraid I was unable to convey what I meant, which was that Jancis had good sources on Spanish wine whereas Alan Davidson didn't have them on Spanish foods. This means that I fully, albeit respectfully, disagree with you on this matter. I deem Jancis Robinson to be a terrific taster and an excellent wine writer, which doesn't mean I agree 100% with her, but then naturally no wine writer agrees 100% with any colleague. I don't know a single wine writer in the world (and, believe me, I know most of them) who would accuse Jancis Robinson of "ignorance" and "bad taste". And her Portugal book did not extol "wimpy" wines at all - it was truly spot on. Ask our colleagues at the Revista de Vinhos what they think of it. Shame there was only one, now outdated, edition.

But the color is scarlet, not dark pink - and this looks more like a carabinero... So you meant Alan Davidson. He's OK in general. But not in this case.Maybe he lacked the kind of inside information on Spain that Jancis Robinson had in the case of the Oxford Companion to Wine...

Barcelona is missing one key ingredient to really aspire to be 'number one': a few great, truly great restaurants. None right now in town. Very interesting ones - yes! But the great restaurants of Catalonia (El Bulli, Can Fabes, Sant Pau, Can Roca) are all quite a distance from the city.

Who's this Davidson character? He don't know nuttin' about our Spanish seafood, it seems. These are two entirely different animals, the red Mediterranean shrimp (gamba roja or Aristeus antennatus) and the giant scarlet shrimp (carabinero or Plesiopenaeus edwardsianus).

Heck, I wish I knew every city in the world to be able to make such a sweeping statement with full knowledge of what I was talking about...

"Mar i muntanya", not very precisely translated as "sea mountain" is a reference to a 1950s Catalan fashion - a combination dish of chicken and spiny lobster (langouste). Surf & turf with a Mediterranean twist, if you will.

Wouldn't want to dampen anyone's festive spirits, but the chances of a chilly rainy New Year's Eve are always high in San Sebastián, so having one solid, warm, indoor base to take refuge would be a sound idea. Subtropical New Orleans it ain't...

Mmmmm... Politically incorrect this, butterfly. Potes is not in Asturias, but in Cantabria, and what we make on our side of the border is not cabrales, but picón de Bejes-Tresviso. Extremely similar, of course. The best cheese is made with summer milk, when the cows and sheep and goats are up in the mountains, not locked inside. Since the top-grade cheese is aged for at least three months and preferably five, they should be available around November-December.

No, in the provinces it's the old reliable Familia Feliz neighborhood chow mein specialists. And Burger King, of course. No, seriously - young newlyweds in Spain, by and large, don't do much home cooking at all. It's a shame, but that's the biz. They do have ample choices of decent tapas in their towns and villages, of course. So perhaps their tastebuds are not irretrievably damaged.

Let's say I'm arguing with Michelin itself, in absentia... : In a sense, this would be correct, Bux, were it not for one major fact: Michelin's Spanish guide is full of no-star restaurants that should have one star, and in a couple of cases two stars. Not to mention the amazing quantity of top-notch restaurants, some of star quality, that don't even appear in the Michelin España guide! No, it isn't reliable. It's just stingy. It even awards stars to a few mediocre restaurants. In such a restrictive context, it's unforgivable!

Actually, iceberg is so tightly packed that removing the outside layer of leaves is usually enough - there will not be one speck of dust inside. Unless a manic need for food hygiene grips us, of course.

Most participants seem to love iceberg lettuce in this thread. De gustibus non est disputandum. But this is one more bit of proof that something deeper than even the Atlantic Ocean separates general American and European attitudes to food. The great iceberg divide. To us here, iceberg is no more than crunchy, pale green cardboard. No serious professional cook I know on this side of the pond would consider using it. I personally loathe it. Even in BLTs. (Oh yes, iceberg is widely available here. And used by those people that appreciate the fact it's the only kind of lettuce you don't have to wash previously.)

