Fish, Fish . . .

I eat like a queen here.

Saturday, para almorzar (I love that meals come in the verb form: desayunar, to breakfast; almorzar, to lunch; cenar, to dine) we had a three course meal.

First mejillones, mussels, from the shell . . . mmm, steamed with lemon. ¡Come! That is what Alicia and Jaime tell me every meal, ¡Come! It means eat, in the imperative form. :) Outside of meals I am always hearing “tranquila.” Anyway . . .

Part two: Sopa de Pescado. Dump a bunch of little fish (whole) and the head of a goosefish (? the fish name in Spanish is rape—rah-pay) into a pot with hot olive oil in the bottom and add onion, tomato, red bell pepper, garlic, fresh parsley, oregano, laurel leaves, paprika, salt, and water. But the water, and this is important, is added bit by bit—add some, wait for it to boil, add more, etc. Then cover the pot and let it cook for two hours, and vòila: broth. Of course, strain out the fishies and veggies and what not. With the broth, 4:1 ratio, cook rice, and that is it. It seems so sparse, broth and rice, but the broth has such a smooth and amazing flavor. Just believe me, fishies and veggies make the best broth I have ever tasted. Yum, yum, yum.

Part three: Fish. Yeah, umm, I should have taken pictures, but I didn’t, so trust me here: mussels, soup, fish. As in two pieces of fish, each about two centimeters high, six inches long, and two to three inches wide. Seafood, anyone?

That was amazing. But so was Sunday’s comida: pimentones rellenos. Stuffed bell peppers. Stuffed with rice. Alicia told me she’d teach me how to make them next time, but she did explain to me that the rice is cooked entirely by the liquids of the pepper. She puts the rice in raw with a bit of meat sautéed in garlic and olive oil, wraps it in tin foil, sticks it in the oven and it comes out cooked. I saw a handful of good sized bell peppers come home from the mercadillo, but on my plate was an enormous, swollen pepper, splitting and spilling out red rice which would form a mountain on the skin, covering my entire plate. I’m running out of descriptors for wow and yum and it is only week two . . .

Since I lack foody photos, the ones I included are of the view from the deck and a close-up of the ocean.