How different is Spanish cooking?

My recent posts have been based on fashion, so I thought it was time to throw something different into the pot - cooking pot, that is!

We were persuaded by our lovely Spanish friend Cristina, whose family happens to own the bar where we meet fellow Brits on Tuesday mornings, to attend a cooking demonstration there this week. We were impressed by the advantages offered by the AMC cookware, especially the apparent savings on time and energy, though not enough to justify the price of the system. However what struck me as particularly interesting were the obvious differences between Spanish and British cooking.

The salesman was demonstrating how people usually boil vegetables in water, whereas his cookware didn't need water to cook the vegetables to perfection. We agreed that the vegetables cooked his way had a lot more flavour, but when he talked about throwing away the vegetable water in the traditional way of cooking, the British unanimously announced that we wouldn't do this, as we would use it to make gravy!  Gravy? What was gravy? Spanish people don't make gravy!

Sunday roast with gravy

The next difference was the use of olive oil when cooking.  I probably use more olive oil than many of my compatriots, as I make a lot of Spanish meals on the basis that I prefer using local produce, but even so when he was talking about the number of litres used per month I had to say that we use a lot less.

I think the highlight of the demonstration was meant to be how quickly you can cook a whole octopus. Octopus? It's not a common ingredient in British kitchens, though I am sure that a group of Spanish señoras would have been impressed.

Pulpo anyone?

We already knew that Spanish meal times are different to ours: if you are going out for an evening meal with Spanish friends, expect to eat no earlier than 21.30, and that's when they are making allowances for British customs.  However this demonstration highlighted how many other differences there were between our culinary habits. I think that the salesman definitely needs to update his sales pitch if he hopes to sell anything to British customers!