Romesco Sauce | A Daily Dose of Europe

Well here she is folks: The Little Red Tin of Awesomeness!

(and I will come back to her importance in a bit!)

This past week, we started our culinary journey just over the border from France and into Spain. Since I thoughoghly and 100% enjoyed cooking from The Food of France cookbook, I decided to pick up The Food of Spain cookbook. If you are looking for an uncomplicated, tasty, and authentic meals, these are definitely the books you should check out….. they are pretty great!

When we travel to Spain in July 2012, we will be hitting both the west coast (staying in San Sebastian) as well as the east coast (staying in Barcelona) of Spain. This past week, for our dining adventure, I decided we would be having a couple of different “tapas” (small Spanish savoury dishes), a chicken dish, as well as a seafood dish.

The nights menu consisted of :

Tortillitas de Gambas con Salsa Romesco

Pollo en salsa de Ajo

aka:

Prawn Fritters with Romesco Sauce

Chicken in Garlic Sauce

Sooooooo……. the kids have NOT been exposed a lot of seafood in their short little lives (I know…..weird…..we live on the west coast of Canada). So with this thought in mind, I thought it was best to “disguise” the shrimp (now this might be a bit of a “no-no” in the book I’m reading – French Kids Eat Everything {and Yours Can Too}), but I haven’t gotten that far in the book, so…….. I made “Tortillias De Gambas”. I chopped up the shrimp and make a “prawn pancake”, (yes I even called it a “pancake” for Brodie sake) served with a romesco sauce for dipping.

Now cooking these dinners has been a bit of a challenge for me. The “Chef” in me has really been holding back on my natural impulses for changing recipes. It has all been for the sake of creating “authentic” national dishes that I have not acted on these impulses. With that said, and the recipes I chose this past weekend, I really thought that the Prawn Fritters was the one dish, that, so far, could have used a bit of livening up (a hit of lemon zest, some cilantro….. ). It totally would have brought the dish to life…… but then, maybe not so “Spanish”?!? RIGHT?!?)).

The Romesco sauce was nothing short of AMAZING! My first I thought was that I had made way too much sauce, but it turns out, it was just the right amount since we couldn’t get enough of the stuff, and ate it like it was going out of style!

The Chicken in Garlic Sauce was as close to “unbelievable” as you can imagine. WOW, it was soooooo good! My total favourite of the night,and maybe even since I stared writing this whole blog thingy. The caption for the recipe even states…..

“……in a way that is so impressive the dish will soon enter your repertoire of everyday meals”.

To say I was a bit sceptical as I was preparing the dish was a bit of an understatement, but this dish took me by total surprise…. happily, 150% by surprise! It was so AMAZING…. it really was not something I was expecting from reading the recipe when deciding to put it on our evening menu. Really, the only reason I picked it, was because it was chicken, and the kids like chicken!

I am happy to say that Brodie LOVED it …. although at one point he stated “my lips are burning a bit”…… yes little man…… it will take some time to get used to the Smoked Sweet Paprika (aka the Little Red Tin of Awesomeness)! Little Syd (being the tough nut she is…) was not such a fan. I think she is gonna be a hard one to convert (too all types of food) no matter what. Unless of course we are going to Japan…. then I know that girl would EAT! But since we are not……..

Well that brings me back to “The Little Red Tin of Awesomeness”,

aka… Sweet Smoked Paprika!

I have used this little gem in my Turkey Chilli for a number of years (though, not much else aside from this), and it is the one addition that everyone asks about when they inquire about my chilli.

Now there are a couple of things I learned about whlle making this dinner

1. Sweet Smoked Paprika is in 2 of 3 recipes, so I need to have it on hand.

2. I now need to go and replenish my supply of Sweet Smoked Paprika before Friday and our next “inspired” meal, since it was all used up this past weekend, and you can almost bet its gonna be in at least one of the dishes I decide to make this coming weekend!

If you don’t already have this “Little Red Tin of Awesomeness” in your pantry….. make your way to the grocery store to get some …… she is a delight to have in your cupboard. You will be happy to have it on hand and to add to just about any of your recipes, especially if you ever intend on cooking traditional Spanish meals!

Enjoy your Daily Dose.

Xox