Last February I took some pictures of the almond trees blooming in the way work. I didn’t have time to edit and post them until now. But now the post coincides with Sakura blooming in Japan :D, so I don’t regret very much not having posted these pictures before. Enjoy!
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This is my favourite picture
It’s already the orange and mandarin season. Some time ago, I went to the orchards to visit the fruits when they are still unripe. I took some pictures:
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Mandarin orchard
Unripe mandarins (clementines)
Spain is, by far, the first producer in the world of citrus fruits destined to the fresh market. It’s followed by the United States.
In Spain, citrus fruits are produced mainly at the South of Tarragona, Valencia, Castellón, Murcia and Sevilla regions.
Halloween (31st of October) is approaching, but in Spain we didn’t use to celebrate it. In Spain is more traditional to celebrate the 1st of November, called “All Saints Day”. This day, people visit graveyards to offer flowers and clean the graves of their relatives. In Catalonia we also have a tradition of preparing roast chestnuts and sweet potatoes that we eat with “panellets“, a kind of little marzipan cakes with different shapes depending on the main ingredient. I hope I cant talk more about “panellets” in another post because I like them very much and I’d like to add pictures and recipes, and I should prepare them first, of course.
Returning back to the pumpkins and Halloween…It’s said that All Saints Day is the catholic version of the “Samhain“, the pagan celebration that Celtics had for the last day of the year. They believed that day the spirits of the dead could take over the bodies of the living and resurrect. To prevent this, they started decorating their houses with unpleasant objects as skulls, bones and other sinister looking things, so that the dead would get scared and avoid the houses. So, although this celebration has become popular through American culture, has in fact an European origin.
Some years ago, many Spanish people started celebrating Halloween too, so they now celebrate two holidays: Halloween and the All Saints Day. But officially only the 1st of November is a holiday in Spain.
A pumpkin field in Spain:
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I’d like to finish talking about what we do with pumpkins when it isn’t Halloween. In Valencia they prepare “buñuelos de calabaza“, a round wheat flour and pumpkin dough fried in oil, when it’s Fallas time.
In Spain is widely used (all the year) in pastries, cakes, etc… a kind of pumpkin jam known as “cabello de ángel” (”angel’s hair” because it looks like golden filaments) and which is really sweet and sticky. We also prepare pudding, creams and soups and it’s very tasty. I’ve seen it even as a pasta filling…but this is an Italian recipe.
Apart from cuisine, during years pumpkins had been used in other ways. People used to dry them and use as a float when plastic floats didn’t exist. They gathered some and tied them around their waist. The type of pumpkin used for floats is not the same of the picture. It’s a much smaller type. Dried pumpkins of this smaller type were used as containers too, making a hole at the stalk and placing a cork. A different type of pumpkin with a long stalk was used to make a funnel cutting the top of the stalk and the bottom.
Also, when saying you “bring pumpkins” (“traer calabazas”), people will understand you failed an exam. Nowadays is a little old fashioned expression.
These are some pictures taken in the harbour of l’Ampolla, a little village by the Mediterranean Sea and near Delta de l’Ebre (Ebro Delta, more info). Delta de l’Ebre is famous for its rice fields and the National Park, extraordinarily rich in flora and fauna (specially migratory birds). It’s one of the most important wetlands in Europe.
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Fishing boats
Moorings
A duck in the sea! it was in the harbour, near fishing nets
As l’Ampolla has a big fishing tradition, fish and seafood dishes are really good. For example dishes of oysters, rice&seafood paella, black rice, eel, many fish types…can be eaten here.
Here I leave a pair of videos of Delta de l’Ebre:
A little video of the landscape in l’Encanyissada wetlands.
A video showing the rice fields and the rice harvesting.
Credits:
Pictures: Blackrice
Videos: Their respective owners at Youtube
This is a plate of black rice I had in a restaurant recently. I promised I would take a picture myself didn’t I?
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Have you ever heard of olive oil (aceite de oliva, in Spanish)? It’s the healthiest vegetable oil, but it isn’t the topic of this post. We’ll talk about it soon.
This is the fruit where it comes from. It’s called “olive” (oliva, aceituna). The one in the picture is ready to be collected. The largest producers in the world are Spain and Italy, olives are a Mediterranean product after all.
