Vegetarian Cuisine in Canary Islands

When travelling abroad, eating vegetarian food is limited to just cottage cheese, mushrooms or potatoes. Mom was vegetarian for 40 years of her life; she normally starved during flights and survived mostly on bread and butter. But things have changed now since more people opt for vegetarian cuisine and I was happy to find good variety of vegetarian dishes in a typical Spanish restaurant.

 Last week I visited a Spanish restaurant in Las Palmas. The tables overflowed outside the restaurant into the walking plaza. We occupied a table to enjoy drinks while waiting for the rest of the family to arrive. While sipping, it’s interesting to watch people on the street. Women with shopping bags, children running back and forth, old men walking leisurely and above all watching what others are eating. The table that caught my attention was the one that had hot plate on coals next to plates. The family enjoyed the drinks and salad while they waited for their marinated meat to cook on the hot plate. It seemed a good option of eating the freshly roasted meat straight from pan.

What was good about this restaurant was that it had good variety of vegetarian dishes too.

White cheese is must if you dine in any restaurant at Canary Islands. The cheese is soft, firm and a bit salty in taste.

 White cheese is added in most salads, the vegetables are fresh and succulent and tastes great with herbs sprinkled on them, The dressing is made by mixing lime juice, salt, sugar, basil leaves, parsley and olive oil.

‘Pimiento Padron’ is a Spanish delight. Big large chilies (that taste like capsicum) are boiled in salty water, dried and stir fried in olive oil.

Papa arrugada is another dish that one must try. Small round potatoes are picked with fork and boiled with rock salt (in one kg of potatoes they use 250gms of rock salt). They are cooked for 45 minutes on slow flame, removed, dipped in cold water, and then roasted in a pan till they crumble.

They are served with mojo, a special sauce served with Papa Arrugada.

Recipe for mojo

Ingredients:

1cup olive oil

20 cloves garlic

4 slices of bread

1tsp cumin powder

1 large red capsicum

10 dried red chilies

1tsp grape vinegar

2tsp salt

Method:

1.   Fry garlic with skin in good quantity of olive oil, till skin separates, remove the garlic and keep aside

2.   In the same oil, fry small pieces of bread till they brown, remove and keep aside.

3.   Transfer the garlic and fried bread in the mixer.

4.   Add cumin powder, salt, red capsicum, dried red chilies and little water

5.   Grind to a smooth paste

6.   Add grape flavor vinegar

7.   Add the reserved olive oil that was used for frying garlic and bread.

8.   Mix it well and serve with potatoes.

For main course, one normally eats Paella in Spanish restaurants. I think this restaurant had many vegetarian clients because it even served vegetarian Paella. There was wide variety of Paella dishes. We ordered veg, the moist one, which looked more like khichdi, but the taste was good, quite similar to the non-veg type with lots of vegetables and the special thick grains of rice that is used in this dish.

Great lunch at Gambrinus at Las Palmas, that’s where we spend one afternoon for vegetarian meal.

Vegetables Sizzler in Black Pepper Sauce

One thing good about sizzlers is that the food is steaming hot till the last spoon. Second thing is the novelty of the sizzling plate that comes shooshing on your table like a steam engine parking on your space, the smoke from the plate blinding you, the colorful combination of different assorted vegetables and that slurpy sauce make it even more exotic. More-over it’s a complete meal by itself and one plateful should suffice for nutrients required to go all day.

No wonder, sizzler can be made of the combination of your choice and there is no rule as such that it has to be made in a particular way. You can neatly arrange all the ingredients side by side or you can place them piled up one by one, the main taste is in the sauce that you pour over it and there are various types of sauces that you could experiment with to give your dish different flavors each time.

Ingredients that I used

1 cup rice

For sauce

1 tsp olive oil

2 pods garlic (grated)

2 medium spring onions (chopped)

2 green chilies (cut slant-wise)

1 vegetable cube

2-3 basil leaves

1 tbsp chopped celery

1 tbsp pepper sauce

1 tsp corn flour

For stir fry vegetables

1 tbsp olive oil

200 grams mushrooms (diced)

1 medium carrot (diced slant-wise)

1 medium capsicum (diced)

3-4 Paksoi leaves (chopped)

1 tsp crushed black pepper

Salt to taste

During arrangement

5-6 Cabbage leaves

1 tsp vinegar

Now ready to cook:

Step 1

Steam 1 cup of rice adding salt and oil.

 Step 2

Keep the plate for heating for 20 minutes.

 Step 3

Make sauce

1.     Stir fry garlic in I tsp of olive oil,

2.     Add spring onions, green chilies, add 1 cup of water, vegetable cube, basil leaves, celery leaves, black pepper sauce,

3.     Let it cook for ten minutes,

4.     Add 1 tsp corn flour in ½ cup water,

5.     Stir till the sauce gets thick,

6.     Keep it aside

Step 4

Stir fry vegetables

1.     Stir fry garlic in 1 tbsp of olive oil,

2.     Add mushrooms and carrot,

3.     Mix and add capsicum, green chilies, Paksoi leave,

4.     Sprinkle crushed black pepper and salt on it.

Step 5

Arranging the sizzling plate

1.     Transfer the hot sizzler plate on a wooden base,(from step 2)

2.     Arrange cabbage leaflets on the plate,

3.     Add the layer of white steam rice,(from step 1)

4.     Add the layer of stir fried vegetables  (from step 4)

5.     Pour the sauce on the top (from step 3)

Step 6

Dissolve 1 tsp of vinegar in 1 tsp of water and pour on it for sizzling effect.