A Taste of Castile

When freelance journalist Gijs van Hensbergen left England for Spain in 1986, he had only the vaguest of ideas as to what awaited him. He knew his destination had something to do with food, and that involvment with food would mean a new start to life. When a few months into his Spanish adventure he found himself firetorching pigs' trotters in the kitchen of one of Castile's most famous restaurants in temperature of over a 100, he might have rued the day he cut and ran from the relative tranquility of art criticism. Like many before him, he succumbed to the addictive charms of Spanish life and has made Segovia, Castile's oldest city, his home. Working his way through the horrors of long kitchen hours and the hazardous culinary practices of the restaurant, he learnt the art of one of Europe's least-known and most delicious cuisines. In the process, he was inducted to all aspects of the culture - artistic, architectural, literary, agricultural as well as culinary - of the area, and he renders it here. Thus we read about wild boar hunts, auctions conducted over church altars, 20-course banquets, crazy priests and the most exclusive wine-grape in the world.
The author scripted the "South Bank Show" programme on Antony Caro in 1986 and writes frequently for the "Burlington Magazine".