Culinary adventures in Spain
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2011
1
18
68
Trip End
Jun 12, 2012
Jaen, Andalusia, Spain
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
When I first was settling into my flat, my usual diet was a sandwich for every meal. I was pretty afraid to try to actually cook something, since the food is all a bit different and unfamiliar. Along with this, we don't have an oven which eliminates the possibility of things like frozen pizzas and baked pastas.
After about a week of sandwiches for every meal, I got sick of them and decided it was time to expand my horizons. My first major breakthrough here was finding that vegetables are (for the most part) quite cheap. I can usually get a few zucchini, a big package of sliced mushrooms, a bag of onions, a bag of green and red peppers and a bag of carrots for about 4-5 euros. This is more than enough for one person. With that in mind, vegetables started getting dumped into everything. Chicken, pork, noodles...whatever.
From that point on, I've since mastered pasta carbonara (thanks to a recipe from my lovely mother).
I also found hamburger patties, which allows me to make cheeseburgers packed full of mushroom and onion on some occasions. I've recently sampled "german style sausages", which appear to simply be brats.
Tortilla espanolas were a favorite for a while as well. This dish is essentially a Spanish style omelet. It's made mostly of eggs, but also includes onion, potato and sometimes pepper. I personally like to add hot sauce as a topping.
Despite this, my main staple remains veggie stir fry with any sort of meat that I pick up and have at the time. A variety of spices get thrown in with this, and I've got an easy meal figured out.
If anyone has recipes that involve no oven and have relatively simple ingredients, send them to me! I may be able to find these things in the stores here.
The biggest thing to overcome here, by far, has been the lack of instant meals or sides. I'm sure I'm doing my body a lot of favors by not eating the salty canned and boxed food that is packed full of preservatives...but it's also more difficult to plan a meal when you need to cook all of it from scratch. There's no simply cooking some chicken, and serving with a side of pasta-roni or baked beans. If you want the pasta on the side, you're making the pasta from scratch as well.
Some days all I want to do is make a nice dish of macaroni and cheese on the stove. But alas, none is to be found in the grocery store.
Overall though, this has been a good experience for me. I needed to work on my cooking skills, and they're certainly being tested! I usually reward a job well done on a meal with a serving of wine to go with the meal. Nothing says good night to a long day with screaming kids like some pasta carbonara and red wine.
Uploaded some pictures of food that I've managed to cook.
