10 things I love about Seville, Spain
Chefs share the unique ingredients, traditions and dishes of their favourite cities. This month, we discover the capital of Andalucía with Peter Sanchez-Inglesias of Casamia, Paco Tapas and Pi Shop in Bristol, and Decimo in London
We discover the capital of Andalucía with Peter Sanchez-Inglesias of Casamia in Bristol
Peter’s father was born and raised in Seville, and Peter has spent his life going back there to immerse himself in the culture. He and his father often visit to go on tapas tours, and Peter believes it is the city to visit for tapas. Seville is where Peter learned all about the cuisine for which he’d later win a Michelin star at Paco Tapas (@pacotapas_).
1 Tapas
In Spain, ingredients are extraordinarily good quality, so it’s really easy to find a tapas bar where they serve great, inexpensive food. Service is so quick there, too, that it’s fine to have loads of tiny dishes – in the UK it’s harder to get people to eat that way and service isn’t set up for it. But at Paco Tapas we do a hybrid version of small plates and informal service, and what I think are some of the best tapas you can find outside of Seville. Due to the warm weather in Spain, children stay up later on weekends or holidays, when they can enjoy eating with the family on a warm summer night. As it can reach 40-45C in the day, at night families tend to eat between 10pm and 11pm when the weather is a cooler 20-25C.
2 Chocolate and churros
This is a really important part of Seville’s food tradition and it’s served all day in some cafés. Most people have it for breakfast or elevenses, but during the feria (Seville’s festival) it becomes a late-night treat. After an evening at the festival we always head to my dad’s favourite café to watch them frying huge rings of churros, which they then cut up with scissors – you get freshly fried churros with a paper cup full of amazing hot chocolate for dunking. It’s the best hot chocolate, thick, bitter and sweet. Some people have cinnamon sugar on theirs but I’m a purist. They sell them from food trucks but the best are always from a traditional café.
3 Jamón
You can’t talk about the food culture of Seville without mentioning jamón. It is everywhere in the city. It’s a real treat so it’s something you have when you’re out rather than at home. Some shops specialise in it, but really it’s part of every tapas
restaurant’s menu and that’s where I like to eat it best. I remember thinking it looked crazy as a child – walking into a tapas bar where the ceiling is covered in hams, dripping their fat into a small paper cone. The smell is strong and powerful, and somehow sweet. There are many different producers, and it’s all made close to Seville. It’s worth spending a bit more if you want the free-range variety as they taste more complex and intense, and have a more tender texture. The acorns that the pigs eat give jamón a particular aroma – different to the ones made from pigs raised just on grains and corn. Producers cure them in cellars – just like wine this gives them a unique taste depending on the time or circumstances of the curing. They can be anything from 16 months to four years old.
4 Manzanilla
We refer to it as a sherry but in Spain it’s always called manzanilla. You would ask for a copa manzanilla (don’t forget the ‘copa’, there is also a manzanilla infusion for the stomach and you do not want to end up with this by mistake!). Manzanilla is made from a palomino grape variety which is grown in the microclimate of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Cadiz province. We always drink La Guita, which is an essential part of the tapas culture in Seville – it’s inexpensive and a good entry-level sherry to try when you visit. Guita means ‘cash’ in colloquial Spanish because legend has it that the original producer would only be paid in cash. Manzanilla can go with any food – something simple like the picos (small toasted bread sticks) or a bowl of olives, and especially with shellfish. The ABV is around 15% so it’s pretty strong, and if there’s a party going on, particularly in the feria, you may end up drinking it straight from the bottle – and that’s one of my earliest memories of seeing people drink it here.
5 Cold soups
Everyone has them at the start of a meal, or as a small tapa. The most common one is salmorejo made with a heavy white bread and tomatoes, and it’s my dad’s favourite. It’s puréed and often topped with jamón shards or hard-boiled eggs. It’s a really refreshing start to a meal, especially when temperatures can reach 40C in Seville. You’ll find cold soups everywhere in Spain but this is particularly linked to the south of Spain.
6 Bull
I am not a fan of bullfighting but it was such an important tradition in Spain and the impact is still seen on menus today, as they include bull’s meat. One of the delicacies of the bull is its tail, the reason being that after a bullfight the bull was taken to the slaughterhouse to be sold for meat to consumers. The tail was sold mainly to local bars as it was cheap but tasty, and it’s stayed on menus ever since. There are many recipes but normally local chefs cooked it slowly with tomatoes, garlic and herbs, and serve with a few potatoes (like chips). Locals would get excited when it was shown on the specials board the day after the big fight. The dish was called rabo de toro and although the culture around bull fighting has completely changed, the dish remains and it’s excellent.
7 Salted sh
Bacalao is another thing that you find everywhere in Seville. It’s cod which is gutted, flattened and salted to preserve the nutrients and the taste – something that was necessary before fridges. In Seville they have shops dedicated to it, where the fish are stocked to the ceiling. As a child I didn’t like it, but I have
come to really enjoy the taste of it. We have it as a key ingredient in stews that you’d have at homes in the city, or in tapas bars – it’s a staple for the area.
8 Prawns
Being close to the Atlantic, Seville has great shellfish and you can always get it super fresh. In Seville they serve these gorgeous little sweet white prawns, gambas blancas, boiled in salted water and served in tapas bars on a plate, sometimes with a wedge of lemon or aïoli. This dish is my first memory of sucking prawn heads, which still isn’t done much in the UK. My mum tells a story of going to Seville with my dad in the 1970s and watching people in tapas bars throw the heads and shells on the sawdust floor after they’d eaten them, and the bar team just sweeping them to the side every now and then – she’d never seen anything like it, but happily that tradition that has died out!
9 Cocido
We always eat stews in Seville, and they’re called cocido. They can have any number of ingredients and variations but usually centre around belly of pork, morcilla (black pudding), chorizo, tomatoes, red peppers, onions, garlic, sweet paprika, red wine and chickpeas (or judias blancas, aka haricot beans). Every tapas bar will have its own recipe, served in winter months. It’s one of my favourite warming comfort foods when I visit the city out of season.
10 Torrijas
Torrijas is one of my favourite dishes from Seville. It’s like a french toast or eggy bread with honey, and I always eat it when I’m in the city. My dad recreates it for us every year at Easter. It’s traditionally eaten around that time – there are lots of food traditions linked to religious festivals, and this is my favourite. It’s super simple: white sliced bread soaked in egg and milk, fried in oil and then a honey water glaze poured over, drenching it. The honey they use in Seville is a strong, dark blossom honey. It’s much better the following day, and it takes all my willpower not to have it straight from the fridge when my dad’s made it. In Seville you might eat it with your fingers with a tea or coffee, and there are lots of variations – even using sweet red wine as an ingredient.