Puerto Banus

[Lord Michael Lewis]

I doubt you are suggesting the use of  Italian olive oils for pil-pil.

Absolutely. Why not? I've had it made with Trapittu, a great extra virgin oil from Sicily, and it was sensational.

After all, the only thing that's Basque in this dish is Basque culinary genius (which ain't hay, of course). All the ingredients are non-Basque:

the olive oil is from Andalusia, Catalonia or La Mancha... or Sicily;

the garlic is from las Pedroñeras, in La Mancha (the famed 'purple garlic');

and the salted codfish is from... Norway, usually.

Culinary nationalism holds no interest to me. The only reason I write more about Spanish food and cuisine than about other cuisines is because I know it better than other cuisines and it's less well-known than other cuisines, so maybe what I have to say is a bit more interesting to other people than if I were to pontificate on the proper blanquette de veau... But I never forget that most cuisines are the result of some sort of fusion, be it recent or old. And I do love the great olive oils from Italy, whose quality levels are what ambitious Spanish oil producers have as their goal nowadays.

Victor, don't be surprised if you see this quoted in the Spanish press.

Edited September 5, 2003 by Lord Michael Lewis (log)

[vserna]

Victor, don't be surpirsed if you see this quoted in the Spanish press.

I would be surprised, yes. Why? Because I've been writing these very same things in the Spanish press, as a relatively well-known food writer, for over 30 years. So by now everyone knows my very old-hat views. Which, by the way, are shared by most of my colleagues. Spain is not a parochial nationalistic backward place in 2003. Othrerwise, how could we have the type of cuisine that we now have? Can you imagine Ferran Adrià sternly controlling if every mushroom he cooks is from the Catalan hills?

Franco's been dead a long time. Thank goodness.