It has been over 11 years since I posted the recipe for fideuá. Coincidentally, I think it was also my very first blog post on Mama Ía! Time has flown ever since, and I cannot believe there are over 200 recipes now on the blog.
This is the life!
Onteniente prepares for Saturday night dinners al fresco
Riding around Torreblanca
I make paella and fideuá very often, and you can find some of those recipes in this blog. However, I’ve been told a few times that people (more…)
I owe this recipe, Meyer lemon eclairs, to Jose Andres’ book “Vegetables Unleashed”. Yes, you heard right! This delicious dessert is categorized by the chef as a vegetable, so I’ll go with it! As they say, always eat your vegetables —during or, in this case, after your main meal!
My eclairs are smaller than chef Jose’s, because these days I try to have just small bites of sweets (I know many of you can relate). So my recipe is slightly modified accordingly.
Like Jose says in his book, I, too, had never heard of Meyer lemons before, and they were quite (more…)
It is the Easter season, and my favorite treat is torrijas! They can be enjoyed at any time of year, but In Spain they are traditionally eaten during Holy Week and Easter.
But what are torrijas, you ask? They’re a delicious sweet bread treat, and even though I hate to make the following comparison, this is how I explain what they are here in America when asked: torrijas are the Spanish version of the French toast. Yeah, I know, who knows what came first, the torrijas or the French toast, right? But French toast is popular in America, so that is my best way to explain torrijas.
Cristo de la Palma during the Holy Week Processions (Onteniente, Spain)
Holy Thursday Procession, Maritime Holy Week in Valencia (Spain)
The weather has been incredibly cold and snowy this winter across much of the United States (even in Florida!). And it’s not over yet! February just ended, so there could be even some more snow and cold temperatures in store for us. In these weather conditions, there are some foods that I crave: soups, stews, and rich, filling vegetables, like this braised greens beans in smoky tomato sauce that is so idiosyncratically Spanish, it almost transports me there.
Borrull Palace, Sant Mateu
You can eat it as an accompaniment to any grilled fish, chicken or meat, but you can also have it as a hearty lunch, scooping up the delicious tomato sauce with pieces of crusty bread. Yum!
This cold winter is making me long for summer, and even though it is still a few months away (we just started the season of Lent!), I want to dream of it by writing about the beautiful town of Sant Mateu —San Mateo in Spanish, Saint Matthew in English—to accompany the recipe of braised beans with smoky tomato sauce.(more…)
If November 2024 started with a trip to London and Edinburgh, November 2025 hasn’t lagged behind in excitement, with a trip to beautiful Maui, in the Hawaii archipelago. A perfect excuse to accompany this post with a celebratory dish, beef shank with wine and pimentón sauce.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying beef shank with wine and pimentón sauce should only be made for a special occasion. It’s just that it’s one of those dishes that looks beautiful on your plate and at the same time, feels comforting — the kind of dish your children coming home for the holidays are craving and will appreciate. (more…)
The eggs in this recipe don’t look perfect but, who cares! They will be broken up just before serving to blend their flavor and texture to that of the other ingredients in the dish. They are huevos rotos, broken eggs, after all.
Huevos rotos con jamón, broken eggs with serrano ham, are a comfort food dish in Spain. It’s a dish probably made in every household in the country, with different variations between them. In fact, one will usually (more…)
What a whirlwind the last few months have been. There’s been travel (a lot of it!), for celebrations, for vacation and for soccer. But most importantly, there have been milestones and “the last of” for my son David. I’ve been able to prepare a few recipes to share on the blog, but for this post, I wanted a sweet one, coca de pasas y nueces, raisins and walnuts cake, because sweet always means celebration.
I will tell you about some of the trips in future posts, but for now, I want to celebrate David. Because my youngest, the “baby,” is wrapping up his life as a minor (he turned 18 this month!) as a high school student (he just graduated!), and (more…)
It’s only fitting that today’s post be a follow-up to the last one, Cooking a la Plancha, Seafood the Spanish Way!, given that that’s a customary cookout when we are in Spain. It’s common with meats too! On this long, Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer and a popular weekend for cooking outdoors, try meat barbacoa, parrillada!
Only the temperatures outdoors indicate that summer is still here, because the Fall routines started a few weeks ago with the start of school. Granted, not very many (more…)
It has been a few weeks now, but we are still enjoying (and trying to finish) some of the sweets from the holidays. Is that your case? I’ve tried to balancethis sugar loaded end of meals with very healthy mains and sides, following the Mediterranean way of cooking I most enjoy, and whole baked branzino is one of those healthy, make-in-a-snap, delicious meals.
Ethan at La Muralla Roja (Calpe)
There’s quite a paradox in this part of the world where I live. On the one hand, lake living is a way of life. Many midwesterners and Hoosiers (the people of Indiana) own lake houses as second homes. Water sports and (more…)
If there was a dessert that my mom made very often when I was a young girl, that was peras al vino, pears poached in red wine. And I know what you’re thinking, and yes, drinking age is lower in Spain that it is in the US, but no, these pears have essentially no alcohol because all of it is evaporated in the making.
Phew! Now that we have cleared that up, let’s move forward.
Pears poached in red wine are one of the easiest desserts to make, and now that I mention it, maybe that’s why (more…)