WINE & DINE WITH ANGELA LANSBURY

  How Spanish food has improved, like English food, over the past few decades. On Tenerife, the largest of the Canary islands, we were looking for a special place to celebrate my husband's birthday.  He found a Michelin standard restaurant. A place where the ingredients, tastes, and presentation would be a surprise, something we could not or would not do at home. (That is a challenge, because my husband is a keen cook. He downloads recipes in French and translates them. He consults three version of the same dish. He shops for unusual ingredients, ordering Jersey potatoes online to get the right texture and flavour.) The name of the restaurant is El Taller. This is Spanish for workshop, studio, repair shop, or garage, depending on the context, the surroundings.   Wine muscat. 9 couses 1 chocolate ball with sweet tomato soup centre   The open hatch into the kitchen at the back enables you to watch the chef owner, Seve Diaz, preparing the set meals. You can see the...

  The Interpretation Centres leaflet alerted me to the view and an eating place which was probably open, being part of a museum complex. Several restaurants had been closed on Sundays and Mondays. Others seemed to be closed in June. Waiting to open until high season., school holidays July and August and busy warm winter season September until January.  Our leaflet described the eating place as a cafeteria. But we had good, swift, waiter service from a friendly man who recommended a sweet verdecha grape wine which suited me. The dry wine for my husband was a blend including Malvasia grapes. The bread came with mango flavour butter. I had cod in a delicious slightly sweet red. Maybe tomato sauce. My husband,s salad looked like a flower. In the centre was a dome of white soft cheese covered in a skin of green sauce. The lettuce leaves, crisp, oval and green were arranged around the centre like petals. The spotless toilets for ladies had 3 cubicles all with wash basins plus anothe...

  The letters T and G are on labels on new wines from this huge important co-op, selling wines from 300 producers.  Sweet malvasia Photo by Angela Lansbury.

 In London I used to love drinking mango lassi in Indian restaurants. You could order it sweet, or savoury, salted. A four and a half hour flight from Stansted airport, north of London, took me and my husband to Tenerife. I first had mango soup in the parador Teide on Tenerife, one of the Spanish, Spanish-speaking Canary Islands. The second time was at a restaurant Casa Osmunda, the name of the original owner of the house, on the island of La Palma. We arrived after a two and a half hour ferry trip from Trnerife . , town hillside, Santa Cruz de la Palma, has the pory for ferIed and tbe airport.