The reason may be that a large number of Spanish 'one-stars' whould be two-star places if located anywhere else in Europe - take Santceloni, Coque, El Bohío or Las Rejas as other examples. In some cases, Spanish one-stars could arguably compete for three-star status elsewhere. As I've argued many times here, Michelin has this unwritten rule about a cap for awarding stars to the Spanish market that's kept the total number almost unchanged for 20 years, and the overall, marked improvement of the Spanish restaurant scene makes this abusive practice more and more evident with each day that passes.

Spanish mothers in their 40s and early 50s, whose sons are getting married these days, didn't cook much at home themselves. So the newlyweds go out to Fast Good or the friendly neighborhood Asian-Peruvian fusion place for a quick bite... For better or worse, this is 2004... even in Spain.

There is no way one is "supposed" to eat things in Spain, generally - one eats them as one pleases! There are better and worse ways, of course. Fresh cheese, cottage cheese, curdled milk are common throughout Spain in many forms, and all of them share one feature, as they do everywhere else: they need added flavors, and also added sweetness - or saltiness! So try your Burgos cheese (it's made with sheep's milk) with honey, indeed. Or with quince jelly (dulce de membrillo). Or with homemade Seville bitter orange marmalade (not too thick cut). Or with homemade greengage plum jam. Or with caramelized, Cantonese-style walnuts. Or with cherries preserved in brandy. Or diced in a fruit salad. Or as the main ingredient for a Spanish-style cheese cake to be topped with raspberries. Or in many savoury recipes: mixed with grated, old Mahón cheese, flour and fresh herbs, it can be shaped as croquettes and fried; or in a pasta salad (I've seen a nice recipe with cooked fusilli, diced Burgos cheese, canned Spanish white tuna belly, corn, olives, a couple of hardboiled eggs, diced tomatoes and onions, an olive oil vinaigrette, and a sprinkling of black pepper, oregano and thyme). BTW, queso de Villalón is similar - but it's salted.

I won't go any further than this in politicizing this thread, except to make this last remark, which I think is important: The erudite search into the historic origins and explanations of any type of terrorism is a nice and even necessary exercise in understanding the phenomenon. But when a terrorist group is active in a democratic, parliamentary society which guarantees that any political ideal or ambition can be fully pursued and defended through the ballot box, these explanations can never be equated with any kind of justification for terror. In a democracy, aiding such a terrorist group cannot be, by any stretch of the imagination, morally acceptable. Much less so when the person who suffers extortion is as well protected by society, including most supporters of terrorism, as these chefs are. Miguel says something that is entirely incorrect, sorry to say: "They are therefore easily seen, by extremists, as potential traitors to the Basque cause - or, at least, sell-outs." On the contrary. The pro-ETA media (yes, there are pro-ETA media in Spain - this is a country where free speech is very real, to the point of excess) have turned these great chefs into shining examples of Basque genius. And the fact that the chefs get large chunks of their income from non-Basque (or non-separatist) customers is something that ETA will never use as a reproach against anyone: heck, ETA does the same! The question thus becomes even more painful: How many of these chefs, if they ever did pay ETA, did so with not much remorse but rather wilfully because, even if their bank accounts suffered a little, they were in general agreement with the extortionists? That's what really, in the end, if the facts are proven, would sadden me most. And I know at least one of them sympathizes with the thugs.

