SHOOTS FROM LA ALPUJARRA

Hi friends, we visited the beautiful villages of the Alpujarra area, situated on the south side on the Sierra Nevada mountains. We where not very lucky with the weather, cloudy, even foggy when we reached the 1400 meters, and it was cold. There are a lot of small villages most with less than 500 inhabitants, before living of the agriculture, but now most live of the turism. We visited the most known Pampaneira, where many of the moors retired when they had to leave Granada, Capileira the last village on the road going over to Granada though Sierra Nevada, now closed for motor traffic, but with many hiking routs, even up to the Mulhacen peak, at 3482meters.
Trevelez, the origen of the Serrano Ham, here called Jamon de Trevelez, there are many possibilities to visit the bodegas where the hams are hanging to dry in the fresh mountain air. Try the chorizos as well, you can buy all their products, you can even get it sent home.
Tha gastronomy is mostly pork products, trouts from the rivers, their local vine, and the typical bread and moorish recipes of sweets.
Dry figs, and sweets made of figs, almonds and local honey, you must try them, and the famous Soplillos, see the recipe on my blog.
There are many posibilities to stay a night or two, have a look at these sites :                                      Turismo Pampaneira     
Turismo Capileira   
                                                                                                                                                          Hotels, Casas Rurales, Apartments and I can recomend a very nice hotel we stayed in, Hotel La Alcazaba de Busquistar ( their web site is under construction) Tel.958 858 687 , very nice staff, fine food, indoor pool and spa, good value for the money. 

I hope you liked my small photo book of this special Spanish place.

Have a good week, lots of love;

Hilde

GASTRO ALMUÑECAR 2013, NOW GOING TO XVI EDITION 2014

Welcome to XVI Gastro Almuñecar 2014
Majuelo Park  6-8 of June
Don't miss it if you are in the aerea.

Almuñecar and theirs best restaurants offered the "XV Feria Gastronomica 2013, during the same I was lucky to be invited to "I Encounter of Gourmet bloggers" 50 partisipants, from different places in Andalucia, Madrid and Barcelona.The heads of the organisation, Helena del Valle, Jose Helaero and the representatives from the Ayuntamiento of Almuñecar, did a super job, we just had to be enjoyed, and we started the day whith a breakfast in open air at the Majuelo Park, cortesy of Heladeria Daniel and some of the bloggers brought homemade bread, butter,different jams, an assortment of Olive Oils , wich you toss on your toast together with grated tomato and salt, you can also add some Serrano Ham cut by Jorge Fernadez, master of cutting the Spanish Ham . From Heladeria Daniel we got cakes and the Cazuela Mohina, tipical from Almuñecar made of almonds, honey,olive oil, eggs,sugar, flour and spices, from ancient secret recipes.

Cazuela Mojina, from Heladeria Daniel.

Bloggers breakfast.

Almuñecar is famus for their Churrerias, some of the bloggers wanted to try, at  San Cristobal  Beach Promenade you find several,  churros with chocolate is a very typical spanish breakfast .

A bus waited to take us to one of the largest and most modern fruit distributors, Frutas Romeral, this is not time of recollection of tropical fruit , most start in september, so we learned about some of them, specially the chirimoya, custard, originally from South America, has good conditions in Almuñecar, the tree loose the leavs in springtime, and afer very short time the new leavs are growing, but the difficluties with growing this hermaphroditic fruit is that the flowers open as feemale and then in matter of hours progress to male stage and need a pollinator that can not only collect the pollen of their flowers in the male stage, but also can deposit it in flowers in the feemale stage. The honey bees are too big to fit between the petals of the female flower, so the polinisation has to be done by hand, flower by flower, with a brush. In the places of origen there are small beetles takig care of this. We got a nice taste of tropical fruits, such as pine apple, mango, papaya some sherries, just the best time now,and the best, all grown in the Almuñecar area, so nice. And yet we want short travelled fruit and veggies.

