Not For Vegetarians…

This entry is part of the Ecotone Wiki’s joint post on Food and Place

Travelling back to Spain in early December made me realize just how much pork the Spanish eat. Even things that are ostensibly “vegetables”-peas, artichoke hearts, green beans-have bits of ham in them. Not chicken, or beef, but ham. Ham legs, cured in the Spanish manner (jamn serrano), hang in every bar, along with various cured sausages, ready for cutting into tapas or sandwiches or for omelettes or for the peas and artichokes.

There’s nothing about Spanish geography that makes the pig a more likely farm animal than, say, a goat, which is certainly eaten in other Mediterranean countries. But there’s plenty in Spanish history that has given pork such a prominent place in the cuisine. For one thing, it was outlawed for about six centuries under Moorish occupation. The forbidden food took on the aura of a battle standard.

Food is never just food, is it? The prominence of pork in Spain recalls an earlier, darker time, following the explusion of Jews and Muslims in the fifteenth century, when it was a test. Are you really one of us? Or does your refusal to eat this forbidden meat reveal you as a convert in name only? The Inquisition lurks around the tables in taverns, watching, watching.