What a beautiful time of the year this is —and this week in particular, a week of anticipation, of preparations, for the big day on Christmas, if you celebrate it. The music in the stores, and in many radio stations, puts me in a happy mood, in an expectant mood. Maybe you’re traveling to see family. Maybe relatives are coming to spend some time with you. Or your (more…)
I was hesitant to post the recipe for tomato and onion salad with olives, because honestly, it can’t really be called a recipe. After all, I’m just slicing and tossing together ingredients, there’s no elbow grease, not much elaboration, and the key is in the ingredients, which have to be of the best quality. But when I think about salads in general, (more…)
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I associate potatoes more with fall and winter than with summer. When I think of potatoes, I imagine some deliciously roasted chunks, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with rosemary, baked to perfection, with a soft, moist inside and a somewhat crusty outside. And yet, potatoes appear in salads all through the summer, from (more…)
I remember vividly my brother-in-law Jorge’s comments on his first visit to our house in Indiana a number of years ago. It was with the occasion of a very American ritual: the barbecue. Jorge, a veterinarian turned the purchasing director at the meat department of a large Spanish supermarket chain, and who, since the last couple of years (more…)
I’m writing this as I’ve just sat down, trying to catch my breath after the hike to la ermita de Santa Lucía, Saint Lucia chapel in Alcocebre, Spain. The breathlessness is real, as the hike is a steep one, trying to navigate rocks, some of them part of a glacier plateau, and bushes of wild rosemary and the many other varieties of wild herbs and low Mediterranean pine trees (more…)
This post is for my older sons. In honor of them, yes, of course. But more than that, to quiet their disappointment. You see, I have been posting on Mama Ía blog for months, the food of Spain, but also the dishes I’ve been cooking in America for years, the Spanish way. Yet for my sons, cooking Spanish is cooking the traditional (more…)
I am in a salad kind of mood these days. It must be the spring, which is still fighting to deserve its name, having just lived through a weekend of cold temperatures, wind and rain. I know it’s there, around the corner, and the anticipation of the opening of the outdoor farmers market on Barr Street in Fort Wayne keeps me hopeful. (more…)
When I moved to North America years ago, I had to get used to things that were done differently than in Spain or any other place I had lived in. One of them was schedules, or rather, the times when regular daily activities like meals were done. Lunch in Spain rarely happens before 2 PM, and dinner not before 9 PM, at the earliest. I’m not saying (more…)
This is a very short post, because the recipe was posted in the Braised Short Ribs in Two Wines Sauce post. I like accompanying mashed potatoes with any meat with a very flavorful sauce, and the two wines sauce, made with sherry and red wine, and shallots, garlic and leek, is unbeatable. But I particularly like these red (more…)
To many reading this post, the pictures might be a bit shocking. I’m sorry you had to wake up to a fish staring at you! This, for me, is nothing new, or should I say, would be nothing new if I were in Spain. Growing up on the Mediterranean, that’s the way I was used to seeing fish on a regular basis, whether straight out of the sea or (more…)
