Traditional Spanish Food

In recent years Spanish food and restaurateurs have made great strides forward. In the most unimaginable places, sometimes hidden away in villages of the interior or next door to a tourist resort along the coast one can find restaurants with a style of their own, offering quality products, practising modern Mediterranean cuisine and sometimes delving into the avant-garde, but always faithful to their roots, making extraordinarily healthy dishes.

Classic Dishes of Spain

Gazpacho

Gazpacho is a chilled raw soup originating in Andalucia that is made by pounding bread and garlic with tomatoes, cucumber and peppers. Olive oil and vinegar gives it a refreshing tang. It is usually garnished with diced salad vegetables and croutons.

Paella

Is this the national dish of Spain? Consisting mainly of rice seasoned with saffron, it can be a combination of chicken, vegetables and seafood, or a combination of sausages, rabbit and meat with chickpeas. Each region will have its own variation. Although many people consider paella the most typical of Spanish dishes, its origins are fairly recent. The first paella was prepared in Valencia in the late nineteenth century.

It is cooked in a flat metal pan with two handles riveted to the sides. Paella short grain rice can be prepared with chicken or rabbit or both, with shellfish, fish of various kinds, or with vegetables only. The combinations are practically limitless - ranging from meatless 'Lent' paella containing only salted codfish and cauliflower, to paella made using small game fresh from the hunt.

It is a popular dish at fiesta time, and curiously enough, a masculine meal customarily made by men. The Valencian phrase 'to go paella-eating' is used throughout the region, which may involve outings, parties, picnics and such like.

The genuine Valencian paella always has a good helping of wide-pod green beans and giant dried butter beans. As for meats, chicken, pork and rabbit are used and occasionally wild duck. Adding extra flavour are white-shelled mountain snails providing what some call an exquisite taste. But there are also seafood and shellfish paellas, which in recent years have become increasingly popular, particularly the high-priced mouth-watering lobster paella.

Whatever the ingredients may be, when an orthodox paella reaches the table, the grains of rice should be dry, loose and golden, never mushy or sticky or leaving a trace of oil if served on the plate. When the paella has been cooked over an outdoor wood fire, the paella-eating ritual calls for diners to sit in a circle, to eat from the communal pan and to scrape the nearly burnt rice from the bottom. Some say this is the best part.

Cocido

Many people consider the traditional meal of Spain to be a meat stew called cocido . It is a slow-simmered stew of beef, chicken, ham and pork belly with chickpeas, cabbage, chorizo (red sausage) and morcilla (black sausage) producing a dish usually served in three courses. The broth is served first, then the vegetables and then the meats.

In Madrid it is called cocido a la madrilena . It is a stew of chicken, chorizo sausage, maybe some ham or other cured meat, potatoes, cabbage and chickpeas and macaroni. Again it is eaten 'from front to back'. But this is a dull dish. There are so many good things to eat in Spain why bother with cocido . Yet the people of Madrid love, dream and sing about it.

Sweets of Moorish Origin

Sweet floury breads halfway between normal bread and confectionery are zealously eaten together with pastries and confectionery. To this list should be added leche merengada (ice cream made from milk, egg whites and flavourings) and crisp almond cookies called avellana. Top of the list for sweet-toothed performers in Spanish gastronomy is none other than the nougat-like turrones from Xixona made from the abundance of almonds and honey produced in various districts of the province.