Free Beer!

Well, not quite… but it got your attention, didn’t it? 😉

Toledo has a brewery that makes Domus, aka “La Cerveza De Toledo”, whose proud history goes all the way back to … erm… 2007. (Sorry, this is my Bavarian heritage scoffing here…). BUT, I have to admit, the stuff ain’t half bad.

On Friday, Carmen alerted me to the fact that they were running a two-week promotion: two bottles of the brew and one ‘special’ tapa, featuring Domus as an ingredient, for a fiver, with 27 local restaurants/bars participating.

So, today we went off to investigate.

These mussels in creamy sauce were divine…

Chicken wings with caramelised onions. Lovely 🙂

We scoffed more than just those, but the pics didn’t turn out so well. One of us – either my camera or I – was struggling to focus…

We may have to do this again next week.

The Kraken Is Served!

It was Maria’s birthday party last night, and she laid on some fantastic food for us. There was Spanish omelette, there was cake, but it was the octopus that starred as the pièce de résistance. Quite literally.

I’d had several exasperated messages from Maria that morning about the beast’s recalcitrance to be turned into a meal. It was by far the biggest she’d ever wrestled with, apparently.

Enough to feed the starving hordes…?

She won. Here he is, the gangly sucker, dismembered and in the pan!

By the time I arrived, the cranky kraken’s miraculous transformation into a delicious meal was already complete 🙂

Toledo’s Treasures: Santa Clara And Some Fab Tuna

The building where I live is right in front of the convent of Santa Clara (founded in 1369), but I can’t actually see it from my own windows. I’m watering friends’ plants this week, so I took a shot of the convent this morning from their balcony.

On Sunday, I ventured inside the convent walls on a free guided tour. They didn’t show us much, just the church part and a couple of pretty interior patios. We were not allowed to take photos, and no access was granted to the archives, art collections or other much more interesting parts of this vast medieval building complex.

Santa Clara is home to just three resident nuns, the youngest of whom is 82. It’s pretty much the same story in all of Toledo’s convents and monasteries, of which there are dozens. In a decade from now, there is going to be nobody left, and what will happen to these properties and their hidden treasures then…?

Cool Door. Held open by my friend Catalina.

Saturday’s totally delicious dinner of tuna and stir fried vegetables in a new restaurant/bar just five minutes from my house. I can’t wait to have this again 🙂

Eat ’em raw, swallow ’em whole!

Andalucía – and Cádiz in particular – has the most fabulous array of seafood. On our way down there last weekend, Maria was waxing lyrical about “camarones”, tiny shrimp sold in cups or cones, eaten on the go, just as they come. And, as you can see, she found some:

The little blighters didn’t stand a chance…

Fresh sea urchins, anyone?

… you do eat them raw, although, unlike the camarones, without the shell, I suppose 😉

 

Some cod’s roe…

…made into a colourful salad. Tasty and nutritious!
The shrimp frittatas in the background were divine 🙂

And, to finish off on a complete non sequitur,  some puzzling… uhm… street art:

Make of it what you will…

Great Cajun Food… In Madrid!

Yup, you read that right…the culinary delights of steamy New Orleans right in the dusty heart of Spain… who’d have thunk it?!

So, Saturday night, my pals Carmen and Olga hauled me into Madrid to check out this restaurant called Gumbo. Not the most original name, granted, but I shall forgive them, because the service was so good, it almost made me forget that I was in Spain!

Carmen had eaten at this place before and survived, so we knew it was unlikely to be a disaster. We hadn’t booked a table and we were really lucky to get in…

Any guesses as to what we had for our first starter?

Fried green tomatoes, what else?! Olga’s allergic to tomatoes, so she was forced to pass on those, but she mopped up the 1000-calories-a-droplet sauce with great gusto.

Our second starter: Baked mussels, all lovely and cheesy 🙂 Could have done with a tad less salt, perhaps, but otherwise perfect.

Carmen and I both opted for the jambalaya for our mains. Just look at those glorious blackened giant prawns perched on top of the rice (which had quite a kick to it, let me tell you!)
Olga had a beef dish with creamy mashed potatoes. The meat was as flavourful as it was tender, but, unfortunately, it didn’t rank as the most photogenic of entrees. You can just about make out a glimpse of it in the back.

Dessert…? Absolutely! Banoffee pie. It had to be. A more humble (but not at all bad) carrot cake in the background.

Would we go back there?

Hell, YES!!!

[Here’s the link to Gumbo’s website, in case you want to check it out for yourself.]

Key West – A Seafood Paradise

The US is not exactly known for being home to a nation of fish lovers. However, in some coastal regions and on its islands, such as the Florida Keys, fish and seafood dishes are as wildly popular as they are delicious. I took these pictures of some of what I gobbled up in various restaurants:

Blackened black grouper with mashed potatoes, black bean sauce and spinach

Yellowtail snapper salad with mango salsa

Scallops on sesame rice with edamame beans

Shrimp green curry

Ceviche (a marinated fish dish popular across virtually all of Latin America)

Horseradish-encrusted hogfish on a mountain of salad

A crab cake starter

Fancy any of these…? 🙂