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…)
I am missing fish, and I am missing shellfish. My brother-in-law Jaime makes the richest, most flavorful arroz con bogavante, soupy rice with lobster, and while I’m not able to replicate it here in Indiana, this creamy rice with langoustines is the best close second. So whenever I find whole shrimp at the store —that is, shrimp with the heads on, or even langoustines if I’m really lucky— I’ll make it.
This is what happened recently —I found langoustines!—, and I couldn’t wait to share with you my recipe for creamy rice with langoustines, a dish that 
Come this time of year and all I want to have is a stew, a hearty soup, something to warm me up inside. Fabada asturiana is the answer –one of them at least, and a scrumptious one at that.
At our house, butternut squash soup is to winter what 
We’re starting to see the fruits of our efforts, and with a bounty of vegetables from our garden, I‘ll be posting more recipes that use them. This post brings you a wonderful gazpacho that could be rightly called green gazpacho, a cucumber gazpacho that includes not only cucumber but also avocado and some other fruits of our garden: green pepper, jalapeño, basil and parsley. You see? A green gazpacho!
We are enjoying the last of the tomatoes, for tomato season is (almost) over. I had been holding on to posting the recipe for salmorejo until we got really good tomatoes, and now the season is slipping away. No matter, I made salmorejo with the last of the good tomatoes and here you have the recipe. Save it until next summer.
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).
Some days I fantasize about my sister Susana and brother-in-law Jaime’s arroz con bogavante, soupy lobster rice. It usually happens around this time of year, after I’ve come back from my summer in Spain, while their vacation is only starting. The photos they send of their fun times at the beach, or the meals they enjoy, make me hunger for more. I followed Susana’s recipe for the lobster stock recipe I’m sharing today, which can be used as the base in the preparation of many delicate seafood stews and soups. Of course Susana and Jaime’s arroz con bogavante comes to mind, but very soon I’ll post a wonderful recipe of a seafood stew that I’m sure you’ll love, using lobster stock.
I don’t know why I don’t make this soup, sopa mora con tostones, Moorish soup with tostones, more often. I grew up eating it very often, as my mom made it regularly. It’s probably the healthiest soup, or as we call it in Spanish, puré (for a soup where all the ingredients are blended). It incorporates a wide variety of vegetables, some spices, and extra virgin olive oil. What could be better?