THE WONDERS OF LOCAL CUISINE, The Wonders Of Local Cuisine

One of the specialties of Spanish cooking are tapas, the typical snacks that accompany the aperitif, and are often enjoyed as starters. Among those you can try in Barcelona are the Coques, a sort of mini pizza without mozzarella, bread with tomato and the characteristic caragols a la llauna: grilled or oven-baked snails, served with allioli, a typical local sauce made with olive oil and garlic and served with many other dishes, such as salads or fish.

A must-have snack or starter is jamon, or ham. The finest quality variety is jamon serrano, from pigs fed with a particular kind of acorns.

Barcelona has a Mediterranean cuisine, featuring many ingredients you would expect to find along the coast, such as fish, mollusks and crustaceans. You’ll also find plenty of fish tapas here, such as fried cod.

As regards first courses, pasta is very common. It was introduced by the Arabs, and is cooked directly in its sauce, rather than boiled separately.

Another common first course in Barcelona, and indeed now all over Spain, is espinacs a la catalana, spinach sautéed with raisins and pine-nuts.

The best-known main course is baccalà alla catalana, salted cod cooked with pine-nuts and vegetables and seasoned with allioli sauce.

Finely chopped cod is also the key ingredient in two well-known salads: esqueixada, with peppers, onion and olives, and xató, with lettuce, anchovies and tuna.

The most popular meat main courses include conil, rabbit stewed with chocolate and chestnuts, or anec amb peres, roast duck with pears.

A characteristic feature of Spanish cuisine is to mix meat with fish and seafood: one famous example is paella, a rice dish made with meat, shellfish and vegetables, originally from Valencia but now considered Spain’s national dish. The Catalan specialty is called zarzuela, which is practically a kind of paella without the rice.

When it comes to desserts, treat yourself to crema catalana, the city’s best known sweet specialty, made with custard.

An interesting fact: did you know that the original crema catalana recipe requires a little blowtorch? It does, really! It’s used to caramelize the surface...

What else can I say but… enjoy!