Compulsive Viewing

British TV studios may echo to the famous warning about children and animals, but Ankawa, one of TVe's flagship programmes since its launch last June, amply demonstrates the deep-seated Spanish psychological need for spectacles of incipient danger and unruly bedlam.

Hosted by Andaluz crooner Bertín Osborne and involving a panel of small kids and lots of visiting exotic animals, you could say it was a children's programme - except that unlike say Blue Peter, it has a prime-time slot (10pm-midnight) and features outbursts of verbal obscenities, racism, sexism, animal-porn, in fact, you name it, it has it. Except perhaps expert naturalists; and safety, as the show's regular activities include blindfolded z-list hispanic celebrities sticking their hands into boxes containing surprise fauna, such as cobras, parrots and lobsters, and tigers and elephants often wander freely around the set.

The kids on the panel are almost as freakish as their pets. The other night a little girl invited to talk about her pet canary* mentioned that she had visited Africa and Nachete, the most inaguantable brat in residence, screeched "Allí hay mucho negro!" (There are loads of blacks over there). There used to be a black kid on the panel, but he appears not to have survived.

Another piece of compulsive Spanish television viewing is Vamos a Cocinar hosted by prestigious Asturian cook José Andrés. Not since Keith Floyd has TV cooking been such fun to watch, and unlike the itinerant dipsomaniac, José Andrés regularly comes up with dishes that look as if they might also be fun to prepare and consume yourself! His kitchen monologue, a mix of informative and witty chatter, is irresistible - a vast improvement on that blathering old woman Rick Stein and the muculent Gary Rhodes.

When not appearing on TVe José Andrés is Washington-based and has related to his viewers the problems he faces smuggling specialist Iberian embutidos (sausages) into the USA. (If you've seen Maria Full of Grace you will understand how challenging this might be!) He has four restaurants in DC - Jaléo, his flagship, along with Café Atlantico, Oyamel and Zaytinya.

Credited with having introduced the 'small plate' concept to America, it appears that ungenerous portions come naturally to a fellow that has the canny look of a parsimonious provincial. (V calls his salads ensala-nadas!) Yet small can be beautiful - such as his simple little tapa of serrano ham chopped up with the scooped-out interior of a ripe fig. Olive oil is something he never stints on though.

Watching him wiping his eyes as he cut up some onions for an escabeche the other night it was plain that he has yet to discover V's trick for avoiding this sort of tearful chopping - if you place a little glass of water near the onions the offending molecules seek out this liquid instead of your eyes. The only other way is to use a very sharp knife which doesn't break down the cells so much. (Since I originally posted this José Andrés has recommended cooling the onions in the fridge before chopping, a tactic which makes the emerging sulphur gases less volatile.)

As if on a mission to wipe out the memories of some of the less entrancing experiences of continental cuisine on our recent trip V has had a very inventive month in the kitchen. The highlights have been a side-dish of red cabbage cooked slowly with balsamic vinegar honey and sultanas, and quince shallow-fried with white wine and honey and served with a mixture of basmati and nanjing black rice. She's also done great things with the orecchiatte we bought near Modena.

Another denizen of the wild Iberian frontier of political correctness is Maria-Rosario-Cayetana FitzJames-Stuart y Silva, the Duchess of Alba, one of Europe's great aristocratic eccentrics and a descendent of our own James II. More on her another day perhaps.

*The bird actually belonged to her grandmother and has 'died' four times, each time seamlessly replaced to spare the old lady from grief, though the little girl had failed to consider the possibility that her abuela was watching the programme that evening.