Italian chefs are appalled at Spanish eating habits

"We're eating pizza all wrong," says the headline. Many of the toppings used in Spain are American style, not authentically Italian, say the aggrieved Italian chefs.

Italians have food rules. Let there be no mistake. And an article in a supplement to El Pais, called Buena Vida, or Good Life, in today's paper laid out the grievances of Italian chefs about their neighbors in Spain (here is the digital version of the supplement, but the article itself was not available online.)

Among the food atrocities:

• Never use a spoon to eat pasta. That's only for children. Adults and anyone older than 6 should use a fork, the only proper instrument for eating pasta in a civilized manner.
• Never cut up spaghetti before cooking it. And don't put in oil while cooking pasta. "I don't know why they do it," said Ilenia Cappai, owner of an Italian restaurant in Madrid. "It doesn't add anything." 
• Don't serve the sauce separately from the pasta; they belong together. And, please, don't serve spaghetti with salsa bolognesa--the only proper pasta for that sauce is tagliatelle, says Cappai.
• Also, we don't like your ham and olive oil, says Enrica Barni, another chef. Italian olive oil is the green product of a cold pressing. And Italian ham, prosciutto, comes from a much larger white pig than Spaniards use for their Iberian style. 
• Spaniards use salt and pepper on their food before even tasting it, says Davide Bonato, chef at Gioia restaurant. An uncivilized practice. "They destroy the flavor of a dish." 
• Spaniards eat bread with everything, too much bread. "Yesterday some clients ordered bread with their pizza," Bonato said, astonished. "Of course, I gave it to them, but . . . " 
• Soft drinks are banned at a civilized Italian table. You drink only wine or water. Drinking Coca Cola at your grandmother's dinner table would be an insult, said Luca Gatti. 
• At formal dinners in Italy, you never sit next to your spouse. The idea is to have others get to know your partner.
• A pizza is for one person, never for sharing.
• And at the end of the meal, the only acceptable form of coffee to have is an espresso, never a capuccino or cafe con leche--those are for breakfast. 

You have been warned. 

It's OK to eat baby sheep (lamb), but not baby horses

Logo for the association of colt meat producers of Navarra.

PAMPLONA, Spain -- The logo at right is supposed to look like a horse, but not too much like a horse.

Probably the producers of colt meat, a local delicacy that costs around $6-$9 a pound here, don't want you thinking too much about the fact that you are eating a baby horse.

We Americans think of horses and dogs and cats as part of our family. So eating colts or kitties or puppies would be like cannibalism. (Although we have no problem eating lamb and veal, babies as well.)

Our notions are pretty strange, if you think about it. According to the local paper (this digital version is less detailed than the print version), there are 420 local farmers who produce about 75,000 pounds of meat a year from 2,000 colts. About 10% is consumed locally, and the rest is shipped to Catalonia (northeast Spain), Italy and the Middle East.

I can't wait to try it. I want to see if it is as good as the marinated donkey burger I had in China. Or the chocolate covered insects I had in Mexico. Mmmmmmm.

What?

Related:

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Basque language has mysterious origins 
Andalusia has different flavor from rest of Spain  
Tapas or pinchos are our favorite foods in Spain  
Pilgrims still come to honor St. James in Santiago de Compostela

Tapas or pinchos are our favorite food in Spain

Typical snacks at a bar include all kinds of concoctions like deviled ham on bread with a little slice of salmon, a few small shrimp with veggies in a sauce on a crust of bread, a mini-hamburger, some olives, some peanuts with lemon juice, curried chicken, a bit of paella, some Iberian ham and cheese, a slice of spanish tortilla (a potato-egg pie), a slice of pizza or almost anything you can imagine. Unlike traditional tapas, which were a very small snack offered free as a courtesy with every drink, these cost $1.50 to $2.50 apiece. Two people can make a meal out of four of them.