If you subscribe to Mama Ía blog, or if you’ve been following it, by now you’re probably familiar with Spain’s dry rice dishes, like paella in all it’s varieties, or arroz al horno (click here and here and here). But there’s a different category of rice dish in Spain, which is not as familiar outside of the country as paella is. In Spanish we call it (more…)
Today is the day that marks the end of Christmas in North America, at least for Christians: it is the feast of the Epiphany, when we celebrate the adoration of the Three Kings, the Three Wise Men, to baby Jesus at Bethlehem (click on this link, to read or hear a children’s story I wrote for Highlights for Children magazine a few years ago, where (more…)
Early October, and the fields are beginning to show it. Colors have started to turn from green to shades of yellow and golden brown, leaves are drying, and corn stalks look as if ready to crumble under the hands of a giant. And yet, we have been enjoying summer temperatures. I’m not kidding you! This week we’ve been enjoying (more…)
This week will culminate in Easter Sunday, which in gastronomic terms means chocolate and special sweets, and an occasion for family celebration. Eggs of every color and material, real and not, and also made of chocolate, inundate our tables, our decor, our stores. So understandably, my first instinct was to make an Easter treat for this week’s post. But this week is also (more…)
I might have mentioned before somewhere in the blog that I warmed up to soups later in life (I think it was on the lentil soup post). I don’t know exactly what the reason was, why I didn’t like soups very much. Maybe it was the fact that, living in a warm country, hot soups didn’t really appeal to me. I totally identified with (more…)
As a child, I thought lentil soup was okay. Just okay. In fact, I wasn’t a soup person, or a stew person. I didn’t like anything that had much broth in it. I much preferred dry rice dishes, like paella or arroz al horno, baked rice. And beans, in particular, weren’t my thing. I still remember my mom’s singsong, “Las lentejas tienen mucho hierro. Y fibra”, lentils have so much iron, and fiber. And her lentil soup with chorizo and bacon not only had a lot of fiber and iron, but was full of flavor. (more…)
I find it hard to define gazpacho. In general, you’d see it classified as a cold soup —like what one usually eats with a spoon, served in a bowl or in a soup plate. Yet, that’s not how I remember my mom having gazpacho in the summers of my youth. And she should know, because (more…)
I have to confess it has not been easy to develop a recipe for seafood stock that would resemble the ones you can make in Spain, and particularly in my region of Valencia. The availability of a wide variety of white fish and shellfish, that one can purchase not only at fishmongers but (more…)
