Since writing about the orange a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking a lot about the food I ate in Spain in 2021. Between scrolling through the photos I snapped on my phone of various meals consumed in Granada and Cordoba – and the increasingly warm weather in New York City – all those pictures of perfect little tapas bites enjoyed with a glass of wine at a cafe outside, feel awfully appealing.
Sure, you can find tapas in New York. But here in Gotham, a small plate of boquerones to accompany your drink can run you close to $20. In Spain, tapas are cheap, and in many cases free. When I was in Granada I never once paid for tapas. Go to a bar, or a cafe, and order a glass of wine – a little plate of something will always magically appear. In some places it might just be a few olives or a small bowl of potato chips. But some establishments take their tapas very seriously.
A neighborhood cafe in Albaicín, just across the road from where I stayed, once served me two pieces of bread with thick slices of crispy sausage to accompany my glass of wine (add some greens and you’ve got a complete meal!) Another time, a few slices of bread, olives, and pieces of salchichón. Often the tapas involved some type of jamón, that dry-cured ham so often associated with Spanish cuisine. The tapas in Granada were so generous, that I found myself abandoning dinner plans more than once (wine, bread and jamón? A perfect girl dinner).
I had no complaints about jamón (be it Iberico or Serrano) forming an essential component of my tourist diet. Nearly translucent strips of reddish cured pork, perhaps adorned with a sliver of buttery white fat along the side – it’s a wonderful thing. Especially when it is sliced so thin, it practically melts in your mouth. But as I studied Spain’s diverse past – its medieval heyday as a melting pot of different religious identities (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) all living together – it did start to make me think about the abundant pork consumption. Observant Jewish and Muslim citizens would not have partaken in the gustatory pleasures of a salt cured pig leg…so when did pork become such a huge part of Spanish cuisine?