Asturias with its mountains and
coastline is home to a wealth of natural food including seafood as
well as dairy products. The Costa Verde area has some wonderful
seafood restaurants serving locally caught lobsters,
bass, crabs, mussels
and clams which are said to be the best in Spain. The
mountainous areas produce the famous Cabrales a blue cheese made
from mixed milks. The blue veins develop in caves in the Picos
de Europa mountains.
In Asturias the famous cabrales blue cheese is
used in some regional menu's. Perhaps the most notable being
Solomillo al Cabrales. A tenderloin of pork or beef served with a
cabrales cheese sauce. The recipe served in most places outside
Asturias is usually made by melting cabrales, white wine,
cream and paprika which is then spooned over the meat. In a lot of
Asturian recipes the cheese is placed on top of the steak and
melted slightly without being transformed into a sauce.
Paella is the Spanish national
dish and is eaten throughout Spain. Sunday lunchtime is the
traditional time to eat paella when all the family troop down to
their local restaurant and spend most of the afternoon eating and
drinking. Paella varies from region to region. Paella
originated in Valencia and the Valencian paella is still regarded as
the authentic version. It usually consists of a mixture of
seafood and chicken with either beans or peas. If you'd like
to try paella,
I've put my recipe here.
An Asturian
Sidreria
The tapas bars in
the Asturian region are known as Sidrerias. Asturian cider or "sidra"
is famous throughout Spain. Barrels of sidra are usually on display
and there is sometimes a room put aside for the sidra drinking
experience. Sidra is decanted into bottles and sometimes
poured by the waiter into a glass for you. The froth is
achieved by pouring it from a height of about three foot. This
is no mean feat, especially if you've already consumed a few. On
reaching the bottom of the glass you will more often than not, be
left with sediment left over from the fermenting process, rooms set
aside for sidra drinking often have a drain to tip the dregs down.
The video above shows a typical sidreria.
One of the most famous dishes of Asturias is
Fabadas, a sustaining stew of pork, sausages, black puddings,
chorizo, bacon and Asturian white beans called fabes all
washed down with a glass of Sidra.
Learn How To
Make Fabadas
The video above
shows the authentic way to make Asturian Fabadas. Its in Spanish but
with some English written translation.
Seafood
Seafood is popular
all along the Costa Verde with many restaurants specialising in the
local produce. Being famous for its cider, it comes as no surprise
that a lot of Asturian seafood dishes are cider based. Hake
and clams baked in cider Merluza a la Sidra is one of the most
popular.
Merluza a la
Sidra
Caldareta de
pescado is a is quite sophisticated seafood recipe which combines
lobster, crab and a variety of small fish cooked in an
earthenware pot. Paprika is added and then the
seafood is flambéed with cognac before white wine is added.
Another fish recipe using the local sidra or cider is salmon a la
riberena, There are two salmon rivers is the Asturias region
the rio Nalon and Della. These rivers are Spain's leading
providers of salmon and it is quite common to find salmon on many of
the region's restaurant menus. The a la riberena recipe
mentioned above calls for salmon and bacon or cured ham an
unlikely combination which works surprisingly well. Rice is
another common ingredient in Asturias and figures in a lot of the
local cuisine the following video shows arroz de la siega which is a
sort of weird paella combining rice meat, snails and sausages.
