From free-range ham to gourmet chocolate with balsamic vinegar, it's amazing what a simple daylong foodie tour of the Spanish capital reveals.

DID you know that Spain produces more than a hundred varieties of cheese and dozens of brands of extra virgin olive oil?

Spanish cuisine is difficult to pinpoint, as it is the result of 3,000 years of invasion and blending of cultures, declares Carlos Galvin, who operates a foodies' walking tour of the Spanish capital, Madrid. His tours take in neighbourhood markets, specialist food suppliers, and even the tapas bars where foreigners rarely venture.

To meet the true foodie professionals, there's no better place to start than in a neighbourhood produce market like the Anton Martin in Madrid's working-class and immigrant district of Lavapies.

And there you will notice something that doesn't take any visitor very long to notice: the Spanish fixation with ham - everywhere you turn, there is ham in all forms, including a "Museum of Ham", which is actually a chain of bars.

Spain's finest hogs range freely in state oak forests, browsing for acorns as they grow Spain's finest ham. The back leg is best, selling at 67 euros (S$141.37) a kilogramme and, says Galvin, is offered by any good restaurant in Madrid. Black hooves or white hooves? Well, apparently, it matters.

And watch out for the knives that come out during the annual carving competitions. Jamoneros that is, thin, flexible carving knives.

And then there's the other obsession: Spaniards consume more seafood per head than any other nation except the Japanese. The widest and freshest selection is to be found here in Madrid, even though the city lies some hours' drive inland from the coast.

The Iberian love affair with bacalao, or codfish, began with Basque fishermen working the Gulf Stream off North America. Hundreds of bacalao recipes exist, usually beginning with repeated soaking and rinsing to remove the salt.

Spain is also the world's largest producer of olive oil, and has recently firmly shrugged off the old image of bulk quantity and mediocre quality. Dozens of varieties are displayed at the Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero, an enticing store operated by a producers' cooperative on the edge of Madrid's trendy Chueca district.

We found it hard to tear ourselves away from the next stop on our daylong food tour. La Duquesita is an old-fashioned confectionary store that was established in 1914. Its dark wooden shelves and marble counters are seemingly little changed despite all the turmoil of the intervening years.

The confectionary and cakes on display include seasonal favourites such as rosquillas (hotcakes) and aguja de ternera (veal in puff pastry) that are usually only made for the festival held in May for Madrid's patron saint, San Isidro (or Saint Isidore). All the items are made by hand, on the premises.

We take a break from exclaiming over the food to exclaim over architecture: A few doors along, on the same calle Fernando VI, is one of Madrid's most remarkable buildings, the century-old Palacio de Longoria, home to the General Society of Authors and a fine representative of the Modernist style, the Spanish version of Art Nouveau.

In contrast to the old Palacio and even older cake shop, Poncelet in the Justicia district has only been operating for three years but the bright, modern emporium of cheese already draws connoisseurs from well beyond Madrid.

Owner Jesús Pombo travels widely to source his stock of more than 300 varieties of cheese. One-third of these are native Spanish, including manchego, the best-known, which is made with raw sheep's milk and aged at least six months; then there is cabrales, a mountain cheese from the Picos de Europa in northern Spain that is made with three types of raw, unpasteurised goat's milk and naturally-occurring penicillin; and from the province of Cadiz in southern Spain comes payoyo, a relatively unusual cheese.

We find the cheese samples went down very nicely with the help of a little tinto, or red wine, specifically a 2003 Fontal Tempranillo, a Spanish varietal aged six months in oak. At 5.95 euros (S$12.50), it seemed a very well priced drop from La Mancha, a region that had been known previously more for bulk than for quality.

Cacao Sampaka is another smart new emporium catering to Madrid's culinary cognoscenti. With a minimalist ambience of polished pine and piped jazz, this store (and café) is dedicated to chocolate in its most sophisticated form.

The name derives from a plantation in Equatorial Guinea, West Africa, but Cacao Sampaka the store identifies its chocolate as originating from at least eight countries. Cacao Sampaka are producers of chocolate and controls the whole process from the selection of cocoa beans to product packaging. Bizarre as it seems, some varieties are flavoured with olive oil, Parma cheese, black truffle, anchovies, or balsamic vinegar!

Chocolate tablets range from 31% cacao to 100%, and the latter, it is claimed, doesn't produce the unpleasant side effects some people suffer when eating chocolate - but, we learn, colour is not indicative of fat content.

Eight different packaged collections are offered. Orange peel with chocolate is one of the most popular products, as is Collection No. 6, an array of chocolates blended with fruit.

It's early evening. Lunch is behind us (although not by much, as the tapas tasting continues through the afternoon). The old "plates of meat" are feeling the heat after tramping around the streets of Madrid. Forget your gourmet provender, it's time for something totally decadent, so we wend our way to the venerable Churreria de San Gines, around the side of the ancient church of San Gines, near the Plaza Mayor at the city's heart.

With tiles on the walls and dark-stained timber fittings, the Churreria is an espresso bar that is a Madrid institution. Churros are simply dough fritters, devoid of nutritional value but delicious none the less when dunked in a cup of hot, soupy chocolate. Mmm...

Philip Game travelled as a guest of Spanish Tourism.

This article was first published by The Star on March 2, 2008.