a Taste of Galicia - Ensalada de Pimientos, Puerros y Langostinos con Huevo de Cordoniz, Roasted Pepper and Leek Salad

It is usually possible whenever you stopped to research information about different countries cultures queasiness and general background for you to come off with a common theme or a common name that would relate to that country's cuisine. Such as English food, German food but when you consider Spanish food or if you wish to be a bit more accurate about how you look at it, food and recipes that originate from Spain there is a very convincing argument that would say it's not that simple.

The argument and the line of logic that would be followed and support this particular viewpoint would be that Spain is a much more recent combination of the various autonomous regions that lie within the country. These autonomous regions have been slowly amalgamated through a number of different processes throughout history but have all kept their own distinctive features.

The relative number of autonomous regions that combine to form modern day Spain is 17 and in the main, they all have their own language variants (if not separate languages) and entire cultural heritages. One of those autonomous regions comprises the north-western province of Galicia.

Spain's most westerly autonomous region it is surrounded on two sides by the Atlantic Ocean and as you can imagine for a region that has so much rugged coastline a lot of Galician cuisine is very much based on seafood and seafood based recipes. The above having been said not all of Galicia’s finest recipes are all seafood based and the region can lay claim to quite a variety of dishes all of which are most definitely worth investigating further.

Lets top talking about the food and get down to business. Let’s eat!

For this particular dish we are going to collect enough ingredients to serve four people and as such for the salad we will need the following ingredients:

Sunflower oil for frying
2 medium leeks trimmed and cut into the finest julienne if at all possible
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 quail’s eggs
1 280g jar of red bell peppers roasted and peeled.
12 cooked King Prawns peeled and deveined
1 tablespoon of roughly chopped fresh flat leaf parsley.

To start with we need to pour the sunflower oil to a depth of about 3 inches into a small deep saucepan until possible. In this saucepan we need to heat the oil and when the oil is reached the “bubble and fizz” stage when you add a few leek shreds we then know that it’s ready to proceed. We need to cook the leaks a handful at a time frying them for between two to three minutes or until the leeks are crispy. At this stage we need to remove the leaks from the oil and dry them well with kitchen paper sprinkle with salt and pepper and reserve.

The next stage in the process is that we need to cook the quail’s eggs. This is best done in the saucepan of boiling water for about two minutes and 15 seconds or two minutes and enough time to fill a bowl with really cold water! Once you've boiled quail's eggs put them into a bowl of cold water to stop them cooking. The yolks of the aches will remain a wonderful almost canary like yellow. If you overcook them they will turn into a much less inspiring powdery grey hue. Once the eggs are cold and that you can hold them safely then remove the shells from the eggs and cut the eggs in half.

Next we move on to the dressing for the salad. For this we will need the following ingredients:

5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of sherry vinegar
1 garlic clove crushed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

This stage of the procedure probably has to be the most unscientific, non-technical but most potentially pleasing part of the process. Basically you take all the ingredients for the dressing (according to your taste i.e. if you love garlic go heavy on it if you don't, don’t etc). What you do is take all the ingredients you are given into a screw top jar any fool or any sealable mixing dish and give them a damn good shake.

Finally take the pieces of red pepper and put them onto individual plates and drizzle with plenty of the dressing. On top of this add the crispy leeks; arrange the prawns and the quail’s eggs on top of that. Then add the surplus dressing that you have, drizzle over the top and sprinkle with a fresh parsley.

Scott James writes about a great many Internet Travel based issues and more on the above can be found at Accommodation in Galicia . For a more complete overlook at Tourism in Galicia try http://www.turgalicia.es