On a friend’s recommendation I recently picked up the book A Late Dinner: Discovering the Food of Spain.  Written by British born food journalist, Paul Richardson, the book documents the author’s year-long voyage into the heart of the Spanish culinary universe.

 If you’re into food and travel, this book is a great read because Richardson describes, in great detail, the history of the cuisine in coastal towns, interior provinces and major cities, while also writing about the landscape, culture and characters of the regions he travels through. 

 A book like this would be impossible to write without dedicating time to olive oil, which sits firmly at the centre of Spanish food and life.  Richardson does just this in chapter 8, titled Jaén, after an inland town south of Madrid, in the region of Andalucía.  Jaén is dedicated to olive oil cultivation and from a restaurant table in a stony village, Richardson provides a fantastic account of the history of olive oil, its production and exportation.  He also recounts a visit to a privately owned olive farm called, Our Lady of Miracles.

 While I always knew that Spain was rife with olive trees, I didn’t quite understand the magnitude.  There are 220 million trees in the whole of Spain and one-third reside in Jaén alone.  Jaén itself produces the most common variety of olive, the Picual, and interestingly the plantations there, which cover more than 600,000 hectares, have been called the largest man-made woodlands in the world: 

“From here to the horizon, there was not a fig tree, not a vine, not a patch of vegetables or almond trees, nothing but an expanse of grey-green foliage.  From a distance, a large olive plantation looks eerily like a restless ocean.  The silvery leaves glitter slightly and, when the wind blows, currents sweep across the canopy of treetops”.

 Written in the first person, it feels like you’re right there on the journey, which makes this book a great escape, albeit imaginary!