Imperative cooking: holiday special WHAT you need is what travel
agents call an 'activity holiday'. Imperative activities are eating and watching food being caught, sold or prepared. Go to Almeria. Your itinerary: Find a companion. Sex is irrelevant. It usually is where eating is concerned. But there must be two to sample more food.
Get a cheap flight. The one on Thursday afternoon from Luton was £100 return each. Phone and book into an ordinary, central hotel such as the Fatima (hotel lists with prices from Spanish Tourist Office the Fatima's about £17 a night for a double room).
Arrive in Luton at 12.30 for a huge lunch at one of the Bury Park area Asian restaurants. Try Sidhar's. On no account . would an Imperative cook eat the aero- plane food — a sort of shepherd's pie with a very thin, glutinous shepherd all encased in aluminum — though some of the fellow travellers with tattoos and gold bracelets (the men) tucked in. Disappointingly few lager louts: there may be more in high summer.
Get a car or taxi to Almeria — 20 minutes. Now you're safe: the tattoos don't go to Almeria itself but have a special compound arranged for them somewhere along the coast: you won't see them again till you return. Dump the car and bags at the Fatima and off you go — it is now nineish. First to the Capital Bar in the Calle Granada, formerly, and still to some of us, the General Saliquet. We are after land snails in sauce. But also try some tapas of salt cod and tripe and chick peas.
Then down the same street to the Res- taurante Sevilla for more tripe and chick peas (interesting differences) and roe and morcilla. These two calls are but warming- up affairs. Allow eight minutes each - 'Come on, hurry up with those snails, if it won't come out, bite through the shell, it won't hurt you.' At each stop you will have tapas or a large portion (radon) of what is set out. You can share or have one each and thus vary quantities.
The real business starts beyond the church (Santa Rita I think), round the corner at Los Claroles in the Puerto de Purchena (four minutes walk: arrive 9.20). This is a major stop. Here they will cook you the fish or meat you choose a la plancha. The house speciality is jibia (cuttlefish). Whole ones are thrown on the grill where they lie spurting, steaming and inflating and collapsing like punctured lungs. The chap then starts cutting them up and anointing them with oil and lemon, continuously throwing salt on the grill. Delicious, but so is the aguja (Davidson says aguja is garfish: here it was swordfish). And a few sardines please, oh, and some anchovies. The Claroles is certainly worth half an hour: more if there's a bull fight on the telly, less if it's accursed football. In either case three drinks and three tapas (or raciones) each.
Two tapas with two beers or wines will cost an average of £1: wine is cheaper and there's a lot of variation. A full racion, for example of swordfish in the Claroles is 600 pesetas (£3). A thoroughly good time can be had for £14 for two over the evening.
Now we're getting into the feel of it. Walk past the fancier bars in the main street and turn right down the Calle Tenor Iribarne. Go in the Cerveceria Bavaria (it's all right: there aren't any there). You will arrive at ten. Go inside. You want to see the wares and the cooking. This and the next port of call are both strong on little things floured and deep fried — whitebait, anchovies, small squid and cuttlefish, un- cooked shrimps. But if you see really small cuttlefish, have them grilled whole, with their ink a la plancha. There's cuttlefish in turmeric and octopus cold in a vinegary sauce. Now pop next door into the Mans- queria Alcazar. Here, more of the same but also small clams on the grill and large ones raw and an owner who, after one visit, remembers what you drink and has it poured out before you reach the bar.
Leave the Calle Tenor Iribarne at 10.30. Turn down Fructuosa Perez. Ignore another fancy bar, specialising in jamon and sherry. Turn left into the Calle Con- cepcion Arenal — previously General Rada — and into the Bar Restaurante Montanes. We are here for some spuds and a couple of glasses of red. Then quickly back up the main street, past the church and into the Bar Santa Rita in the Calle Alcalde Munoz. There's a lady here who does some corking quail eggs with chorizo and very good pinchos (small kebabs). It's just up from the Fatima and you can be back at base by 11, teeth cleaned, prayers said, slightly incoherently, and lights out by 11.15.
Friday, up at 7.30 and into the market by eight for a thorough inspection and break- fast — coffee, tostada with olive oil and brandy or anise. Then off to Cabo de Gata to read Dornford Yates on the beach. By the time his chaps are digging for the treasure, you're ready for the first rounds. Again, sardines and anchovies but what they specialise in is dried fish, dried bonito and dried melva (frigate mackerel). There are four bar-eating places on the shore: go to the two furthest west. In the evening it's back to Almeria for another two-hour bar and tapas shuffle. That's the daily routine. There are outings — if you insist. We nipped up to Cordoba to have a spot of culture and lunch with the Chestertons (they of the pig slaughter) at the mosque and the famed El Cabello Rojo restaurant. In fact there are two Mezquitas — a bar next to the better known one is more fun. As for the Caballo, the Vino de la Vega del Duero ('83) and gazpacho were first class, the oxtail fair, the cardoons overcooked, the dessert trolley Berniesque and the headwaiter an objectionable man in a red jacket who sings the delights of boring salmon and prawns and won't let you have any of the interesting vegetables you've seen in the market without a fight. Mrs C. and Mrs A. were shocked to discover ranks of bidets in the ladies' lavatories.
It's a change and the olive-producing country roundabout is fascinating, but after 24 hours it's a relief to get back to the scruffy bars, upright eating among dis- carded serviettes and toothpicks, pneuma- tic cuttlefish, sizzling sardines, the garlicky steamy haze from the ylancha, in fact all that southern Spain, despite the entreaties of the red coat and the ominous cultural subversions of the Common Market, still does best. Go now, before it's too late.
Digby Anderson
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