Gastronomic Spain - Art, food & wine in Madrid & Castile

Madrid – the nation’s melting pot – is the only place to start a journey through the astonishing variety of Iberian cuisine. Every region has its supper club and its favourite bar in Madrid – its txoko, casa de cultura and home from home. But food means far more than just the pleasure of the table. It sits right at the heart of tertulia culture, with its often passionate and heated debates. From the court to the playhouse, from the nineteenth-century novels of Perez Galdos to the contemporary paintings of Miquel Barceló, food remains the protagonist. Today, Madrid Fusión - the world’s largest avant-garde food symposium - drags us into the 21st century with its action packed presentations on the future of food. And, every famous Spanish chef from the regions is now present with a satellite or a pop-up making their presence felt in a creative gastro-extravaganza.

Spain’s rich and ancient food heritage is civilization on a plate, as it holds up a mirror to its complex historical past. Dishes and flavours send out echoes of Greek, Phoenician, Roman, Visigoth and Moorish cuisine. There is the Passover fare of Sephardic Spain, the subtle Arabian sweetmeats, the austerity of Philip II, the extravagances of the Bishop, marzipan pastries and thyme flavoured honey prepared by the Carmelite nuns, pastas from Naples and the explosion in tastes derived from the new produce of the Americas. In Madrid, Maria Marte, the rising star from the Dominican Republic, has worked up from dishwasher to Michelin 2 star chef in under a decade. Leche de Tigre, ceviches, sharp citric bursts with soothing creamy undercurrents tickle the tongue and surprise us. New World ingredients like the humble potato take on a new appearance with their Peruvian ancestors, stained a deep purple, gold and black. Then there is the hugely popular street food of the religious fiestas held all over Spain, every saint’s day being associated with a different dish.

This tour provides a chance to see some of the dishes of the seventeenth-century table and to steal through its larders courtesy of Velázquez, Zurbarán, Luis Meléndez and Sánchez Cotán. There are tiled Valencian kitchens to see and wonderful examples of Spanish earthenware, majolica and table decorations fit for a king.

The wealth and quality of Spanish food, as is to be expected, rests first and foremost on the quality of its primary produce: the acorn-fed hams of the wild Iberian pig, the truffles from Guadalajara, asparagus from Ávila, vintage sherry from Jerez, giant fava beans from La Granja, extra virgin olive oils from Catalonia, wild herbs from Soria, saffron from Teruel, goose neck barnacles from Galicia and cod cheeks from Bilbao. Madrid is the nation’s larder and the crossing point for all that is both ancient and new: caviar from Granada, artisan conserves, pickled flowers, seaweeds, the best beef in the world and all displayed in the restored nineteenth-century Mercado de San Miguel, just off Madrid’s Plaza Mayor.

North of Madrid, the Sierra de Guadarrama rising to more than 3000 metres provides sanctuary for deer, wild boar, partridge, imperial eagles and wolves as the northern slopes lead us down towards the meseta plains of Castile. High mountain passes are now protected as heritage sites on the famous Cañadas Reales, the royal sheep trails that criss-cross Castile leading north to the distant Pyrenees.

This is the land of the roasts, of sucking pig and milk-fed lamb, where Roman waterways and Moorish irrigation systems are lost in the maquis scrub. Monasteries and convents still sell their produce from behind the privacy of the wooden turno, a revolving hatch. ‘Ave Maria Purissima!’ your password to handpicked artichokes to be later dribbled with convent honey and marzipan treats.

The dry grandeur of the Castilian landscape left some vineyards undamaged when phylloxera hit Spain. Ossian’s vines were planted before the French Revolution and produce a stunning white verdejo – the King of Rueda – long, deep, floral and utterly delicious. The Ribera del Duero – the Golden Triangle – offers masterpieces like Pesquera, Malleolus, Pago de Carraovejas – ambassadors of the tempranillo grape - and the legendary one-off ‘Unico’ Vega Sicilia, all to be tasted and partnered with artisan cheeses, smoked chorizo and farmhouse bread. ‘Que aproveche!’