La Comida de La Plateria
Gazpacho
Since I´ll be in Spain for a month, I thought it would be fun to write about the Spanish food that I´m trying in restaurants and at the home of Ascensión (Chon for short), my host mámá. I arrived in Madrid on Saturday and after several hours at El Museo del Prado, my friend and I went to La Plateria, a restaurant known for their good tapas. It was a very hot day, so we both ordered gazpacho, chilled tomato soup with bell peppers, onions, garlic, and paprika. It was delicious and very refreshing. We split a tapa sandwich made with warm house-made bread smeared with tomatoes and olive oil and filled with wonderful Manchego cheese.
Sándwich con manchego
La Comida en la Casa de Chón
Ensalada con huevo verdes olivas, y tomates
Lunch is the biggest meal of the day in Spain and is eaten around 2:30. For the first course, Chon made a flavorful pasta salad with hard boiled egg, geen olives, fresh tomatoes, and her favorite condiment, olive oil. The second course was chicken with a sauce made of fried onions, tomatoes, garlic, bay leaf and paprika. Our third course was fresh nectarines.
The color of the gazpacho is gorgeous, and gazpacho would be the perfect lunch for today (low nineties) in San Jose. -AM
ReplyDeleteWhen Chón served gazpacho, did you drink it or eat it with a spoon?
ReplyDeleteI've read that traditional Spanish gazpacho recipes call for some stale baguette. Did Chón use any bread in hers?
At Chón´s, it was aceptable to eat with a spoon or drink it. I opted to use a spoon to prevent any spillage. At the tapas restaurant, Rebecca and I drank it. There was no baguette in either gazpacho. The recipes may be suggesting to dip the stale baguette in gazpacho to soften it?
DeleteI just asked Chón about the bread in gazpacho and she said that she sometimes uses it, but not in the one we had. She says you soak the bread in water, then add it to the soup before pureeing. It makes it thicker and adds some flavor. She has stopped doing that because she is (kind of) watching her weight.
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