Check out Simon Calder’s city guide to Madrid for Classic FM – you may recognise the third interviewee 😉
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Colin Davies lives and blogs in Galicia, and his website makes for very worrying reading at the moment. Good luck Colin.
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Spain best beaches up-date
Following last month’s 20minutos.es photo-survey on reader’s favourite beaches, results are now in on which region takes most of the accolades. So, in first place, with the best beaches in Spain, we have The North, with 33% of the votes, followed by The South (Andalusia), The Islands, and The East (Levante and Catalonia).
Do you have a favourite beach in Spain? (Ours include Bolonia on the Costa de la Luz, Gros in San Sebastian, and Andrin, near LLanes).
Introduction
The secret of this recipie is the mixture of the crispy chicken skin and roasted garlic.
Ingredients
1.5 Kg (3.3 pounds) of chicken with bone and skin (either a whole chicken cut in to 4 cm/2 inch pieces or thighs and legs chopped separately)
12 garlic cloves
olive oil
1 teaspoon of salt
3 bay leaves
a glass of white wine (optional)
Preparation
For this recipie you need to use the biggest frying pan you have, so all the chicken pieces fit in one layer. If you don’t have a big enough frying pan you will need to use two simultaneusly.
Start by peeling the garlic cloves and slicing them roughly, then pour olive oil until the bottom of the frying pan is covered and wait until it starts to smoke. While you wait you can add salt to all the chicken bits. Then add all the garlic pieces and just when they start to brown add the chicken, inserting the bay leaves in between. You will need to cook it for aproximately 30 minutes or until all the pieces are crispy and brown, taking care to turn the pieces over so they get equally brown all over.
Serving Idea: Great to have it with fries.
Tip: If you want to have a bit of sauce, towards the end of the cooking lower the heat to minimum, remove the excess oil from the frying pan and add a glass of white wine. Cook for another 5 minutes and serve.
Discuss this show in the forum.
Close to 90 fires are sweeping across Galicia in a desperate situation that has led to the army being drafted in to provide support for the 4,700 people already working to extinguish them. 3 people have died so far, 2 women in a car that became trapped in the flames, and a 74 year old man who was helping to keep the fire away from a village.
Most of these fires are thought to have been deliberately provoked. Who on earth does this kind on thing?
Waves of immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa keep arriving on the shores of Tenerife in Cayucos, small boats that make the perilous journey across the Atlantic. With the Red Cross often unable to cope themselves, beach-goers are having to help bring the exhausted, de-hydrated, hyperthermic travelers ashore. This is a terrible situation that was repeated again yesterday on La Tejita beach in Tenerife.
Ben and Marina visit the wonderful market in Ourense to do some much needed shopping before heading back to Madrid from Galicia. See more photos of the market on Flickr.
Discuss this episode in the Notes from Spain Forum
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Costa del Sol ex-pat interview
The BBC’s Today Programme has an interesting interview with an ex-pat theartre group based on the Costa del Sol. Listen to the programme (Real Player required), and let us know what you think.
Are these people the scurge of the Costa del Sol? Is it OK to move to Spain and make little or no effort to learn the language?
Join the debate in the Notes from Spain Forum!
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Top 5 Valencia City Escapes
Continuing with our summer Top 5 series, Derek Workman, an English freelance journalist who lives in Valencia and has written guides such as Small Hotels and Inns of Eastern Spain and Inland Trips from the Costa Blanca, lets us in on a few of his favourite Valencian getaways:
Five places I’d rather be in Valencia than sitting at my desk writing…
1. Cabañal
One of the old fishing villages that form the Pueblos Maritimos down by the port. It’s full of old modernista houses covered in decorative tiles. After an hour on the beach at Malvarrosa I’d wander in to El Polp for lunch; a real neighbourhood cafeteria with a strange décor that somehow or other brings together American diner and Edwardian elegance. In the evening I’d nip in to Bodegas Montaña, one of Valencia’s oldest, and have a couple of their excellent tapas.
2. The Riu Turia
In front of the Palau de Musica. At least I would if it was Sunday morning. Despite still being called the riu it hasn’t seen a drop of water since the 60’s and is now 9 kms of parks, fountains, etc. (It’s where the City of Arts and Sciences is set.) On Sunday morning the world and his brother while away a couple of hours listening to music and the splashing fountains in front of the Palau; strolling, chatting, playing with the niños on the grass and trying to avoid the cool dudes on their in-line skates. During August it has an open-air cinema which is the bees-knees because the films start at 11pm, when the heat of the day has mainly disapated.
3. Mercado Central
Said to be the biggest covered market in Europe, I love wandering around it even if I’m not buying anything. The ladies will shout at you saying that their fish is the best in the market and you should get in quick while the going’s good. It’s so popular now with tourists that some of the stalls even have ‘No Foto!’ signs stuck up. If you fancy your hand at making a paella there are stalls that sell only the beans that go into it and others where you can buy nothing but the snails you need to make a proper paella Valenciana. I haven’t gone as far as buying a pig’s head, though – yet!
4. Cinquante Cinq
A local French restaurant owned by an Englishman and with an English head chef. Curios combination but excellent food and gets packed out with Spanish. I once had sopa de zanahoria, pastel de buey and pastel de pan y pasas – in other words, carrot soup, shepherd’s pie and bread and butter pudding. The Spanish diners didn’t realising that they were eating a typical British meal and loved it.
5. Sat at a table on the street…
… outside the bar below my apartment, swapping lies with Toni next door about how brilliant we are. It could be any bar, it’s just being able to relax and chat with friends in a Spanish way instead of shouting at each other across a packed British pub.
Image by Derek Workman: Kids with boat, Valencia
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This month we have had more photos than ever added to the NFS Flickr Group, but as is often the case I knew this image was a winner as soon as I saw it. The photo is of Logroño, in the La Rioja region, on the first day of a huge snowfall, and was taken by Marian Garcia. It conjures up scenes from Spanish films of the 80’s, dark goings on in small pueblos. And of course a bit of snow on the ground is a welcome thought at this sweltering time of year. Remember to keep adding pictures to the group this month!
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 