Gastronomic Specialties on Gran Canaria
Typical Canarian Specialties
Gastronomic specialties from Gran Canaria
There are a lot of typical canarian foods, dishes and recipes.
In the municipality of Moya on Gran Canaria you can get the famous und typical sweet “suspiros” and the “bizcochos lustrados”.
The so called “Chorizo de Teror” comes, as the name for itself says, from Teror which is also a municipality of Gran Canaria. It is a high-seasoned pork and paprika sausage.
Hint.: A flea market takes places every Sunday in town, there you have the possibility to taste and enjoy some bread with this special sausage.
In Valleseco you have the chance to get to know several delicious gastronomic dishes from the canaries, like:
- Cheese from the “Madrelagua” cheese factory
- The famous “Milflores” honey (thousand flowers)
- Canarian honey-wine
You can also enjoy in Valsequillo numerous typical specialties:
- Grilled meat (very typical for Valsequillo)
- Chorizo, blood sausage, ribs
- “papas arrugadas con mojo” (Canarian ‘crumpled’ potatoes with mojo sauce)
Potatoes with mojo
One of the most famous specialties on the canary islands are "papas arrugadas con mojo" you've been served in any canarian restaurant on this and other of the seven islands.
Typical canarian dishes from Gran Canaria
Here we present you some recipes of typical canarian dishes from Gran Canaria. Write them down or print it or cook it directly with your smartphone, and try it out. Maybe you can surprise you family and friends with something new.
Recipe - "Papas arrugadas"
Crumpled potatoes would be the direct translation of "Papas arrugadas".
There are actually different ways or styles of preparing them but basically its donde this way:
1) Pic small sized potatoes, like an egg, and wash them very good but leave the skin on.
2) Put them in a high saucepan, add a piece of lemon and a quarter kilo of salt for every kilo of potatoes (more or less: 1 pound = 0,454 kilo; 2.205 pounds = 1 kilo ). Fill the saucepan with water just enough to cover the potatoes on the top and boil them until they are ready.
3) When done, pour the water out and put the saucepan back on the fireand let the potatoes dry out, shaking them from time to time (this might take not more than 2 or 3 minutes)
4) After this, take them off the fire and leave them covered them with a dish towel for some minutes.
5) Serve them on a plate and pour "mojo" over them. ("mojo" is a tipical canarian spicy peppersauce)
Enjoy!
Recipe - Mojo picón Sauce
This is the recipe of the most typical red sauce made on the canary islands.
Ingredients:
Garlic, cooking salt, red hot chili peppers, crumb, caraway, oil and vinegar.
Preparation:
- First we need to pound half a dozen garlic cloves with two fingers of salt (cooking salt) and half a tea-spoon of caraway until we get a homogeneous paste.
- Then we add a few chopped peppers (the more you put in, the hotter the sauce will get) and we continue pounding untill everything is even again.
- After that we add a piece of crumb (not big) that we've had in vinegar before. (Though, there are some cooks that leave the step of putting the crumb in vinegar aside.) We mix it very good and finally add oil and more vinegar (more or less in a 3:1 proportion).
- Watch out!, don't let it get neither to oily nor to vinegary, so that its texture is not to thick and not to liquid.
Oh by the way, "mojo" is pronounced like "moho"
Recipe - Green Mojo Sauce
Here you find an easy recipe of Green Mojo, the most commonly used sauce on canarian food. Since you can spice up almost evey meal with this sauce, I think it'll be appropriate to let you know this tasty sauce.
Normally it's given you in a restaurant when you order fresh fish. But certainly you can try it out on ribs, steak or any other kind of meat.
Green Mojo - Ingredients:
Fresh coriander, garlic, cooking salt, red hot chili-peppers, white wine, oil and vinegar.
Green Mojo - Preparation:
- First we'll need to pound a bundle of fresh, well chopped coriander with a handful of salt and a few garlic cloves (the more you put in, the spicier the sauce would be; though it should never outbalance the flavour of the coriander).
- Pound everything very well ,add some chopped peppers and keep pounding.
- After that add a good spurt of oil and another one (more or less the same) of the white wine. Add vinegar (a little less than the oil) and that's it. Just stir it well and voilá!!
Enjoy it!
Recipe - Rancho Canario
The day before we should have desalted a 1/4 Kg pork ribs. Some people say it's more tasty if you use stewing beef and chicken instead.
Anyway, the next day we put them into a cauldron and add 3/4 Kg of potatoes, cut in squares, and a 1/4 Kg chickpeas.
We cover it with water, doubleing the size of the ingredients with it, and put it on the fire. We salten it slightly and add a bit of bicarbonate to soften the chickpeas.
While it begins to boil, we shoud've made a so called "sofrito"or "refrito" which is the base for an inmense ammount of spanish dishes. I'd define it as some kind of "sauce" made of a sliced good piece of "chorizo", a pealed crushed tomato, and well chopped garlic and onions, fried in a pan.
At the moment it begins to boil we add this "sofrito" and let it cook until everything is almost done. You can see this by piercing the meat and the potatoes.
Finally we add, and this is very important, thick noodles and let it finish.
