Food in Spain

Spanish cuisine and food from Spain

Mouth-watering information about Spanish cuisine and food from Spain

If you haven't tasted Spanish food yet then your tastebuds are in for a treat. Haters of garlic might find the choice a little difficult but you could always try and ask for your food without garlic or "sin ajo", although you might get a strange look.

Throughout the different regions of Spain you will find local specialities and variations of national dishes such as paella, gambas pil pil and suckling pig, although some regions will argue that they invented the original recipe.

The Spanish love their food and tend to eat a large lunch, followed by the much famed siesta and then a later dinner. For Spanish families meal times are always an important event and the whole family are encouraged to sit down and enjoy their food together.

I always thought that a quote from a recipe book by Elisabeth Luard, which has lots of tasty recipes and lots of useful information about food from Spain and Portugal, sums up Spanish cuisine perfectly.

"Close your eyes and imagine yourself under the shade of an olive tree with the shores of the Mediterranean just over the curve of the hill. Imagine, too, that someone - a native of this land - is preparing your meal. What shall it be? The choice is wide. Creamy white beans from the slopes of the Asturian hillsides, slow simmered with garlic and olive oil, flavoured perhaps, with a ham on the bone - nothing much, you might think, until the cook explains with shining eyes that this particular ham on the bone is from a particular breed of pig and is cured in a particular way which makes it like no other ham in all the world. Or perhaps you might choose a rice dish from the wetlands of Valencia, coloured and perfumed with saffron grown in the red earth of La Mancha. Or chickpeas cooked to a nutty sweetness with deep crimson peppers cured in the smokehouse of Old Castile. Or, if the sun is high and the breeze is cool and you have a mind to stay in the shade, you might choose a thick crusted speckle crumbled loaf to eat with the sheep's cheese of La Mancha, or cornmeal bread with soft centred cheese of Tras-os-Montes."

Well if that has not enticed you to the world of Spanish food and cuisine then you don't deserve to try that many flavours and styles of cooking that Spain has to offer. The different cultures from the south of Spain, which were heavily influenced by the Moors, to the foods of northern Spain, which might even have a hint of French cuisine provide so many different tastes that you cannot but look forward to the next meal.

Just follow the different sections to read more about food from certain areas of Spain and to look up particular recipes.

Spanish recipe section

Paella recipes
Prawn recipes