#4: Spain

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👋Bienvenidos tios! Our palates will travel to one of the most delicious territories in the Mediterranean and the cradle of many cultures thanks to the conquest, according to history, of course. Spain has hundreds of dishes to offer with curious names and so varied that on many occasions even Spanish speakers from other territories do not understand, but we must also remember that this country has more subcultures than just the Castilian one.


😋Spaniards have the honor of owning incredibly delicious products, some of them you should try sometime in your life, and I will show you a couple of them.

👀Let's see if they have a good memory because when we talked about Italian gastronomy, we could notice that this country has competition with France to see who makes the best wine. Well, it also has a rivalry with Spain and that is that a product is always compared in these two countries. 

🌱We're talking about olive oil. Among these differences we can notice its color since it depends on the climate and harvest time, it changes, level of fat and types of olives it has. Within Spain, locals have many ways to consume it either as a dressing or for cooking. Yes, it is a myth that olive oil cannot be used for cooking because it loses its nutrients, this is false. 

Currently, there are four types of oil: extra virgin olive oil, virgin olive oil, olive oil, and olive pomace oil. This classification corresponds to the four commercial categories of olive oil that are recognized in European Union legislation (EC Regulation 1019/2002). (Coosur, 2021, pa 1)

In a region of Spain called Andalusia, it is traditional to eat bread seasoned with olive oil for breakfast and although it is not usually so rare, the truth is that you can see that some people put salt or sugar in the oil. No matter how they eat it, it is a fact that Spaniards are proud to be the number 1 consumers of this product. One recommendation is to try olive oil with toasted bread. 👍 

Another of the products we are going to discuss has a particular origin and that is that it was created thinking about the shadows that people in food crises used to have and thanks to that, a harmony of flavors was created.

💗Las croquetas were designed to use the remains of Serrano ham, chicken, vegetables, among other things in a small bite that explodes in your mouth. They are made from a béchamel sauce that is basically mixing flour with some fat, usually butter, adding milk until it thickens and adding the ingredient to give it the flavor. When they cool, they are made into small balls that are varnished with grated bread and fried and that's it.

In all of Spain, there is a supermarket that is the most popular and where you can find thousands of local and foreign products. I mention Mercadona because if you ever travel to Spain this is the ideal place to buy frozen or freshly made croquettes if you don't like to cook, in addition to discovering hundreds of products that you only see there.


9.5 golden spoons describe my vision of Spanish cuisine for its simple but quality ingredients. It's not a perfect rating as I need more products to try.



🍳Recipe: Tortilla de patata🍴


No please, just because it has the word tortilla on it means that they are the same as those in Mexico. For Spaniards, the word tortilla refers to the sautéed egg and this recipe has quite a lot. If you follow this recipe is for a medium tortilla de patata.

  • 700 g or 4-5 medium potatoes peeled and cut into thin or thick slices.
  • 1/2 onion (This is almost controversial since there is team with onion or team without onion so add it if you want)
  • 6 eggs
  • Extra virgen olive oil
  • Salt 
  1. When you have the potatoes peeled and cut, in a pot or deep-frying pan add a lot of olive oil as if you were going to fry the potatoes, but we are NOT going to fry them, but over medium heat put the potatoes so that they begin to cook until they are soft, this will take about 20 minutes so constantly the potatoes must be flipped.
  2. If you're adding onion, pair it with the potatoes 8 minutes into cooking so they cook slowly as well.
  3. After the time has passed, drain the potatoes (and onion) very well. Try to remove as much oil as you can. A word of advice: don't throw away the oil you used to cook the potatoes, reuse it once again with another recipe so you don't waste it.
  4. In a large bowl add all the eggs and beat them very well, add salt while you mix them and then put the cooked potatoes and onion and stir everything very well.
  5. Then in a frying pan that you see that nothing sticks, put a little olive oil and the mixture of the eggs with potato over medium heat. When you move the pan and the tortilla moves, it's time to flip it to the other side.
  6. You can flip it in two ways, one is the traditional one that consists of putting a plate on the pan and turning the tortilla over and then putting it back on the fire to cook on the other side. The other option is to try to flip it over with the spatula but be careful that it can be heavy.
  7. Wait for it to cook on the other side and you're done!
😊Thanks all for reading, see you in the next one. 👋


References

Coosur. 2021. Tipos de aceites de oliva para cocinar

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