                                                       EL ROMERAL FRUTAS

Tropical fruit.

Mango, papaya, avocado, all grown in Almuñecar.

BODEGAS CALVENTE

Rose and redwines from Bodegas Calvente.

Then we continued our morning trip to Jete , the next visit was Bodegas Calvente, local people, Horacio Calvente started making wine for family and friends, but since year 2000, started to sell some of his production. The grapes all grown on their proper vines, some recovered from strains 50-90 years old,Moscatel Alejandria for the white wine and the red has 40 % Cabernet Sauignon, 40 % Tempranillo ,20% Merlot also also strain between. 20 and 40 years old.

The fields are on a hight of 700 to 1000 m and has an inclination of 30 to 50% , the altitude, the fresh air from the sea, the more than 2500 hours of sun and a temperature of 23 degrees, make the grapes ripen very slowly, and the onely irrigatin is the rain ( 300-600 mm a year). All this let us have a natural grape with an intense flavor, but with a low production, only 4500 kg per hectare. They tell us that often they can't harvest all the grapes in at the same time, and must go over the fields until 3 times to get the grapes in the right moment of ripening.

Resting Wines

www.bodegascalvente.com

The bodega can be visited, and they have a shop where you can buy the sellection of Calvente vines

Fina decanting some of her vines.

Tasting the different wines, with some nice tapas.

This is going to be a long story, but I think it·s interesting, when going to Spain, especially Andalucia, you must look out for the different thing to do, I·m never tired of repiting Spain isn·t only sun and beach.

The mediterranen diet is reconed to be one of the healtiest in the world, it includes Olive Oil, fresh fruit and vegetables, legumes, cereals, fish and seafood, moderate use of diary product, as yoghurt and cheese, moderate use of wine, and low to very low consumption of meat and meat products.

The Mercado Municipal of Almuñecar, make it easy for you to try the mediterranean diet , if you like to spend some time of the holiday in the kitchen.............. and if not, go and have a look, and then do as we did, go for some  tapas and some wine, or sit down to relax and have a meal in one of Almuñecars restaurants.

Cherry tomatoes.

 One of my market mornings, first I have a look at the fruit and vegetable stands, an explotion of colours, and then I continue with the fish and seafood stands, while I·m walking around there, wanting to buy such a lot of things, Almuñecar is my week.end paradise, so I decide to buy for the day, but it·s quite impossible, always we end up whith bags of food to take back to Granada.

Red peppers.

To cook ;"All you need is love"fresh ingredients and some spices..........................

Salmonetes, you can deep fry or grill.

Lubinas for the oven, and some cod roe to mix in a  salad.

Escargots, "caracoles" in spicy sauce speiality from  the district.

Guayabas, lemon or strawberry taste?

Bananas.

Nisperos, lemon and lime.

The VI Feria Gastronomica of Almuñecar  23 restaurants had their stands, here are some shots, sorry if I leave any of the restaurants out, so many visitors, and it was so  dificult to photograph.

Bloggers lunch.

We had a really good time for our lunch, trying what we liked from any of the stands, table arranged for all of us to sit together , comenting the day we  lived so far in Almuñecar,and still there i more..............................

Chef Paco from Restaurant Kairos de la Flor

Swwet sweets from Mari Trini.

Paco·s filled pancake.

Traditional tapas.

"Fritura de pecado" deep fried fish.

Jorge Fernandez, Master in  the art of cutting ham.

Tapitas.

After lunch we had one of the highest moment of the day, Jose Helaero·s Chirimoya coctail, contains Mondero Rum, chirimoya icecream and chirimoya sorbet, don·t miss it.

Ths s only a small taste of what to do in Almuñecar between the 6th and 8th of June ths year, never say no to a gastronomic holiday in Spain, and always irrigated by Spansh vines.

Hope to see you  in Almuñecar.

If you want any information don't hestate to ask,  I will answer everybody individually.

I have two eariier posts from Almuñecar you can have a look at.

Love 

Hilde