Food for thought.

Gill has a knack of buying me the perfect book at exactly the right time. So, after a few years of  wandering around the Mediterranean, in 2017, either as a birthday or Christmas present - I can't remember which - she gave me Cyprien Broodbank's 'The Middle Sea', a brilliant account of the development of human culture around the Mediterranean from earliest times to the advent of Classical Greek civilisation. It helped me join up the dots of our journey; familiar landscapes were given added depth.

This Christmas she did it again, buying me this:

I am only a third of the way through it, but I can see how it the experience of 'eating local' will be enriched by understand something of the history of food culture. Yesterday's trip into Malaga was a case in point; what started as a quick trip to the market to buy some veg. followed by a visit to Malaga's municipal museum turned into a culinary Odyssey, the entire day focused on food.

It was late morning by the time we arrived in the city. The market was a little tricky to find, tucked down some side streets on the west side of Malaga's historical centre. It is smaller than some of the city markets we have visited in Spain, like those in Salamanca or Valencia. However, if anything it was even more thriving, the stalls piled high with brightly coloured vegetables, the fish market pristine, white marble slabs gleaming with silvery dorada, merzula and caballa.

Each stallholders tried to outdo the next in the arrangement of produce. As you walked through you are confronted by a series of real still lifes, each one inviting you to admire the colour or texture of the produce. Not just the sights, Malaga is as far south as Algiers so the market is full of spices, figs and dried fruits. Arabic influences prevail in the scents and smells that assail you.

There is something joyous about a thriving municipal market, the sense that you are participating in a scene as old as civilisation itself. Indeed, the first essays in book I am reading make the point that food culture predates the moment we grouped together in settlements; the gathering, cooking and sharing of food is a fundamental characteristic of the human species. To shop in the market is to touch base with the past as much as any visit to a museum, the history of the city written in its food.

As noon approached the market bars began to serve food. The ones here are basic, unpretentious places. In a few places we have been they have become a somewhat gentrified, to the point where Lisbon's 'Time Out' Market functions as much as a visitor attraction as a place for locals to buy fresh food. Malaga's market for the moment remains true to its roots. 

Though the market bars look basic, the food they serve is not. We opted to eat at 'Happy Fish'. It specialises, unsurprisingly, in fried and grilled fish. I chose a prawn with Iberico ham skewer, Gill opted for grilled Rosado and salad. They were both good; however, our side dish of aubergines with a honey sauce was delicious, one of those plates of food that is unforgettable. The aubergines were coated lightly in a tempura batter seasoned with herbs and ever so gently spiced. With the dish we were presented with a squeezy plastic bottle containing a dark brown sauce. This was the honey dressing. It had been mixed, we think, with a balsamic 'crema' spiked perhaps with a dash of molasses. It was really quite special - the cost - €4.00!

On the way out we bought two thin slices of fresh tuna to accompany the salad vegetables we had bought earlier, then headed towards Malaga museum. It focuses on the history of the city, one part of it housing the municipal art collection, another showcasing archaeological finds from the prehistoric period through to the end of the Arabic era in the thirteenth century. 

The artefacts from the earlier period were the most fascinating, partly because they related to the material we happened across in December concerning the area's earliest inhabitants. Most of the finds from this period relate to hunting and gathering food - how stone tools were fashioned into implements to butcher meat, bone made into harpoons for catching fish. 

As the paleolithic became the mesolithic more sophisticated technology emerged - pottery in particular. The earliest examples were 7000 years old. They still looked serviceable. 

A label next to them noted that it is thought that  pottery was produced by women. We speculated how that might be known, by hand prints found on the artefacts perhaps? I reflected that the fact this point needed to be made reveals the extent to which the role of women in history is so often simply unrecorded - that 'pre-herstory' reaches towards the present to a far greater extent than prehistory, because in almost every culture, ancient and modern, men controlled the written word. The deeds of women were almost always written by men until very recently indeed. So, if it is the case that these ancient pots were produced by women it makes them rare, special things.

I have no idea if the bracelets and necklaces from the same era were worn by women or men, or both sexes. Body adornments and jewellery always seem poignant to me, especially those designed to encircle the wrist or neck. That empty, disembodied circle, through absence, becomes the ghostly presence of a long gone ancestor. One of those times when the past touches us, a brief haunting moment.

Time to head for the bus. what a great day it has been from start to finish. We got back to the van with an hour or so of daylight remaining. Enough time to fire-up the Cadac and grill the tuna. It's been a very foody day.