El Menjar Espanyol

La Comida Española

Spanish Food

So since I've been here I've been trying to take photos of the meals I eat.  Some seem more strange and outlandish than others but so far I haven't had anything that I really dislike.  My host mom, Gema, is an amazing cook and plans on teaching me to make some of my favourite dishes.  I should write a few things about meals in general in Spain.  Breakfast is consumed upon arising, it usually only consists of some coffee or tea and some cookies or a muffin.  If I tried to eat bacon and eggs with toast here they'd think I'm crazy.  Later, after school, lunch is eaten at around 3 in the afternoon and is the largest meal of the day when the whole family gets together.  On weekends it can be eaten later in the day.  Supper is served between 9:30 and 12 and is about the size of a small American lunch.

Here's some photos. I'll put captions by the things that are noteworthy and that I remember.  Make sure to post if you have any questions!  (Note:  if you don't look closely some of the photos look the same because the table is set the same everyday.)  Click on the photos to enlarge them!

Spanish chorizo (we have about 6 million different kinds here) with olives and Gazpacho, a tomato based soup, served ice cold .

Pasta, croquetas, and gazpacho out of the carton.

Spanish meats, salad with oil and vinegar and bread.  Bread is served at every meal here in Spain.  Many say they wouldn't want to sit down to eat without it.

Shrimp, fish, and mussels.

Lasagna kind of thing.  See picture below. 

"Egg Sandwiches" are a common breakfast food at my home in the US.  Though absolutely no one eats eggs for breakfast here.  I decided to make a Spanish version of my favourite sandwich for supper.

An awesome lunch with all kinds of sausage, bacon, eggs, and potatoes.

Purée Veggies with some slices of meat.

Pollo!

Pork chop stuffed with ham and cheese and breaded to perfection with mushrooms.

My favourite meal so far.  The stuff in the bowl on the right is a kind of tomato purée and you put it on the toasted bread and then put some of the meat on top and eat it.  The meat is called Jamón Serrano and is by far the most famous of Spanish meats.  I'll put more information below.

Jamón Serrano is not cooked, it's cured.  It usually comes right on the leg and cut off when needed at home (see below) but you can also buy it in packages. There's actually an art to cutting the ham off the leg and buying Jamon Serrano can cost anywhere from 30€ ($40) to 300€ ($405) easily.  

Thanks for reading.  Let me know if you have any questions and if you enjoyed this post I can post more photos of food with explanations in the future.

Pax & Bonum,

Sean