I have finally overcome my difficulties with this blog, as well as the irony of being the member of the group who has to make a post about our second tapas excursion. So here it is, the best of the second tapas trip in A Foodie's Guide to Spain.

The favorite tapa of both Katherine and Sarah was the huevos fritos con farinato (far right in the picture below). I have heard that one should not ask or research what exactly is in farinato, much like one should not ask what is in American hot dogs. But, regardless of what may be nauseating ingredients, both taste delicious. Our group of six annihilated two orders after having already eaten at two other bars. Carla's choice of tapa, morcilla or blood sausage, is also pictured. It is the bottom dish on the top plate. Carla was generous enough to share her helping, and everyone agreed that it was quite tasty, despite the ominous name.

Linda's favorite tapa was the pimientos rellenos, or stuffed peppers (which I believe, but cannot tell for sure, are the center dish in the picture below). My second favorite dish, los tigres or mussels, are pictured as well, the two dishes on the right.

My favorite tapa is the dish on the center in the photo below, champinones or mushrooms. My home town is what some people call the mushroom capital of the world, so I have been craving mushrooms for this whole trip. And I finally got to have them, and they were delicious, cooked with a bit of bacon and onions.

Finally, the unanimous choice for the best tapas bar on the trip was Cafe Devinos, our last stop. It should be noted that if we picked this place after pigging out in two others beforehand, that the food must have been good enough to entice us to pack more into our already full stomachs.

Cooking for my Señora :-D

I don't cook. I honestly have never put in the time to learn how to. I am so busy with school everyday that I don't have time to spend an hour cooking and I never really enjoyed sitting around the kitchen with my mom. So, I was very nervous to cook for my señora. When Andy told us that we had to cook for our señoras, I went home and explained to my señora my problem: that I needed to cook for her but I had no idea what I was going to cook. She told me "Don't worry, be happy!", her favorite English saying. She said she could teach me how to cook something Spanish. She told me she would instruct me and help a little, while I did most of the cooking! I thought this would be a great way for me to learn about Spanish food and learn a little bit about cooking too!

With my señora's help, I was able to cook a Spanish meal! And I learned a lot! We cooked a tortilla española and una ensalada con arroz y verduras. The first thing I did was cook the rice. Next, I cut the onions and let them cook in olive oil. I peeled the potatoes, washed them, cut them and added them to the saucepan. I drained the rice and cut up vegetables for our salad. I added the vegetables and some olive oil and white wine vinegar to the cooled rice. Next, I added some tuna to the salad and mixed it all up. The salad was ready and the potatoes and onions were cooking :-) After the potatoes and onions were cooked, I added them to beaten eggs. We drained most of the oil from the pan and added the egg, onion and potato mixture. My señora had to help me flip the tortilla to bake the other side. After cooking the tortilla on both sides, we were ready to eat. I am so glad my señora helped me learn how to make some Spanish food. I enjoyed learning from her because she showed me how to do everything but then she trusted me to cook on my own, so I now feel confident that I can make a Spanish tortilla. We had a great time and we had a very delicious meal. I cannot wait to make the same meal for my friends back home!

Mi Señora!

As a pescatarian, after about a week in Salamanca, I'd already tried a lot of different types of fish. Now, after 5 weeks here, I've had a wide range of fish along with many different traditional Spanish dishes. About 2 weeks in, I finally sat down with my señora to talk to her about her shopping habits, eating habits, and Spanish food in general. Since then, my señora, Dayaneet, Zach (the other two foreign students), and I have talked about food during almost every meal. Dayaneet and I especially like learning about Charro's cooking habits. During our first conversation, Charro (not sure if I'm spelling her name correctly) told us that she goes grocery shopping almost every day of the week, and that in the past few years, the price of food has increased a lot. She says she tries to save money by going to markets with better prices, but she mostly goes to the ones closest to her apartment. Along with Carrefour, she said she enjoys going to fruit, fish, and meat markets. She says the markets are the best place to get the freshest food, although it's fine to buy things like bread, muffins, and cereals at Carrefour--she'll buy these items days or weeks in advance, while she says she always buys the meat, fish, and fruit the day that she's going to use them or a day before.

Charro really likes to eat healthy foods--usually our meals consist of some type of fish, cooked vegetables or a salad, and fruit for dessert. She's diabetic, which limits her options for sweets obviously, but we did have ice cream one night. I can honestly say I've enjoyed every meal she's cooked for me except for one, which was octopus (pulpo). I tried about 5 solid bites of it before I gave up. I think the meaty texture just did not sit well with me, but I do know that I've talked to other people here who have tried it and enjoyed it. When asked what foods she likes and dislikes, Charro immediately said that she likes everything. After more conversations with her over the weeks, I've found out that not only does she enjoy eating healthy, but her favorite meat is lamb. The one thing pertaining to food that she doesn't like is when different parts of her meal mixes together, like the vegetables and the meat. As for her cooking, Charro lightly fries the fish most of the time. The merluza she made was delicious, and my favorite meal of hers was tortilla espanola with eggplant instead of the potatoes. Overall, Charro is a great cook and I thoroughly enjoyed trying everything she made for me. It is very nice of her to go out of her way to make me fish instead of other meat, and I made sure to tell her how much I appreciate it. My favorite part about trying food in Spain was the fact that it's so much fresher than the food in the U.S. I genuinely feel better after eating healthy, fresh fish, vegetables, and fruit every day.

