Pages

Showing posts with label Catalan food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catalan food. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Sampling Catalan Food in Barcelona (Spain) with Savvy Mom Ruth Pagert

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




Ruth Paget Selfie