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Olives can’t be eaten right after being collected. They enter a process to eliminate its bitter taste and soften them, and it’s also needed for preservation. There are many methods of curing/pìckling olives but, at home, I’ve always seen the brine-curing method only. My grandfather knows well the process. Maybe I can give further information in future posts.
Watch the traditional way of collecting olives in Spain:
Peasants hit olive tree’s branches with sticks (traditional way) or also with vibrating rakes, pneumatic shakers, etc… Olives fall on the ground, over a big mesh they have previously placed there, around the tree. There are also special tractors (harvesters) that circle the tree, shake the branches and olives go directly inside the vehicle. To use these tractors trees must be planted in broad rows.
Credits:
Pictures: Blackrice
Videos: Their respective owners at Youtube
HELADO DE TURRÓN
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This is the summer version of the typical Christmas desert: turrón, which has been eaten in Spain since the sixteenth century. Its origin comes from the arabic domination, when Spain was known as Al-Andalus.
Turrón is made of almonds ( the main ingredient ), sugar, honey and egg white ( albumen ). Nowadays, for Christmas there are many varieties such chocolate, yolk, coconut…but the original one is made from almond. Its shape is rectangular, like a tablet 2 o 3 cm thick.
There are two almond types of “turrón”, the hard version and the soft one. The hard is called Alacant/Alicante and the soft is called Xixona/Jijona. The last one is very oily.
The quality depends on the amount of almonds used. Real Alacant version must be at least the 60% almond. Xixona must be 64% to be considered real Xixona.
ZARZUELA DE PESCADO
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This is the result when you fry some monkfish, “Dublin bay prawn” as the dictionary says… but we call them “cigalas” in Spanish, and you mix it with previously boiled clams. Sauce is made of tomato, garlic, parsley and saffron.
Saffron is widely used in fish dishes, in paella for example. Nevertheless, some alternatives exist.
The name Zarzuela may come from the lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung/danced scenes. This is also the name of the Palace of the King and Queen of Spain in Madrid.
CARGOLS A LA LLAUNA/CARACOLES ASADOS
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What you see here is a typical dish of Lleida, at least the way of cooking the snails because they are also eaten in other places of Spain and in some other countries too ( France, Portugal, etc… ). This dish is called “Cargols a la llauna“. “Cargols” is snail, and “llauna” is the special iron pan with handles used to cook them in a barbecue.
Salt, cayenne and olive oil are added to the snails and they are left in the heat. They have been carefully chosen, one by one, to discard any dead snails.
They are served with this sauce similar to mayonnaise and called “allioli”. Outside Catalonia they call it “alioli” too. It means “garlic and oil” because these two ingredients are the main ones. It contains also egg.
Snails are taken out of their shells by this special tool, a spike, and dipped right after in the sauce.
Complete menu may include “escalivada” which is eggplant and pepper ( sometimes tomato and onion too ) roasted in barbecue and then peeled. This is usually eaten on a toast, seasoned with oil and salt. Traditionally the toast is previously rubbed with tomato or garlic, or even both, but skipping this is step doesn’t make it less tasty.
“Mona de Pascua” is a traditional Easter cake which is eaten on Easter Monday in places like Catalonia and Valencian Community. I don’t know if “mona” is eaten in other places of Spain because there are already many types of traditional Easter pastries around the country, so they don’t need to eat more :P. For example in Balearic Islands they eat “crespells”, a star-shaped special biscuit and “robiols” a pie made of the same dough and filled with a sweet made of pumpkin and syrup or cottage cheese, among other fillings.
“Mona de Pascua” was formerly a plain cake with hard-boiled eggs which godparents gave to their godchildren as a present on Easter Sunday. There was an egg for each year-old of the child. Nowadays it’s the same but cakes are very elaborate ( for example with jam, chocolate, butter, etc… inside ) and eggs are made of chocolate or have been replaced by figures. In Catalonia even the cake has disappeared in some cases and the “mona” is only the figure, by the way very big and extremely elaborated.
This is a little example of “mona“. It hasn’t a chocolate figure because different kinds of chocolate ( plain, white, strawberry, milk… ) are spread on the top, so there is enough, LOL.
This other one has a milk-chocolate figure, a bunny.
The bottle you see in the pictures is “cava“, the Catalan version of the French “champagne“. For those who want to make a toast.
The chocolate bunny figure in detail. Yes, I guess a scantily clad chocolate bunny on the phone is a bit strange ^^U:
