Thursday, April 7, 2016

Cooking in Sevilla

Food is big in Sevilla -- they are rightfully proud of their amazing array of tapas, and the markets are replete with fresh veggies, fruits, seafood, and just about any part of a vertebrate you could want.  Of course, there are many things missing here from our usual diet; for instance it has so far been impossible to get good Mexican flavors, because all the spices here are different.  
Mushroom caps stuffed with garlic snails

But one of my personal goals during this stay, with an abundance of cool new foods, was to be as adventurous in cooking as I could be.  Sometimes this was trying to learn to make something that we tried in a tapas bar, but most often it was finding something in the market that I couldn't identify, asking what it was and what to do with it, and searching the internet for how to prepare it.  Not everything has been a success or to our liking the first time (or in the case of pigeon, even the second), but there are some wonderful new foods that I will sorely miss back in California.

A few new things I've learned to cook:
Birds:  Quail, pigeon, pheasant, partridge
Eggs: Quail eggs, both pickled and in little baked cups, tortilla española (con cebolla)
Seafood: Hueva de merluza (hake ovary), huevos de choco (cuttlefish eggs), calamares (squid), choco (cuttlefish), caracoles (snails), percebes (goose-necked barnacles), cañaillas (Bolinus brandaris, purple-dye murex), a variety of species of clams, mussels, and shrimps, and a variety of fresh fish (hake, tuna, swordfish, bacalao, lenguado, boquerones).
Plants and fungi: Tagarninas (Scolymus hispanicus common golden thistle), canónigos (Valerianella locusta, corn salad), borraja (Borago officinalis), gurumelos (Amanita ponderosa), gazpacho and salmorejo (cold soups), cured and spiced olives, crushed tomato and olive oil on bread for breakfast

Of all these, I think what I like the most are the huevos de choco.  Kind of like scallops. 

3 comments:

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  2. Some of these sound really good! We just finished studying food in Spanish class, but we spend much more time talking about Mexico & Latin America than we do about Spain, so it's fun to see how different the dishes are between the two cultures.

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