Basque cooking

N's sister Begonia is here from Madrid. We ate with them at the weekend, and Begonia cooked traditional Basque food for N - who misses Basque cuisine. She brought squid ink with her from Spain, and they bought fresh squid at the excellent quayside fish-shop in Musselburgh. So the main course was squid cooked with tomatoes, onion, garlic, white wine and black squid ink.

I was proud of my son, he ate it all up without batting an eye. And it was very good, you could taste the sea, like breathing in a lungful of salty air.

I had this dish once before with N, in a bar in Bilbao, and I think it works better as a tapas type dish with a mix of other things, but nonetheless it was great to taste it again. In Basque it has a name, which sounds like the Abba song Chiquitita!

Black coloured food is always rather strange to eat, as the colour or rather the lack of colour doesn't make it look that appetising, think of liquorice, black pudding and black pasta, again made with squid ink. And all black coloured food stuff seem to have properties that make them almost too healthy! But they aren't as odd as blue food, apparently food dyed blue is the least appetising of all to the eye.