I don’t know in which category exactly to place esgarraet, salads or appetizers/tapas. Esgarraet is a dish typical of the Valencian community, and very often it is served as a tapa, on top of a slice of crusty bread, or grilled or toasted bread. It consists of roasted red peppers, salt cod, garlic and olive oil, and in some areas of (more…)
As mother’s day approached, and I was thinking more of my mom, and how we’ve been separated by an ocean for the past 22 years, many memories of when she was the mom and I was just a daughter danced through my head. Many of those memories involved oranges, and orange trees, and an orange orchard where (more…)
If you subscribe to this blog, or follow it regularly, you’ve noticed it has taken me a few extra days to post. I have not been procrastinating! In fact, this is the third recipe that I cooked and photographed for this week’s post. I kept changing my mind about it, and suddenly, I realized this Sunday is Mother’s Day in Spain, and I will (more…)
It has taken me a number of years to convince Dave to spend a vacation in Miami. I would say at least a decade. The humidity, and the heat —I couldn’t stand it, he’d say. I’ve been wanting to visit it not only for the sites, the beaches or the Latin culture, but mostly because part of my family lives there, my dear aunt Isa, my uncle Orlando and their children, my cousins, with whom (more…)
I have a section in the Mama Ía blog called IDIOSYNCRASIES (click here). It is there that I talk about certain aspects of Spanish life and culture that are different from those of the United States, and that somehow have caught my attention. Some of those aspects merit a whole section or post about them, like the way we celebrate Holy Week (more…)
The farmers markets haven’t opened in Fort Wayne, and yet, I can find almost every fruit that I can think of at the store. They are obviously not local, but I’m having a hard time staying away from them. And plums have a sweet spot in my heart (check this post, where I explain it in more detail), so I couldn’t help but get some. I was thinking (more…)
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…)
I am mesmerized by the person of Rafael Guastavino, and I’ve been wanting to write about him for a while. This apple tart made me think of him.
Rafael Guastavino Moreno was a Valencian architect that lived between the 19th and 20th century, and whom, upon his death, the Herald Tribune baptized as “New York’s Architect”, a testament to the more than (more…)
If I were in Spain, this dish would be made with hake. But you know the chances of me finding hake in the Midwest are zero, zip. And yet, as always, I can’t go without enjoying the dish. Filetes de merluza al horno con patatas becomes oven baked tilapia over potatoes. It is a very tasty dish, and yet, easy and relatively quick to make, which makes it (more…)
My son Matthew was home this weekend. This is always an event, because even though he’s only two hours away from us, he doesn’t come home all that often. In fact, we hadn’t seen him since the Christmas break. So whenever he comes home, we make it a celebration. This weekend in particular, we attended a concert, and spent time together, even if some of that time was him doing (more…)
