And if you’re looking for more cheese, you have both Roncal & Idiazábal from Navarra. And the Quesos y Besos from the Jaén province.
There are apparently as many versions of the Andalusian sobrehúsa as there are cooks, or as there are versions of gazpacho. “The sauce with a thousand faces”. There’s the Málaga style, with tomatoes, and the Cádiz version, and the Sanlúcar dish of cod, sobreúsa sauce and potatoes.
The article from El Sur explains its versatility, as it originated as “cocina de reciclaje”, recycling cooking, or using leftovers to make this sauce in a creative fashion.
Some home cooks used paprika to give it a red tinge while others added saffron to give it a yellow look or thicken with flour or by adding potatoes.
Some considered it a stew, others a sauce, but in the Cádiz province, usually with fish (hake, cod, whiting) as the principal ingredient.
Maribel we are all so fortunate to have you here, with so much knowledge!
I was looking for the Quesos y Besos cheeses but did not see them at El Corte Ingles. I did not see a Club de Gourmets area in this store (Plaza del Duque) although I looked for that area. Do you have any idea of where I can find their cheeses around here??? Honestly, I feel as if I’ve died and gone to heaven…just to be in Sevilla!
El Corte Inglés has a Gourmet Experience area on the top floor in their main building on Plaza del Duque. It has an outdoor terrace with great views of the city. Only 11 ECI stores have the elevated Gourmet Experience. The rest of them, like the one near our suburb, just have a Club del Gourmet.
This is where we sometimes go to breakfast or take our shopping break.
Did you go to the supermarket in the basement? I suspect so, as that’s where you’ll find the items on sale.
All the best gourmet items are on the top floor, where you’ll find the luscious pastries of Manu Jara (maybe they serve them for breakfast at the Casa Palacio?)
And you have Ratatouille Cheesecake on Calle San Aloy that Shawn introduced us to.
About that El Bosqueño cheese, queso de cabra, goat,
it’s from El Bosque, which is a perched white hill town in the Sierra de Grazalema, so you’ve purchased goat cheese from the area where Payoyo is produced, in the Villaluenga del Rosario. So it’s essentially Payoyo without the Payoyo red label.
One can tour the Payoyo factory and visit the goats here
Oh, Maribel, of course I’d read about Manu Jara. Ii forgot!!
Yes, I was in the basement supermarket; tomorrow I will go to the rooftop Gourmet Experience.
The breakfasts at the hotel are very good but the cheese section is so-so. They offer three types of cheese: Brie, manchego, and (I think) gouda (or cheddar). Nothing local. There is a large selection of items, but not a buffet; you choose what you want and they bring it to your table. Impressive how the butter is served already softened–normal butter and a butter blended with several types of nuts including almond and pistaccio. I’ve been taking assorted fruit (just okay, but this is March), scrambled eggs (so golden in color!) and a pan de chocolate pastry. They do offer jamon Iberico, chorizo, lomo as well. The staff is so lovely.
Yes, fruit here in March is just so, so. We’re eagerly awaiting May and June for those delicious strawberries from Aranjuez.
But Spaniards do scrambled eggs so deliciously well! We love to have them made to order at the Paradors along with a side of bacon.
@erica1
If you venture to the Mercado de Triana and since we’re in Lent (Cuaresma), Manu Jara has a pop up there selling this famous torrijas (like a pain perdu), which is a typical Lenten dessert, also enjoyed at Easter.
Shawn included me in a wonderful tasting of sherry at Hnos. Morales; what an atmospheric and homey bar, celebrating its 175 year!!! Will post pics of the many tapas we devoured, and more description of the tasting, later…
I highly, highly recommend getting in touch with Shawn for food and sherry tastings and tours in Sevilla; she’s lived here for thirty years now and is rightly known (by the Times of London, no less!). as the “Queen of Tapas!!!”
Finally made its to Club de Gourmets on the fifth floor of El Corte Ingles at Plaza Duque. The little restaurants are open until midnight! And I found my cheese from Queso’s y Besos, and another cheese that I will take a pic of later. Manu Jara is very tempting but I already had some sweets so did not buy anything there.
I was so knackered last night that I (ruefully) cancelled by restaurant booking at El Disparate and gorged on cabrales (blue from Asturias) with picos and orange jam in my hotel room.
Five nights is the absolute bare minimum for this city. I am running at a very very slow pace, due to rain and general decrepitness.
I’m leaving this morning for Jerez airport, where I’ve rented a car and will drive to my base outside Vejer for more exploring…return to ANTONIO, EL CAMPERO, LA CASTILLERIA, and a few places new to me and recommended by Maribel…
Near the end of my 5-night-stay in Sevilla, I took a sherry tasting tour with Shawn Hennessy. Highly recommended! The tour consisted only of me, Shawn, and a couple of cheesemakers from Lancashire. The setting was perfect: Hijos de E. Morales, a few steps from the Cathedral. This bar celebrated its 175th anniversary recently and it’s still in the hands of the Morales family. This could be a film set–just oozing atmosphere.
We arrived at the 12:30pm opening time and within minutes, the back room (where we sat on tables overlooking by giant old ceramic wine vats (tinajas, thank you, Maribel!) lettered with the many dishes turned out by the kitchen upstairs; the Morales family still makes wine, in Castilla-La Mancha.)
We tasted quite a range of different varieties of sherry, each one explained by Shawn and paired with food. I did not expect the food to be so great!! The tasting lasted about two hours and not only did I learn so much, but I ate extremely well!!
