Sampling Catalan Food in Barcelona (Spain) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
I woke from my nap and got ready
to eat lunch at Barcelona time – 2 pm.
We went to the Los Caracoles Restaurant, a tourist spot for the Spanish
as well as foreign visitors.
The restaurant began its life in
1835 as a wine shop and gradually evolved into a restaurant. The food is simple and expertly
prepared. You have to walk through the
grill area to get your table, and the walls are lined with photographs of the
rich and famous people, who have eaten there.
We sat at a corner table, which
was perfect for Florence. She could see
everything and not be in the way. She
was a well-behaved girl during all of the meal.
She smiled at our neighbors, a Spanish family and three German ladies.
Laurent began his meal with
mussels cooked in tomato, garlic, and parsley.
I tried the fish soup made with tomatoes, langoustines (crayfish), and
morsels of fish. Florence ate
garlic-butter croutons dunked in the fish soup I ordered.
For our next course, I ate the
paella with grilled shellfish while Laurent ate grilled prawns (large
shrimp). Paella is like sauerkraut for
me. I will only eat it, if I am
someplace where it is a specialty. The
rice the Catalans use is pudgy with round grains.
The 6-inch prawns Laurent used were
grilled, chopped in half and seasoned with olive oil, garlic, and parsley. We drank Viña Sol, a delicious white wine
from the Torres Winery in the Pénédés region with our meal.
Laurent ate Crema Catalana for
dessert, and ate I ice cream topped with tourron (hard nougat). Catalan cream is made with milk, eggs, sugar,
cornstarch, cinnamon, and lemon or orange zest.
The caramelized, crunchy topping
is made by flaming sugar and cinnamon with a blowtorch. The Catalans use a heated, cast iron tool
called a salamander with a disk at the end to make this dessert.
We walked back to the hotel and
slept until dinnertime. I ate Spanish
Teruel ham with a pineapple quarter and felt like I was eating a meal from the
Spanish Canary Islands.
Then,
I ate roast chicken with potatoes.
Laurent had grilled shrimp. We
drank a rosé wine called “tinto” in Spanish from the famous Spanish wine region
of Rioja.
These
meals were definitely vacation gorging. We
would go back to more reasonable portions at home.
Recommended
books on Catalan and Spanish food in general:
Catalan
Cuisine by Colman Andrews
The
Foods and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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