Asturias – Food!

I have eaten so many amazing dishes in Asturias that I simply cannot afford to write a blog about every one of them so I decided to put the best ones all in here. I try to write their names as well so if you ever go to a Spanish restaurant you know how the meals look. Some of them sound interesting and some of them look curious but believe me, all of them taste divine!

This one is the ‘pulpo con patatas’ (or at least this is what I would call it), octopus with potatoes. Basically a hearty potatoe stew with bits of octopus tentacles in it. An interesting combination in my opinion. The bread was still a bit warm and was sitting there on the side of the plate waiting for you to pull out a chunk and dunk it in the rich sauce. 

I would call this something like ‘bacalao con gulas and mejillones’. It means cod with baby eels (the long bits) and mussles. They weren’t big on the vegetables and the side dish was represented by four thin circles of potatoe that were hiding under the huge chunk of fish.

I know the official name of this one, ‘chorizo a la sidra’, or chorizo in cider. To be honest it just tasted like chorizo. We drank cider with it so that gave the other taste, too.

This is called ‘revuelto con gambas y gulas’ or ‘scrambled egg with prawns and baby eels’. I don’t think I have to say more.

A This next dish is my absolutely favourite. It’s called a ‘cachopo’, a huge piece of beef (?) stuffed with lots of yummy variations, in this case it’s ham, bacon and pepper. As you can see it’s deep fried. It’s VERY bad for you, you just look at it and you’ve already acquired 500 calories. Pure sin. But BOY, it tastes good! Here’s Rafael, our Spanish friend who is wrestling with it to cut it up.

The seafood here is very famous as it comes from the Atlantic which is full of nutritious particles. One of the star dishes is the octopus. Paul here is eating a whole tentacle! 

Finally, the plate of cheese. These four are the most famous cheese in Asturias. Very distinct appearance and taste. The names are : ‘afuega’, ‘l pitu’, ‘la peral’, and the very blue one is ‘cabrales’. They are served with thick apple pure that is similar to quince in England but still different, it’s in the form of squares in the middle of the plate.

Almost all this food above were put together from more meals and most were shared with other people. We don’t go out often but when we do we are treated like kings. There are huge advantages of living in Asturias.