Here are a few photos:
Trio of gentlemen in the rear bar area, where our tastings took place:
Hijos de Morales is our very favorite “time warp” bar in Sevilla! The front bar is always bursting at the seams, 4 deep at the bar, but the back room with its huge tinajas is our favorite. Shawn chooses very atmospheric places for her excellent sherry tastings. Here you can’t go wrong as your final tapas bill will be an incredible bargain. This is as classic a sevillano experience as they come.
Maribel, indeed it was a bargain. I don’t know what I expected but it was certainly not food as good as this!! I was listening to Shawn so do not have details on each individual dish, but we began with jamon Iberico de bellota and it was interesting to learn the different categories of this delicacy and the significance of the colored paper labels that each leg sports on its…ankle (??). Black paper label translates to an animal fed only on acorns and this is the quintessential jamon de bellota. After that, there are red, green and white labels, not in that order, depending on how much of the feed was acorns and how much was pasture (dehesa, I believe is the term) other than acorns. I am probably not explaining totally correctly but Shawn explained it perfectly and it’s explained on various online pages.
Aracena is a center of jamon production and is only an hour or so drive from Sevilla. Other fine hams are produced elsewhere in Huelva and also in Extremadura.
Here are more photos of the seemingly endless parade of typical Sevillano dishes, each one paired with a different sherry. There were also a couple of other plates that I forgot to photograph as I was engrossed in her explanations:
This is the bellota ham, paired with Zamorano cured cheese:
Along with those, each one terrific, was a meltingly soft pig’s cheek, braised in red wine, which I forgot to snap.
Near the end, and before dessert (caramelized flan and a selection of cheeses,) we pounced on the foie with red pepper jam, with which we drank Pedro Jimenez, the finest sweetest sherry:
erica1,
We have those chicken meatballs at home once a week, I agree, great comfort food! We actually had them tonight with pasta, courtesy of our prepared foods department of our ECI Hipercor.
The Sierra de Aracena in Huelva is the closest jamón ibérico producer to Sevilla and where Roger Davies of A Question of Taste takes clients on his Iberian ham tours.
Yes the area in which the black pigs gorge on acorns (bellotas) during the “montanera”, middle of October to the end of March, is the “dehesa”, the land of the holm oak. To be pure 100% bellota it must have a black label. What you don’t want to purchase is the ham marked “cebo” (pigs that have not been acorn fed at all).
We’ve toured in the Salamanca province, whose ibérico production is centered in Guijuelo (Joselito) and in Extremadura in Monesterio.
We went to a wonderful touring experience at family-run Ibéricos Torreón, outside of Salamanca city, where we toured the production plant with the owner’s daughter, starting with an erudite video explaining the difference in the many labels (for 100% pure bellota both mother and father must be the same), with a blind tasting to see if we could tell the difference between black and white labels (we passed the test!)
and at the end enjoyed a “surprise” 7-course, gourmet degustation lunch with wine, all prepared by their company chef who trained with two Michelin-stared Ivan Cerdeño in Toledo.
The highlight of the tasting menu was their new pastrami! Even the dessert was pork based! I highly encourage anyone in the Salamanca area to indulge in this very informative and tasty experience! We filled our trunk with Iberian ham delights, jamón, chorizo, salchichón, coppa… but they now send directly to our house!
Their pigs reside in the environs of La Alberca de Salamanca, to the south, in the Sierra de Francia, while the artisan, completely 100% manual production plant and “secadero” are found just north of Salamanca, capital.
Erica, you would LOVE this experience!
In Huelva the center of production is in Jabugo (5 Jotas).
In Córdoba the Los Pedroches production is centered in Pozoblanco (Covap)
Great report just read it and commented over Fodors. As I said there, I love your reports and we also were/are all about the food when we were going to Europe a lot. And here I get to use my real name not macdogmom!
Annegrace!! I “know” you! You always write such great threads on Fodors!!
I’m a little behind now; I guess it’s a good thing that I dot’ have so much time to write. I am now on the morning of my fourth day in the small hotel outside Vejer. I have a rental car, which one very much needs in this area.
Although the weather is not as good as last year, not by a long shot, I’ve seen some sun most days. Also lots of pouring rain and high winds.
So far I’ve had lunch at two old favorites and, as usual, these were out-of-this world fantastic: RESTAURANTE ANTONIO, outside Zahara de los Atunes (about 40 minute drive from my base) and LA CASTILLERIA, less than fifteen minute easy drive from here. Today will be lunch in Barbate, at EL CAMPERO.
I will put up some photos later, but I’ve already written about these three restaurants on this forum.
such wonderful write-ups! Last time I was in Sevilla (2017), I came down with a terrible cold and spent two of our three days in bed (but we also went to Granada, Cordoba, Antequera, and Malaga). But my sister wants to go, so, someday…
I forgot to mention AUGURIO in Sevilla!!
This is a tiny place run by two women and I got a resounding welcome from one of them, Carmen. Unfortunately, I was not in top condition that night, so could only fit in two dishes:
Here is a photo of the facade on a rainy night in March, when only one other table was taken, and their, anchovy with blue cheese dressing:
My second dish, recommended by Carmen, was Little Gem lettuce, grilled, with Payoyo (GOAT!!) cheese from the region. I forgot to take a photo, but I do have my bill: 14 euro; only water to drink.
Carta is on their Instagram, here; it will change by the season:
@erica1,
The restaurant Leartá (new as of last year) just received a Repsol sun during last Monday´s Gala. But…it’s tasting menu only, priced at 78 euros.