(A brief reminder to all you youngsters: The first world-famous chef who ever worked in New York was Basque, and French: Henri Soulé, the founder of Le Pavillon, the man who stayed in the city after the 1939 World's Fair and changed the local culinary scene forever. What other restaurant did he launch? La Côte Basque, obviously!) Now on to the other, very sad part of the story - the purported payment of extorsion money by four famous Basque chefs to ETA, a terrorist group. First of all, of course it remains to be seen if this is true. But I can only point out that in the 48 hours since the story broke, not one of them has come out and said in so many words: "No, I never gave ETA a cent." The only one who's said something, Martín Berasategui, has complained about the "unfair" situation he sees himself in, but he hasn't flatly denied the facts. (No, francesco, your information about this is incorrect...) To me, this is especially unpleasant because I have been a restaurant critic for the past 23 years and I am a good friend of Berasategui, of Pedro Subijana and particularly of Juan Mari Arzak, whom I've known for almost 30 years and is very dear to me. I haven't met Karlos Arguiñano, who's more famous as a TV chef than as a restaurant owner (nor do I much wish to meet him after all that I've heard about him and about his attitude to this whole terrible problem the Basques have.) However hard it all is, if it's proven to be true that one or more of them paid up, I will never patronize again the restaurants of those who did. Indeed, I cannot consider them as 'victims', even though suffering extortion threats must be a terrible thing. First of all, four years ago my colleague at El Mundo, José Luis López de Lacalle, a courageous columnist (jailed during the Franco regime for fighting for democracy), was gunned down by ETA on his doorstep in the Basque Country for having had the gall to steadfastly denounce their crimes in his columns. If any chef is proven to have been giving money to ETA, I will always believe that the weapons used to kill José Luis were acquired with this money, and that is simply unacceptable. There are no ifs and buts in fighting terrorism. Second, and morally foremost, if anyone is well equipped to resist and denounce extortion demands in the Basque Country, it's the native celebrity chefs, who are as close to flesh-and-bone deities as can be imagined in a society that idolizes fine cuisine. If an Arzak were to go the police, to the courts and to the media to denounce an extortion attempt by ETA, the popular backlash against ETA (even among many or most ETA supporters in the population!) would be enormous, and no one (no one!) would dare touch him or his family. ETA cannot afford to alienate its social base, which loves the great cooks and considers them as a national treasure. Indeed that's the main difference with an anonymous businessman who gets hit by this sinister protection racket: often he has no alternative but to pay up or leave the Basque Country altogether. (More than 200,000 residents have fled the Basque Country over the past 20 years.) But the favorite sons, the world-famous stars, the idolized cooks could have stood up to the blackmailers safely and, in so doing, shown their solidarity with the thousands of people who are threatened by ETA. A judge has announced charges of financing a terrorist group against Arzak and Subijana, while it seems that Arguiñano and Berasategui will be called to testify as witnesses. (The difference seems to be that an arrested ETA member has said that he personally collected money from the first two, while he said he sent demands to the other two but didn't personally collect from them. The arrested man is a relative of Arzak's wife.) Again, all final judgment must be deferred until the matter is cleared, and I do hope that at least three of the chefs will be cleared. El Mundo's editorial was largely correct - even though I believe it went too far in considering them as definitely guilty of the charges - when it stated: "Whoever pays a terrorist gang in order to protect his family or his business knows perfectly that this money will be used to pressure others or to kill; in short, to feed the monster. For that reason it's absolutely reprehensible to give in to ETA's blackmail, particularly when there are other persons who risk their lives because they are members of a political party, and others who have been murdered for not giving in to the band's demands. The case of these cooks is more serious because they all enjoy popularity and social prestige to the point that they've become media stars, with huge contracts in television or advertising. One of them was even under contract to the Basque government to promote tourism in the region. These famous cooks, now at the peak of success, never dared raise their voices before on behalf of the victims of terrorism. This deserves not only the rejection but even the boycott of their restaurants and their many businesses on the part of the public. This would really hinder them and make them reflect on their lack of solidarity. At any rate they owe an explanation to the public, which is legitimately wondering about the reasons which led these rich and famous people to finance a band of killers."

That he builds on? I wouldn't say so. I would say it's the Catalan cuisine which he loves, but which he hardly ever builds on these days.

Allow me one observation. I think that sweet langoustine and sweet melon don't play off each other well, but rather assemble two kinds of sweetness that might offset one another. I personally would prefer working on a traditional ajo blanco made with almonds and garlic, or even a more bitter, more pungent one made with fresh pistachios and garlic, to really create a gustatory contrast with the sweet soft crayfish and start the juices flowing in the diner's mouth... Serrano ham and melon is an entirely different harmony, since these two are really taste and textural opposites.