Recently, the Wake director in Salamanca signed our group up for a Spanish cooking class. He is drilling Spanish culture into our heads one course at a time—not to say that I’m complaining.
Spanish cooking, while I do not find it to be spectacular, does have quite a few gems. As a cooking aficionado, I find myself frequently wanting to ask my ‘madre’ for some of her recipes. And I’ve discovered tons of delicacies that I know I’ll be attempting to recreate when I’m back in the States, like a Spanish tortilla with strawberry, peach, kiwi, and goat cheese. So when Javier told us we were going to become chefs for the night, I was thrilled.
Javier took us to a popular restaurant in Salamanca and we were ushered downstairs into their enormous, industrial kitchen, where the head chef gave each of us a cooking apron and told us we’d be preparing some of the most popular dishes found in Spain. He explained how the evening would run, and informed us that we would make three famous dishes: Tortilla Española, Gazpacho, and Paella and one very famous drink: Sangria!
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Making tortillas was hilarious. Egg literally ended up all over the place after Javier tried to make us flip omelets the size of a cake! He lectured us on the proper types of seafood to use for Paella, and the importance of using real saffron (most restaurants use a substitute solely for color, because the real spice is expensive). Gazpacho turned out to be the easiest thing to make: ingredients, food processer, presto!
We passed about two hours in the kitchen learning how to prepare everything, and had a great time along the way. After our lesson, the whole group sat down to eat in a private room where their wait staff served us, topping off our glasses of Sangria along the way. Speaking of which,
For anyone who ever feels the desire to whip up the sweet and refreshing Spanish beverage, the only ingredients needed are a bottle of red table wine, a peach, some lemons and oranges, sugar, and carbonated water or citrus juice. Of course, as with almost everything the chef taught us to make, he neglected to use any type of precise measurements. All you really need to do is take 175 ml of red wine and add about half that amount of the carbonated beverage. Slice the fruit and add it to the pitcher along with sugar to your taste preference (Javier added about a cup, but used an un-sweet sparkling lemon beverage). The most crucial step is squeezing the fruit a bit before using it, that way the juices are fresh! Don’t forget to let the Sangria sit for at least six hours. Javier advised letting it sit overnight if served during the day, or making it in the morning.
Of course, he also cautioned us not to eat the fruit because “only ‘borrachos’ eat the fruit from the Sangria!” Maybe Javier should be taken with a grain of salt…