Turrón

Picture the scene if you will, a young Monkey Gland sits at a Christmas day family table. Small, bald and fat men sit around a table strewn with the wreckage of a Christmas dinner, huge snifters of brandy are swilled, short stubby cigars are smoked and deeply impenetrable card games are played with much shouting in deeply impenetrable accents. Everyone has been there a very long time and various older members of the family are snoozing in other rooms. On the table huge slabs of turrón sit amongst the coffee cups and cigar wrappers. Young Monkey Gland takes a mouthful and his theory that all adults are frankly insane is given a further boost.

Turrón, a hard almond nougat, is a staple of a Spanish Christmas and one of those sweet things that is designed for adults. No child I know ever liked turrón, it was purely the preserve of aunts and uncles, along with ammaretti, Turkish Delight and anything served in a small glass that made you grimace when drinking it. They were adult sweets that we as children would view with suspicion every time they appeared on the table. Sweet, yes, but difficult to eat and needlessly complicated to a kids palate. Actually, even now I can only handle a tiny piece of this at a time and I only then with a coffee and a grappa close by.