Team Tapas Tasting

On the night of Tuesday, July 27^th, after a grueling day of cursos exams, Andy’s food practicum met up on the east side of town to go out for one last tapa hopping experience. After we had all arrived, Andy pulled out a deck of cards and had us each take one—we weren’t simply trying tapas bars as a group, like usual; instead, we were teaming up and making a game out of it. My group included Brandon, Sheri, Ashley, and Sydney, and we wasted no time deciding where to go first (this is a lie: we actually took about 5 whole minutes before deciding to wander down Avenida de los Comuneros, off the beaten path). We started at Los 3 Carabeles, a bar that I pass every day on the way home from class. Andy came with us, and due to the rules of the game, Brandon was our first waiter. Let me just say that Brandon was excellent: he could make a career out of waiting. I ordered an empanada that had tuna, tomato, and green olives inside of it, and it was delicious. On a scale of 1-10, I’d give it a 9.5. And that’s only because I don’t like green olives. Sheri and Brandon each had croquetas that I’m pretty sure had ham in them, which they gave a 6 and a 5, respectively. Sydney and Ashley had patatas con alioli and gave them a 6.5 and a 7, respectively. I tried the patatas and really enjoyed them—the only problem with the patatas here is that sometimes they drown them in the sauce; otherwise, they’re almost always delicious (if you like fried potatoes). Andy let us in on a secret: he said it’s always best to go to crowded tapas bars, since more people usually means better food. Let’s just say Los 3 Carabeles wasn’t exactly bumping. But it was also 8:45pm, which is very early to go out in Salamanca. Either way, I have to say that empanada was my favorite tapa of the night.

Next, we wandered back to the park we’d started in (Parque de Pablo Picasso) and went to Devinos, a tapa bar that Andy highly recommended. I ordered one of the only pescatarian (spelling?) items on the menu, the bacalao con salsa y pan (fish with salsa and bread). The bacalao was very good, but it was raw, which I had trouble with. I ate a few bites and ended up eating the bread and salsa alone (yes, I’m embarrassed), which was delicious. I’d give this tapa a 6, only because of the struggle I had with the raw fish. Sydney tried it and really liked it, so definitely don’t shy away from bacalao if you have the chance to try it. Sheri, Sydney, and Brandon had pollo con queso (chicken with cheese) and gave it an 8, an 8.5, and a 7.5, respectively. Even as a vegetarian, the chicken with cheese looked really good. Ashley had panceta con queso, which is a type of pig fat (I think that’s correct) with cheese. She really enjoyed it and gave it a 9.

The last bar we went to was called Café Bar Crespo—we were lucky and found a table outside. I ordered tortilla, which is my favorite tapa in general (although the empanada definitely won out on this night), and I’d give it a 7 because although it was delicious, it was cold. Brandon got salpicon marisco, a mixed seafood salad sort of dish, which he gave a 7. Ashley had patatas bravas (potatoes in a red, sort of spicy sauce) which she gave a 7.5. After eating her tapa, Ashley had to leave to go on a date with a Spanish guy—really exciting! Hopefully she had room to eat after all those tapas! Sheri had a bocadillo con lomo y queso (sandwich with pork and cheese), which she gave a 5, and Sydney had fried pig cheek, which we asked the name of multiple times but never fully understood. Sydney rated the pig cheek at a 7, leading us to the conclusion that it’s always good to try new foods, especially in Spain (a conclusion I’m pretty sure we’ve all come to over the past 5 weeks). Since we had money left over, we ordered leche helada, a dessert that Sheri’s host parents highly recommended. It was delicious! It was a milky icecream with pieces of cone in the glass along with lots of cinnamon on top. We chatted and ate on the patio of the café for a while before splitting up for the night. Other than my slightly negative experience with raw fish, we agreed that Devinos was probably the best tapa bar we went to that night. Overall, we had a great tapa hopping experience!

-Emily

A Great Tapas Team

It truly is amazing how much 5 girls can eat and drink here with 50 euro. We really made the most of our money and filled our stomachs with delicious food last night. We managed to eat at 4 different bars and get ice cream! Our favorite place was De Vinos. We all had some kind of meat sandwich with cheese and everyone was satisfied. Also, we all agreed that De Vinos had the best drinks- both their sangria and white wine was fabulous. Most of us had chicken, which was a pleasant change after so much ham. The fact that we had chicken instead of ham could have been one reasons why we enjoyed this bar so much. Additionally, the bar had a hip and clean atmosphere that we all appreciated!

A tie for the best tapa was a meat and cheese dish that we tried at Café Solo. When I asked what it was, she said it was la saña, with a pause between the la and the saña, so I didn't realize she was talking about the very familiar dish that we call lasagna. Later, when I asked my señora about saña, she told me she had never heard of that and she was pretty sure I meant lasaña, which I did. This makes total sense now, especially because the first thing out of Emily's mouth was "This is great. It's like lasagna!". So, our favorite dishes turned out to be chicken and lasagna, which, are not very Spanish but they still tasted amazing!

