Easy Spanish Recipes

You can find our Easy Spanish Recipes here:

Fish & Seafood

Gambas al Ajillo (Spanish Garlic Prawns Recipe) Empanada Recipe with Tuna

Shrimp Salad Recipe Salmon with Ham & Apple Cider

Poultry & Meat

Pork in Whisky Sauce Chorizo Chicken

Olive Oil Quail Recipe

Soups

Cold Almond Soup Recipe (Ajo Blanco) Salmorejo

Miscellaneous

Salsa Almadroc Escalivada (Roasted Vegetable Recipe)

Spanish Tortilla Recipe

Before writing about easy Spanish recipes I could have played the same game I did before writing about French cuisine and ask a few people to name me some keywords while brainstorming about Spanish cuisine.

Like many other countries Spain prospers from its superb location: pressed between the rocky Pyrenees and Portugal this rich country touches the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Inland Spain is riddled with rivers, valleys, steep hills and a breathtaking countryside. Not only these elements make it an enormous fertile and vivid country. Its climate also contributes to its culinary richness.

It’s hard to speak about Spanish cuisine as being one cuisine because Spain is a cobweb of various local cultures living in their own vast climate and landscape such as Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque country. These different regions are yet again divided into a patchwork of hundreds of local little cuisines each containing very own easy Spanish recipes, ingredients, habits and produce developed through the years. Some cuisines differ so extremely it’s hard to believe they come from the same country. Other dishes and specialties are widespread and can be found throughout the whole country and sometimes lightly adapted to local standards: tortilla, gazpacho, paella or cured hams.

As mentioned earlier on easy Spanish recipes mean more than world famous delicacies such as paella, tortilla, tapas or chorizo. Spain is one of the founders of the Mediterranean diet and maintains this influence until now. Many typical recipes are pure and outright Mediterranean bestsellers. Spanish food is varied and therefore healthy. There’s still an enormous drive and pride amongst the Spanish people to cook and consume daily-fresh products from their own lands and rivers, most commonly fish, fruits and vegetables. This attitude is the result why all these local cuisines are resistant to modern influences like frozen food, imported produce and fastfood. Spain is the number two if it comes to fish and seafood consumption worldwide after sushi crazy Japan. The consumption of meat is much higher than compared to Crete, the ruler of Mediterranean lifestyle, but still is much lower than the average fish and seafood consumption. Nevertheless large amounts of fruits and vegetables are eaten daily.

Beware, don’t think of Spanish cuisine as being selfish. For centuries Spain has been in constant contact with other cultures surrounding the Mediterranean or got invaded by some of them. Their rich and fertile lands bursting with top quality products made Spain look like treasure island for greedy emperors and kings. These contacts influenced the way of cooking: Roman and Arabian spices, ingredients and cooking techniques are still visible in some traditional specialties. The Phoenicians for example introduced olives in Spain. Other products like potatoes, tomatoes or capsicum got incorporated in Spanish cuisine only after the discovery of America. Other crucial ingredients or spices that are used daily: onions, almonds, chili, ham, goat cheese, rice, garlic, parsley, olive oil, paprika powder, rosemary and saffron.

Not only fish, seafood, meat, fruits and vegetables are secrets of the healthy Spanish lifestyle. Alcohol is another element. Spain produces the famous Rioja wines, sherry and cava. Sangria is probably the most famous drink of all: a kind of red wine punch loaded with fruits. It’s rumored that although the Spanish were acquainted with the knowledge and production of wine it were the Greek who encouraged them to start producing wine on a larger scale.

Spanish people maintain a very particular way of living which extremely inflicts their eating habits. Instead of consuming 3 meals a day they insert different small bites throughout the whole day. Breakfast consists mainly of sweet pastry and coffee. Lunch is eaten around 2 pm but in between people would have a second sweet breakfast or a pre-lunch of various stuffed sandwiches. Lunch is the most important hot meal of the day. To digest well people often have a little siesta before going back to work. Some companies and shops even close around lunch time and open again at 5 or 6 pm. Dinner (around 10 pm) is light and mostly consist of some tapas (little entrees) that can be eaten non-stop the whole day. Even though Spain has changed over the years lunch is still respected as the most important event of the day at home.

A quick word (before we introduce our easy Spanish recipes) about those Spanish tapas. The name tapa comes from the Spanish verb tapar which means cover. It is believed that in order to protect a drink from flies and other insects customers put a piece of bread on their glasses. Gradually bar owners would create little entrees covering the bread with ham, cheese, sausages or fish. Nowadays tapas are delicious and fancy looking food creations served on small plates. Some common tapas you find everywhere: stuffed sardines, albondigas (meatballs), stuffed mushrooms, fried calamari, cold cuts, tortilla wedges, patatas bravas (fried potato cubes served with cocktail sauce), prawns, pickled anchovy, stuffed and fried peppers,…

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