Chorizo wars

When do changing British tastes amount to cultural appropriation? Plus: what I've been drinking this week

Sacrilege or evolution? Marks & Spencer's new "chorizo paella croquetas" and the original Spanish dishes

IT was a classic international food row: late last month, social media buzzed with the news that British supermarket Marks & Spencer is selling “chorizo paella croquetas”. The British taste for chorizo in paella has previously outraged Spain: as I’ve written before, chorizo is regarded there as sacrilege in a dish that should include only rabbit or chicken, or at a push, seafood. But putting it all together in a croqueta is a truly bizarre concept for any Spaniard. That we’ve reached this stage in ready meals says more about British than Spanish tastes – but much about international food culture too.

Social media argued over whether the croquetas were “cultural appropriation or pure gastronomic terrorism”, reports El País’s Rafa de Miguel. Even Britain’s ambassador in Madrid, Hugh Elliot, was moved to weigh in online (I’ve translated his flawless Spanish): “Chorizo, yes! Paella, yes! Croquetas, yes yes! All together? M&S, what have you done?”

Some Spaniards weren’t so sure. London-based Spanish chef Omar Allibhoy posted a video of himself buying a pack of the offending croquetas and preparing them at home.

“Good taste!” exclaims Allibhoy. “It’s very well achieved, I have to say – it’s tasty, it’s creamy. We can’t complain!” Though the expression on the face of his friend when he tells her what’s in them is a picture of Spanish bewilderment.

But as de Miguel notes, “sometimes a kick to gastronomic traditions... actually hides a declaration of love. Only an unbridled passion for Spanish cuisine could bring together three dishes in one: croquetas, paella rice and chorizo.”

These are indeed now much-loved dishes in Britain, with chorizo perhaps the firmest favourite. The UK imported more than 6,800 tonnes of Spanish sausages in the first half of this year alone – their second-biggest export market after France.

What Spaniards find harder to understand, in part because of their relatively insular food culture, is why we have to mess with classics. But in a country with as thoroughly bastardised, industrialised a food culture as ours, that was bound to happen. Not only can you now find artisanal English chorizo, but also chorizo crisps, relish and pasties. Even builders-favourite sandwich shop Greggs sells chicken and chorizo rolls. And naturally we’ve used it to debase (or improve) another imported favourite, pizza.

So when does such borrowing become cultural appropriation? British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver had previously drawn fire for his recipes for Jollof rice and “punchy jerk rice”. Last year he told the Sunday Times that he now employs “cultural appropriation specialists” to avoid such misunderstandings.

And in 2020, US foodie celebrity and then-New York Times columnist Alison Roman sparked outrage by refusing to acknowledge the ethnic roots of her viral recipe hit, The Stew. A chickpea stew with coconut and turmeric, it’s pretty clearly a curry (maybe more obviously so to Brits) – but Roman and the NYT didn’t say so. In the social media firestorm that followed, plenty of critics voiced views like those of Iranian-American Roxana Hadadi, who called Roman’s recipe “colonialism as cuisine”, a way to “absorb other people’s identities and present them as her own expertise”.

It’s frankly a pretty silly spat between different upper-middle-class influencers: people actually being violently oppressed by imperialists don’t generally have time to argue about recipes. And Britain evidently doesn’t have the same colonial relationship with Spain as with parts of Africa, the Caribbean or Asia.

But imperial history still inscribes other food traditions in both nations. Chorizo got its distinctive flavour and red colour only when paprika, made from New World capiscums, was brought back from Spain’s empire in the seventeenth century. And the sausage remained unaffordable for much of the Spanish working class until nineteenth-century industrialisation – itself powered in part by the profits of empire in the Caribbean and Asia. Tradition is rarely as uncomplicated as it looks.

As for croquetas, they’re firmly an international borrowing, if not a colonial one: the great French chef Antonin Carême supposedly invented the classic béchamel base in 1817. Not that there’s anything very French about these fried cheese and ham snacks so beloved of Spaniards (they are estimated to consume around 2.5kg of croquetas – around 100 – per head annually.)

Still, while the Spanish today eat more burgers, say, than their parents did, their cuisine has changed less than ours. I’m not entirely sure what white English people ate in the 1960s – just meat-and-two-veg standards like pork chops and mash?

Never mind chorizo and paella: it’s easy to forget, for instance, that pasta was little known when I grew up. In the early 1970s, the only pasta in most British stores was macaroni (for macaroni cheese; American “mac and cheese” was still decades away from importation.)

When my mother expanded her supper repertoire in the mid-70s, a fusty delicatessen was the sole place spaghetti could be found – at least in Exeter – and then in traditional 50cm lengths, in a blue paper packet. My brother and I greeted her first spaghetti Bolognese as a daring experiment. The dish’s transformation to student staple – Google’s Ngram tool suggests the term “spag bol” gained currency from the late 1980s – would have seemed improbable then.

Chorizo’s ascent from rare foreign delicacy to pub crisp flavour marks another such step in Britain’s culinary transformation. And while I doubt I’ll be eating the M&S croquetas in question, I think the enrichment of our cuisine is to be celebrated. The Spanish will just have to live with the sad truth that, lacking a very distinctive food tradition of our own, Brits borrow and adapt what looks tasty in other people’s cuisines – increasingly so, in a globalised culture. I’m not suggesting my Spanish friends do the same – but if you do fancy devising roast-dinner croquetas, ¡vamos a hacerlo!

Tasty: Omar Allibhoy samples M&S’s new croquetas

What I’ve been drinking this week

Casa Mariol Samsó Crianza 2019, Terra Alta – Terra Alta is a promising but little-known Catalan denominación: I drank this at last month’s Catalan food and drink show in London. Samsó is the local name fot Cariñena/Carignan: this boasts nice chewy tannins and crunchy fruit, but it’s supple and balanced (Nine Elms Wines, Salusbury Wine Store from £16.)

Domaine Gardiès “Les Millères” 2018, Côtes-du-Roussillon Villages – Domaine Gardiès is one of the most serious Rousillon producers, making wine in the harsh Agly valley. This one is mostly Grenache and Syrah, with a bit of Carignan and Mourvèdre: aromas of garrigue herbs, savoury, fresh and well balanced. I found this just so satisfying (can’t remember where I bought it; Jeroboams has the 2020, £19.50)

Suertes Del Marquès 7 Fuentes “El Lance” 2020, Valle de Orotava – from Tenerife, this red is a blend of Listán Negro (the island’s most-planted red grape) and Castellana Negra (also known in Portugal as Tinta Cão) – so a pretty typical Canarian red, though no less singular for it. As so often with these wines, there’s a hard-to-pin-down energy and mineral edge to it, slightly smoky, almost saline yet fresh, complex. And it’s only 12.5 percent alcohol (Vinatis, £19.90.)