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Spain has some of the finest gastronomy in the whole of the world and is rightly
famed for its great variety of dishes and its relience on fresh and healthy ingredients such as fish, olive oil and fresh vegetables. It has something for everyone, with rice dishes, meat, fish,
seafood and truly imaginative salads that make the British limp lettuce with a lone tomato look a bit sad.
Due to Spainīs enviable climate, the country is able to produce a huge range of superb
quality home grown produce which certainly accounts for the great variety available in the countryīs cuisine. The Alicante and Murcia regions are known chiefly for their daes, almonds, grapes and
tomatoes. A little further north in Valencia, apart from the rice, the tastiest oranges and lemons you will ever try are grown.
In the rainswept north, in Galicia and Asturias, they have some of the best meats, cheeses, potatoes and seafood. The central plains around Leon and Salamanca are famed for the wonderful steaks and hams - every part of Spain seems to be able to produce something truly exceptional, from the wines of La Rioja and the Duero, to the olives of Seville.
Each region likes to have a speciality - sometimes its the local wines or cheeses, but some towns are quite particular about having their own little thing - like Astorga in the Leon hills, here
they make their "Hojaldre" pastry - a flaky cake filled with honey, or the lovely village of Chinchón outside Madrid where they produce a kind of aniseed licquor.
In the Alicante region
there are numerous examples of local specialities. In Jijona they focus on the famous Christmas treat "turron" (a kind of cross between nougat and fudge) and ice cream, and Villajoyosa is
the home of the Valor chocolate company.
It doesnīt end there, Elche makes use of its date palm groves to produce the "delicias de Elche" (Elche delights), a date wrapped in bacon and deep fried - sounds disgusting, but it is actually very nice indeed.
In fact the whole Valencia region (which includes Alicante) has its own speciality: the world famous rice dish known as Paella. This is probably Spainīs most renowned dish, but itīs really
not the same anywhere else. The paddy fields south of Valencia produce a different kind of rice from the Asian variety more common in the UK.
This fragrant rice, usually coloured yellow, is slowly cooked in broth and liberally strewn with pieces of fish, seafood, chicken or rabbit. This is the regionīs signature dish, and it is served in many varieties, not just the seafood one best known outside of the country.
Apart from paella, many people think first of tapas when they think of Spanish food, but tapas is a relatively minor part of the experience. The habit of having tiny portions of tasty food
along with a glass of wine was supposed to have started in a bar in Andalucia when a local man asked for a hunk of bread to put across the top of the glass to stop the flies getting into the drink (Tapa
in Spanish means "top" or "lid"). He ate the bread as he drank the wine, and soon it became the norm to have a little something with each glass. Nowadays tapas has developed
into a sophisticated range of choices, often a number of which are eaten as a meal, but in many places itīs still the norm to serve a free "tapa" with each drink and it becomes quite possible
to dine out solely on these free morsels - moving from bar to bar to ensure a bit of variety.
Fish and seafood are important to the Spanish diet - the country is second only to the Japanese for
fish consumption, and the sheer range of choice available is eye opening to many of us brought up on fish and chips and prawn cocktail - but it is wrong to imagine that Spanish cuisine is mainly about
fish, it very much isnīt. Meat plays a very important role, and again the consistent thing is the quality of the ingredients.
The main meats are beef steaks and porks and hams, though lamb cutlets are also quite common.
The style of cooking is usually simple, thereīs a lot of olive oil, garlic and parsley, but the key
is the use of such fresh ingredients of such high quality. The Spanish donīt go for fancy foods, sticky sauces and small portions - the Spanish like big plates of meat or fish served with potatoes
(usually fried) and salad or vegetables.
There really is something for everyone in the Spanish diet - with the cured hams and spicy chorizo sausages, tasty fresh fruit and vegetables, and clever
and varied use of quality meats and fish, it is one of the best and healthiest cuisines in the world.
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