{"id":365,"date":"2014-03-16T13:04:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T11:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/?p=365"},"modified":"2014-03-28T10:51:46","modified_gmt":"2014-03-28T08:51:46","slug":"from-salpicon-to-spam-and-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/?p=365","title":{"rendered":"From Salpicon to Spam and back"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first discovered the amazing salpic\u00f3n<\/i> (salpicon<\/i> in English) on a trip to A Coru\u00f1a last summer with Bel\u00e9n, tucked away in an odd restaurant in the city centre on an even odder men\u00fa del d\u00eda<\/i>. I can\u2019t speak for the salpic\u00f3n<\/em>, but for me it was love at first eat. A few more men\u00fa del d\u00edas<\/i> back in Gij\u00f3n and then again last Sunday courtesy of Bel\u00e9n\u2019s sister Paz and I became hooked. Otra aventura espa\u00f1ola de amor por la comida.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"salpicon\"<\/a> \"spam\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Salpicon is a delicious mix of seafood \u2013 shrimps, mussels, clams \u2013 together with chopped onion, tomato, pepper, and a few twists of lemon. Think tabbouleh* with seafood instead of bulgar. If you like, a fancy word for seafood salad. Leave it to the Spanish to come up with an exotic word for salad.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s more popular in the Hispanic world, especially Central America and Mexico, brought by the Spanish colonists. I have no idea of the origin of the word, although it likely comes from the Spanish verb salpicar<\/i>, meaning to sprinkle. And like any transplanted dish it has many variants, typically de marisco<\/i> in Spain but also with fish and beef elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Maybe it was a transplanted dish itself, brought with the Arabs who lived and ruled here in varying degrees from 711 to 1492 (Moorish Spain in Al-Andalus or Andalusia). They brought sugar, rice, lemons and increased the use of olives, foods mostly associated now with Spain. According to Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Introductions by the Arabs were … of fundamental importance to Spain\u2019s future. They are particularly associated with the use of almonds (the essential ingredient for so many Spanish desserts, baked goods, and confectionery items); with the introduction of citrus fruit including the lemon and the bitter (Seville) orange…sugar cane and the process of refining sugar from its juice; many vegetables, among which the aubergine (eggplant) was outstanding; and numerous spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, sesame, coriander, aniseed, etc. The Arabs introduced rice to the tidal flatlands of what is now Valencia …The use of saffron in paella is also something which stems from an Arab introduction.<\/h5>\n

Other sources call salpicon a medley, a melange, a hodge podge. I know what a medley and melange are, I even occasionally use hodge podge in day-to-day life (last round at the quiz was called hodge podge), but the origin of salpicon, I don\u2019t know. Alas whatever it means, however it\u2019s served, and regardless its origin, it is delicious.**<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a mixture, a melange, a big jambalaya of cultures myself (my favourite Cayjun or Creole food, itself a rich mix of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian). I\u2019m three quarters Irish, one quarter Scottish, four quarters Canadian, with maybe a pizca <\/i>of Asturian cider now. Interesting that the races, which were separated millennia ago, are again reuniting, courtesy of the Industrial Revolution and mass immigrations from poor country to rich. From the blackest of Africa spread apart and mutated by climates over the hundreds of thousands of years (no need for black skin in Sweden) we\u2019re mixing again. Human pea soup.<\/p>\n

I suppose Spain is changing too, although it is pretty white. The mix is mostly in the food not the people, with the best and most varied thrown together in foods like paella and salpicon. Spain has its own rugged past with cultural dissent, a cipher anyway for poverty, but no need to dredge up Torquemada and the Reconquista in a caracola on food. Suffice it to say, we all have to learn to mix. Variety is the spice of life. The salsa is<\/i> the sauce.<\/p>\n

Spam on the other hand is something we could all do without, spam as in the incessant commercial messaging that comes with modern technology. The other spam, well, that\u2019s not nice either, an inexpensive (cheap) mix of chopped pork shoulder, ham, potato starch, and sodium nitrate, with a gooey glazed jelly that comes from the cooling of the meat stock. It was popularized after the Second World War by servicemen and women and soon became popular the world over because of its low (cheap) cost.<\/p>\n

But most of today\u2019s spam comes via email (85% of all email), Twitter (perhaps one third), even the latest high-tech home appliance which gurgles out ads for our presumed benefit in the midst of slicing and dicing. Essentially, if it\u2019s got a microchip, it can spam (see Finn Brunton\u2019s excellent A Short History of Spam<\/i><\/a> for more on the origins of spam).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not enough that they can stick carbon-unfriendly leaflets in your door, program a robot to telephone you at all hours, they litter your computer selling junk, 24-7, holidays included. No, I\u2019m not interested in collecting my Nigerian inheritance, finding out about government fraud (believe me I already know), or availing of the latest no-strings-attached, no-money-down, don\u2019t-pay-a-cent-until-2054 options on my fibre package. Please, leave me in peace. Don\u2019t you know, I\u2019m enjoying my own amazing can\u2019t-live-without-mix, salpicon.<\/p>\n

In fact, that\u2019s my answer to the spammers now: \u201cSorry chaps, can\u2019t stop now, I\u2019m eating salpicon.\u201d Salpicon, that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been waiting for.<\/p>\n

* Not to confuse one little known dish for another: Tabbouleh is a Middle Eastern salad made from bulgur, tomatoes, cucumbers, finely chopped parsley, mint, onion, and garlic and seasoned with olive oil, and lemon juice. I have been eating it and falafel ever since my older sister took me to Moishe\u2019s on Spadina Avenue 35 years ago.<\/h5>\n
** Some salpicon recipes at hogarutil.com<\/a> and a Youtube video from Cocina Para Todas<\/a>. Good for Spanish practice too.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first discovered the amazing salpic\u00f3n (salpicon in English) on a trip to A Coru\u00f1a last summer with Bel\u00e9n, tucked away in an odd restaurant in the city centre on an even odder men\u00fa del d\u00eda. I can\u2019t speak for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5,7],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spain","tag-food","tag-funny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnkwhite.ie\/caracolas\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}