With influences from Spain and the African coast the food in the Canaries is packed full of flavour and sunshine. Our hotel, The Suite Princess, went to great lengths to promote the areas food both in cooking us deciduous lunches and dinners and also by inviting us demonstrations so you could learn the recipes first hand.
I attended one of the Paella demonstrations where I watched and learnt how to make the perfect traditional Paella from the Head Chef.
His top tip was that you should always use fish stock, as this is more traditional as the overriding flavour should be of the sea.
As part of this demonstration we got to don plastic aprons and hair nets and make a Mojo Canario (Mojo for short) which is a moorish sauce packed full of chilli, garlic, cumin and paprika. This a a Canaries speciality and tasted amazing considering it takes little effort, it's traditionally served over skin-on new potatoes. The best was of describing it is that it tastes similar to Patatas bravas and when I find a decent recipe I'll stick it on the blog as it's definitely worth a try.
They hotel also made real effort at dinner time offering a mouth watering selection of food, one night we were in seafood heaven where I got to gorge myself on freshly cooked shell on prawns and mussels and something that I'd never had before - octopus. To my surprise it was delicious, it was served in a copped salad and wasn't slimy or rubbery at all, just need to work up the confidence to cook it myself at home.
As well as the delicious savoury dishes they also had an impression array of tarts - think I managed to pretty much work my way through them all! My top three were:
No. 3 Lemon Meringue Pie
No. 2 Fresh Raspberry Tart
No 1 (aka Top of the Tarts) Musical Tart.
I'm not sure where the name comes from but it was yummy, it's a sweet pastry tart was filled with a egg custard delicately infused with orange then topped with plump raisins and chopped nuts and finished off with a sweet glaze.
Whist the quality and taste of the food we got to eat while we were away on holiday was a pleasant surprise the post holiday weight gain was not - worth ever pound though!
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