The lasagna at Café Solo was great, but we were not fans of the calamari there. The calamari was hard and cold and pretty bland, so we would definitely recommend trying calamari elsewhere. As for the worst drink, we did not like the tinto de verano at Café Bar Sprint- it was bland and tasteless, so before you get a tinto there, try walking over to De Vinos first!

Mi señora y la comida

It was harder than I thought to pin down my señora for a quick chat about food, but justifiably so: our apartment is a constantly revolving door of international students staying for two weeks (Italians), three weeks (Americans), or six weeks (myself), and cooking and cleaning everyday for six students is not quite the recipe for a señora with free time. However, when she could spare a few minutes for my little interview, the results were insightful and well worth the wait.

Given the amount of students my señora must host at any given time, it’s common for her to have to make shopping trips at least twice a week, depending on what she plans to cook for the week and her stock of staples (such as galletas for breakfast, coffee, milk and juice). She does a large portion of her food shopping at Carrefour, where she can usually find good deals on staples when she buys things in bulk, as well as lots of microwaveable food. Most importantly, Carrefour sometimes stocks a small range of Mickey Mouse-themed products, and with a two-year-old with an unhealthy Mickey Mouse obsession, it helps to have those products nearby during her shopping trips. Fortunately for my señora (and for us students, as well), her family often stops by to drop off extra fruits and vegetables (and if we’re lucky, her mother’s famous croquetas!). This is particularly helpful, as the cost of fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods has risen exponentially. This is something I’ve really started to notice over the past few weeks, because fried foods and meat always seem to take up more space on my plate than healthier foods. I’m not one to complain, however – three home cooked meals a day is something I am truly grateful for!

My señora learned how to cook from her mother from a very early age. I asked her if she ever wrote any recipes down but she told me that was unnecessary – everything is in a big recipe box in her head from which she can pull out hundreds of different meals without a problem, thanks to several years of repeating her favorite recipes and cooking for international students. She usually plans what she is going to cook for the household a few days ahead so that she can plan her schedule around cooking and cleaning the kitchen when she isn’t taking care of her two-year-old, Daniel. One of her favorite summer foods to cook is her version of pisto, a ratatouille-esque dish usually served warm with bread. My señora’s version is made with eggs, tomatoes, onions, peppers and olive oil. For some reason she doesn’t cook it often, but when she does, it’s absolutely fantastic!

I have two parents back in the States who work around the clock and who don’t often have time to cook anything special for family dinner. When we do sit down for family dinners about three or four times a week, the food is always super healthy and usually much of the same thing: grilled chicken, salad, and a piece of fruit. I have grown to truly appreciate what my señora does for me and my roommates on a daily basis – cooking for six students, a husband, and a two-year-old son, with something different to eat for every night of the week, is a miracle in my mind. I have so much respect for mothers around the world who work to keep their households happy with food and a comfortable atmosphere. Even though I can’t wait to get back home and eat some of my own mother’s mustard-pretzel chicken and bok choy salad, I’m really enjoying the varied menu of pisto, tortilla and croquetas in my Salamanca home. Muchas gracias, Irene!

The Tops of Tapas

For the less adventurous Tapa-Tasters (a.k.a. those who do not like seafood) I would recommend all of the pinchos I have tried thus far. Before coming to Spain, I knew that I adored tortilla de espanola, and after failing to make it myself at home, I knew had to come back here to get some real tortilla. Like much of the food here, the tortilla is a strange combination of food you might never think of putting together: egg, potato, and onion. So simple, yet so delicious.

Next is the famous croqueta. I've heard it described as a gooey mozarella stick and that seems to be pretty accurate; there are different fillings but most involve cheese, ham, or potato.

I also tried the costillos (ribs) at the place where it was supposed to be the specialty. Although extremely flavorful, my piece was very disappointing as there wasn't much meat at all on the bone, so I definitely felt cheated.

After sampling these two, I kind of thought Spanish pinchos resembled bar food far too much for me to enjoy on a daily basis. However, I discovered the elegance in other pinchos that seemed like delicacies to me. For instance, the champinones rellenos (refilled mushrooms) were delicious. I really had no idea what to expect here, but I think they were stuffed with some kind of meat and I'm not sure what else, but they were delectable! Definitely a good idea for a classy party snack.

Having never tried sangria before coming to Spain (something about wanting to wait for the real thing) I had made it a point to sample it at each new establishment. To my amazement there has actually been quite a spectrum of quality. Clubs around here serve terrible juice-like sangria, but in tapas bars (especially those on the Plaza Mayor), the sangria is wonderful and refreshing. Tasting so much sangria has also steered me in to trying more red wine here. At home, I am not a red wine drinker at all, but I've wanted to become one. I think that once I go home, I will want to start trying more, now that I've had everything under the sun mixed with red wine: limon, coke, casera, and various other beverages.