As cool as a cucumber

I was in the supermarket last night, and wanted to buy a cucumber. (Sounds like a bad joke, but trust me on this one!)

The cucumber was "Made in Spain". As chance would have it, I was with a Spanish person who said: "Cucumbers in Spain are not like that. Perhaps they're grown for export?"

This started me thinking...

Most of the fruit and veg here looks exactly the same as how a child would draw it, i.e. a cucumber is dark green, tomatoes are bright red, lemons are yellow. They tend to have a perfect homogenous shape and size.

In Spain (and a lot of the continent I might add), most of the fruit and veg is not perfect. The cucumber basket in the supermarket will contain a variety of sizes shapes and colours. This is true of all fruits and veg.

The latest craze here appears to be organic stuff, but if even if you look in that section of the shop you still find that most of the stuff conforms to this idea of how the food should look. Curiously enough, in Madrid last year an English friend commented that she didn't particularly like the look of the fruit and veg. Maybe it's just too natural...

Last night on TV, Jamie Oliver, that great ambassador of British cuisine, continued his adventures around Italy. He went to a school and showed us all how wonderful Italian school dinners are. He's spent most of the series slagging off the British attitude to food, saying how wonderful people are in Italy. A three year old can recognise an aubergine (!) Last night, he finally said something of note. The British are much more open when it comes to trying new food.

In the summer I was in Rome eating a rather good ice-cream, I admit, when a group of Spaniards walked passed saying: "Como en España, no se come por ningún lado", which means there's no food like Spanish food. Oliver's programme has shown, in every episode (apparently to the disgust of the Italian Embassy in London), the lack of willingness to try new things. They appear to like things cooked the way they've always been cooked.

Not so here. (And I think I'd agree, although I am probably laying myself wide open by admitting that. I am in no way saying that the whole of the continent is closed to new culinary experiences, but have found it to be true on many occasions.)

So, all British food is bad, just the same as it always rains in London, and all men wear Bowler hats (I've left mine at home today!). This was perhaps true, but it has come on it leaps and bounds. I once had it pointed out to me, that if you think of what can be grown naturally here, then it is predominantly quite boring things such as the potato. This means that the staple diet is going to be based along those lines. Quite a good argument if you ask me.

Not anymore, with more and more exotic things you've never heard of being imported from far flung places you've only dreamt about.

As well as bright green cucumbers from Spain.