A change of seasons

 

The seasons have changed here in Zaragoza. The temperatures are rarely above 25 C (75 F) and are dropping down to  10-15 C (50-60 F). Carlos and I have talked about how nice it is to have a prolonged fall versus what always felt like a week of Fall between Summer and Winter in Louisville. This means we are seeing new and delicious fruits and vegies in the markets these days.

Butternut squash are everywhere now.  I have not yet seen a real pumpkin. A few plastic Halloween cartoon jack-o-lanterns but no actual pumpkins. Fresh mushrooms of new and interesting varieties spill out of baskets next to baskets of chestnuts. We have seen them roasting them on the streets. Pomegranates are now in every fruitaria as well. They call them Granadas......They are grown in Granada...I had never connected those dots before this year. And Artichokes. Not the huge artichokes I was accustomed to seeing in the US but cute little artichokes the size of a child's fist. They sell them by the kilo. We are in Europe after all. everything is the metric system here.

I am good with the metric system as a whole since I was educated in the physical sciences. I even used to teach the metric system as part of my curriculum. I struggle with two things: the day to day temperatures in Celsius and Kilos converted to pounds. My experience with weather has always been in Fahrenheit and Celsius in the lab. Its bit of a challenge to truly integrate the Celsius with weather. Thankfully the weather app shows both. The kilo's with cooking is new as well. Conversion between kilos and other metric masses are no problem (divide or multiply by 10's) But my intrinsic understanding of amounts needed when cooking is rooted in the tragic English standards.

So the new unknown of the smaller artichokes coupled with the kilos lead to an impulse buy of 1 kilo of artichokes. That is 14 artichokes....they filled our largest bowl. It was a metric system blunder for sure. I perused some recipes that used more than 1 fresh artichoke and came up with one for artichoke risotto. It was delicious! I was inspired by some mushroom risotto I had on my first night in Portugal. 

Tee cooler weather combined with a bit of rain mean that the olives are fattening on the trees and are starting to ripen to black. Let me be clear. This does not mean that they are tasty right off the tree. I had read that the brining process is critical to make them palatable. Whomever wrote that is correct. I tried one and it was horrible. So bitter but not good bitter, toxic bitter. The birds love them though. I will stick to buying mine in the store already brined and or pressed into oil. 

The Argonese are partial to black olives cured with bay leaves and green olives stuffed with anchovies. I am currently hooked on green olives stuffed with roasted red peppers or lemon rinds....soooo good with some local semi cured Manchego and fresh dates. 

I will be making my first batch of paella, while in Spain, this weekend. I'll let you know how it goes.