Spanish Bread

I humor myself with choices on the topic of titles.  I’ve no intention of diving into the variety of breads in Spain, (My wife read the title and mentioned perhaps I should have changed it to Cataluña Bread). I also had not intentionally learned about the nuances of the many differences in the country of Spain.  Growing up, for as far back as I can remember ~ well into my adulthood even ~ I thought Spain was a homogeneous society; sharing the same language and having the same customs.  It was only until I married a girl from Catalonia did I realize the complexities and stark differences of that mystical alluring country; with the many distinct different qualities of its individual regions.  I suppose I had suspected it from my lessons earlier in life about generalizing the world when I was stationed in Germany, but the reckoning came obliquely.  My German friends would often conjecture on topics of emotional issue as if all Americans thought and felt the same way.  Sure, our language was more or less English, but it held key regional inferences as well; different enough so when someone from the East might be perplexed with a phrase known well from the West.  I’m unsure if I captured the relationship of comparing the big country with the smaller parts that make it up.  I’m just as certain the same could be said for the villages within any region of any mentioned country.  Some shared qualities to be sure, as well as individual distinctions which are very specifically unique to a singular place.

  Which brings me to bread. 

When we visited Barcelona I could not eat enough of their bread. It seemed to me to be steeped in history. I’m sure I was assigning some mystical characteristic to it, but I would swear that I had never had bread before I ate Pa amb Tomàquet, (Bread distinctly prepared in a Catalan way.) Clearly distinctive ethnic dishes reflect the culture, but I didn’t expect it with a staple I was so intimately familiar with.

   Pa amb Tomàquet is simple. Rub an as newly picked tomato as you can find over fresh bread, spread the juice of the tomato over the face of the cut slice of bread like you were grinding cheese; then add a little olive oil and salt. It’s a delight I just cannot re-enact here in the States. It must be the bread. Or, perhaps, it was the fresh tomatoes? We can get Spanish olive oil, so it’s not that ingredient. For whatever the reason I can’t make Pometomarket , (I call it), here.  

   I think of Pa amb Tomàquet now and my eyes tear up, I miss it so much.  Perhaps I’ve attached my affection to that food and my second home with the delight I experienced with the friendship and intimacy that greeted me on my first visit.  Where subliminally I assigned the food with my initial positive impression I was washed in when introduced to my new extended family.

   That could be, just as a host of other reasons as well.  What I am aware of is my feeling that there is no other bread like it on the planet. Just as certainly, we could line up expats from their regional home towns from around the world and they’d get misty-eyed talking about a favorite dish, or the healing welcome to their soul with a bite of their home spun bread.

You human beings humble me sometimes with your very tender hearts. Some of the very best of the innocent child remains in you, even when you act in deplorably selfish ways towards one another.  I wish us better.