October 28, 2024

Eat This Podcast: How the Spanish learned to love anchovies

For hundreds of years the people of Spain, with the exception of the good people of Malaga, who developed a thing for deep-fried fresh anchovies, ignored the little fish. Today, they are the greatest anchovy eaters in the world.

Chris Beckman, author of A Twist in the Tail: How the Humble Anchovy Flavoured Western Cuisine, explains that to get to No. 1, they needed a lot of help, from love-struck Italian fish salters, chic French hotels, and General Franco’s disastrous policies of self-sufficiency.

Take a listen.