Traditional Baking Recipes of Spain

Malcolm Coxall, the author, is the proprietor of the family's 110 acre organic farm in Southern Andalucía in Spain. The farm produces olives, almonds and culinary herbs. It incorporates a small factory for the packing of organic herbs, dried fruits and nuts.

Apart from running the farm, Malcolm also provides IT consultancy and business services especially to other organic food producers in the region. He has published several books and many articles on traditional Spanish food, sustainable agriculture, organic food production, forest biodiversity, environmental protection, politics and economics. He is active in the European food and environmental movement, and has taken several successful legal actions in defence of European environmental standards in the European Court of Justice.

Malcolm is passionate about local food production, culinary diversity, agricultural sustainability and traditional gastronomy. He believes that our traditional recipes have much to teach a generation that lives on a largely homogenised processed diet and has forgotten how real food is grown and prepared. He believes that truly good food is local, ethical, organic and slow and that how and what we eat defines who we are as a society. 

As he says: "Societies that knowingly eat chemically adulterated junk foods, produced in heartless factory farms, reveal an intrinsic social, political and health malaise and a profound lack of empathy for the planet. How can such food be good food? It cannot. Such societies reveal their lack of sustainability, an inherent ignorance of the world we share and a disconnection from their natural and social context. Contrast this "care-less" mentality with those societies that treasure their land, their natural environment, their people, their traditional cuisine and the quality of their food.

"Spanish traditional food is one of the last bastions of good food in Europe. The Spanish are fiercely proud of their local agricultural produce and with some justification. Few other culinary traditions in Europe are as vast in range, as imaginative, healthy and delicious as that of Spain. The Spanish love good food and good company, they enjoy life and they love their land and its produce. 

"Explain to me again why we need fast food and how 'industrial agriculture' fits in with the larger concepts of human and environmental well-being and sustainability. To be sustainable, we need to start to understand food again - beginning with the basics both on the farm and in the kitchen. To begin, we could do worse than to try to re-discover our own local gastronomic heritage. Not only is this socially worthwhile and important, it is also great fun to make and enjoy real food again!"