Great Little Cakes and Italian Olive Oil That Isn't: It's time to celebrate Spanish Cuisine Part 2

Living next to the town's olive oil co-operative, my days at this time of year are enlivened late into the evening by the surprisingly reassuring clatter of conveyor belts and other miscellaneous machinery. It is olive harvesting season and throughout the day, trailers of all shapes and sizes stream into the depot to unload their harvest for crushing and pressing to make that most versatile and important of foodstuffs - olive oil.

Some years ago, I wrote an article for an online magazine about the Spanish olive oil industry which focussed on the problems associated with the export of Spanish olive oil to Italy, where it is labelled to look (and sound) suspiciously like a genuine Italian product, and is marketed accordingly (even though EU law does insist that all labelling should clearly state the country of origin).

I am sure that many international consumers of olive oil, and specifically extra virgin olive oil, would associate this product most intimately with countries such as Italy and possibly Greece. It may therefore come as a huge surprise that one single province in Andalucia - the Province of Jaen, not far from my home in Granada - produces more olive oil than the whole of Italy. And we are talking quality here, delicious, health-giving, green-gold quality, as good as anything from the fabled "olive groves" of Italy or Greece.

So why don't we associate Spain with quality? Well, it's easy to blame General Franco and the rapidity with which Spain was opened up to the outside world as a cheap package holiday destination during the 1960s and 70s, but there may be some truth in this little theory of mine. For decades, the words Spain and cheap have been sinonimous in the minds of many a holidaymaker, and indeed, many tourists lamentably treat Spain and the Spanish people in a cheap and disrespectful manner. And I have a notion that this lack of regard may be far too easily transferred to all other things Spanish, including the country's fabulous and largely undiscovered cuisine.

How wrong this would be! A thousand food experts will be casting scorn on the following assertion, but Spanish cuisine is every last bit as good as that pretentious, sauce-laden French stuff and the supposedly quintessential Mediterranean fare of Italy. And on the subject of Italian food, while the highly commendable Slow |Food Movement had its origins in Italy, in Spain slow food never disappeared and is very much alive and healthy, despite the inexorable proliferation of KFCs and Burger Kings.

In conclusion, I'd like to give one example of an aspect of Spanish food that may once again come as a huge surprise to the uninitiated yet one that is seasonally appropriate - Christmas sweets. Forget those dried up little bags of rather uninspiring German biscuity efforts that cram the shelves of so many UK supermarkets in the run-up to Yule. Disregard that most disgusting of British traditions - Christmas Pudding (a more revolting conglomeration of traumatised and abused ingredients, I cannot imagine...).

Because here in wonderful Spain you will find decadently calorific mantecados, polverones that crumble mysteriously but delightfully into dust when you bite into them, hojaldrinas as light as air, dusted with icing sugar and delicately flavoured with orange. There are a dozen different kinds of turron (in Spain, they do things with almonds that you never imagined were possible!), roscos flavoured with wine and anis and elaborated with care by the sisters of convents all around the country, And at this very moment I am enjoying an alfajor from the famous Casa Pasteles in Granada's historic Albaicin district and attempting to identify the subtle and skillful combination of flavours - almonds, definately; cinnamon too and a crunchy but not overwhelming coating of sugar. But there are other things in there that my taste buds are unable to put their collective finger on and I'll simply go on enjoying and delighting in the mystery.

So, who was it that said Spanish food was nothing more than paella and chips and a soggy butty in the airport on the way back to Blighty? If it was you, then think again!