Potaje de Cuaresma, Chickpeas and Swiss Chard Stew, for Lent — and Fallas!
Potaje de Cuaresma, sopa de vigilia, caldo de Cuaresma, are all names that refer to the same dish. The name would translate literally to “vigil stew” or “Lent stew” in English, but we’ll call it chickpeas and Swiss chard stew for the purposes of this blog.
Valencia’s Fallas 2022, celebrated as it was before the pandemic
The original or most typical version of it in Spain also includes cod. However, I omitted it today and made it a more simple dish, not only appropriate for Lent but also for a vegetarian diet.
The origin of this dish, like many other Spanish dishes, can be found (more…)
Beef stew with sherry sauce is not the recipe I would have wanted to post/make, but climate made me. Where is Spring? We eagerly received it a month ago, soon after confinement was mandated, but the weather keeps telling us it’s not time for warm temperatures yet. In a way, it could be a good thing, as I would personally rather be watching a gray day outside than a sunny one, given the circumstances that keeps us indoors.
A very early flight for the last of my adult sons return to college marked the end of the holiday season and the return to the routine. And routine, for me, means familiar dishes, comfort food. Braised chicken with prunes is a dish that brings me back to the normal, to the every day, with the familiarity and reassurance of what is known and expected.
Do you have the feeling that the Christmas and winter holiday season was ages ago? I certainly do, not so much because a long time has passed, but because so many events and activities have happened since. And I’m not talking about out of the ordinary or amazing events. In fact, January is probably one of those months (September would be another one) when everything goes back to normal —the restart of old routines, the beginning of new projects; but more than anything, a month of inwardness, of restarts, of cleaning and organizing, in literal and figurative terms. In one word, January is a month of resetting. This lentil and butternut squash soup, that I make often during winter, seemed appropriate for this time of year (a particularly cold January).
Meatballs in wine sauce, albóndigas en salsa, are a classic Spanish dish. Growing up, they were a favorite, and I think it’s safe to say children and adults alike love them. At home, and at most homes in Spain, they are accompanied by potatoes, that marry so well with the sauce they’re cooked in. My mom made them with cubed