Valencia - Fallas - Day1

These styrofoam sculptures are so huge! They are still being built and must be completed by Thursday. There are over 300 of them, but not all are outrageously big. The neighborhood merchants pool their advertising budgets to draw customers with a motive falla. On Monday they will all be set on fire!

Mike and Gonza and just a bit of Mel!

This is what the inside of the structures looks like.  All Styrofoam and wood.  Must make for a wonderful blaze when it is all set on fire on Sunday night!

Valencia's Beautiful Market

Valencia's Central market is one of the oldest in Europe.  The beauty and freshness of the produce was incredible even to us Salad Bowl Californians.  They seem to keep the most beautiful produce for themselves.  The oranges that we ate and bought in sufficient quantities to keep us awash in vitamin C for the whole of January were like eating candy from a tree.  To a reluctant ham eater, the
Ibérico ham was full of such rich and nutty flavor.  You could taste the sweet acorns that the animal had been grazing on.  

My friend Mel introduced us to Spanish tuna ventrescas.  We had this at Casa Ana as a starter to our paella feast.  It was served simply over crunchy flavorful Raf tomatoes with the olive oil from the tuna.  We bought some of the tuna and tomatoes at the market and had it for our first dinner back in Montpellier.  It brought back the flavors of our trip and made us yearn for such a market near us!!

We also bought fresh and dried beans and rice for a paella feast.  The lady who sold us the beans gave me a quick overview of paella preparation.  I was surprised that a dish that has such a reputation for difficulty and time consuming preparation is actually fairly simple in technique and ingredients.  I will share both the recipe and the pictures of our paella with you in a separate post.

It was a new adventure in cuisine for me to learn of the varied, rich and simple dishes that are eaten in this region of Spain.  I look forward to many Spanish influences in my menus to come.