Our friends don’t tire of eating bacalao (salted codfish) cooked with lots of garlic and olive oil except for one friend, Jose “Pepe” Rodriguez, executive director of Instituto Cervantes. When I asked him why, he replied, “I come from Galicia (in the northwestern part of Spain, just above Portugal ) and nowhere can you eat better seafood than in Galicia.”
Galicia brings in more fish, shellfish and crustaceans than in any other region in Spain and the Galicians — including our friend, Pepe — regard it as their staple diet.
I’ve never been to Galicia so I could not imagine a daily fare using ingredients fresh from the bounty of the sea. But that’s not a good excuse. I can start out by liking something and then I can get interested enough to want to find out why, right?
Well, I didn’t have to wait very long. La Camara, the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Navigation in the Philippines launched “La Ruta Gastronomica” — now on its second year — which is a series of food festivals to promote the gastronomic heritage of Spain ’s diverse and colorful regions.
Two chefs trained in the Spanish cuisine, Mikel Arriet of Fuego Hotels and J. Gamboa of Cirkulo, put their cooking heads together and came out with a dinner menu that featured all manner of fish, seafood, sand and rock-harvested crustaceans very typical of Galician cooking.
For starters, we had three appetizers of Cabrales cheese stuffed in marble potatoes, green peas with crispy jamon and marinated grilled sardines and paprika ice cream to refresh the palate.
The entrées were octopus or pulpo cooked in olive oil and salt, and smoked scallops with cauliflower and saffron. I was told that pulpo is perhaps the most popular of all the fruits of the sea and Galicians love to cook this whole in a large pan, following which it’s cut into bite-size pieces with scissors and then seasoned with paprika, salt and first press olive oil.
The soup was made of white beans flavored with bacon and seafood and the main dish was an assortment of seafood wrapped and steamed in cellophane. When I dug my fork into the soft and flaky orange roughy fillet, the steamed king crabs and the mussels and clams, the taste of fennel and Albarino wine made each bite truly delicate and luscious. This was complemented by rice cooked with clams and mushrooms. The sweet finalé was their version of rice pudding laced with milk.
The food festivals at La Camara once again proved that you don’t have to know the recipe for your favorite dish before enjoying a gourmet meal. It is after you have enjoyed it that you may want to know why it was delicious, what ingredients were used, and why the flavor lingered on.
Getting family and friends together and sharing a meal — with plenty of wine — over a couple of hours, build pleasurable memories. It becomes a major part of one’s culture that warms the heart and, by the way, satisfies one’s hunger and thirst.
I didn’t even have to fly to Galicia.
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Contact La Camara at 887-7643 or lacamara@lacamara.com.ph or bobz@pldtdsl.net at 522-5274.