¡Comida!
Food!
Last week I received my first visitor!
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| Obligatory Gijón sign photo with Richard |
But mainly we ate our way round Asturias like the very hungry caterpillar....
One the first day we had empanada and pimientos de padrón. Empanda is pastry filled usually with meat/cheese and ham/tuna; some are slices from a giant tray baked one, some are like pasties. Pimientos de padrón are small green peppers which are fried while sprinkled with lots of salt, often served as a tapas.
On the second day we ate tortilla and a sartén. We made our own tortilla! The Spanish omelette is easy to make, the secret is to mix the fried potatoes and onions in the bowl of beaten eggs, before frying it all together. A sartén is a frying pan, but it also refers to a mix of fried potatoes, eggs and meat (jamón or choriozo) which is served in a black high sided frying pan. It's the best form of comfort food ever.
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| Tortilla |
On the third day we had a menú del día. Almost every restaurant in Spain offers one; it's a large lunch, normally consisting of 3 courses, a drink, bread and maybe a coffee as well if you're lucky, for between 8-15 euros. Believe me it's worth every cent. We had the Asturian themed one. We started with fabada, a special Asturain stew with fabes (large white beans) and chunks of morcilla (black pudding), lacón (pork shoulder) and chorizo in a kind of stock. It's very filling. We continued with pork in a cabrales sauce; cabrales is a rich spreadable Asturian blue cheese. We finished with arroz con leche (a kind of rice pudding which was cold) and a frixuelo (the Asturian word for crepe/pancake), which are both traditional desserts here. Suffice to say we didn't eat dinner that evening.
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| Fabada |
On the fourth day we munched cachopo. Cachopo is huge, first of all, and some restaurants advertise the size of their's. It's veal steaks layered with cheese and ham, bread-crumbed and fried, served with chips and sometimes a small salad. Very filling and tasty.
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| The waiter spilt the water not us. Honestly! |
On the fifth day we ate a Regma ice-cream. Ibense is the Asturian brand of ice-cream, which is lovely, but once we tried a Regma there was no going back. Regma is a Santander based brand and despite the limited flavours, and its shop's winter closure, it reigns supreme. A single (with 2 flavours) looks like this:
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| I can't imagine how big a double is... |
On the sixth and final day we ate some bakery goods. Magdalenas are typical breakfast muffins (only 1 flavour and that's Magdalena plain flavour, though mine had apple on the top), a palmera that is a heart shaped pastry sometimes covered in chocolate or glace icing, bizcocho is a Spanish plain sponge cake and a milhoja, which is a custard/cream slice.
Then Richard turned into a butterfly and flew back to London and I remained a chubby Asturian caterpillar.
The end.
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