Kika´s galley

I hope that we haven't given the impression that our culinary ambitions are satisfied with rissoto of the starboard locker and tuna pasta. We've been sampling the local delicacies ashore then trying to recreate them in our galley. The greatest success to date is Pimentos de Padron. Small green peppers, fried until they're soft then sprickled with salt - delicious. We've also made great improvements with our tortilla and chorizo dishes- still not up to Tapas standards, but definately improving. Ellen has only been moderately impressed with my sea-food experiments, with the exception of prawn based dishes; baby squid was rejected [Ellen's note: because they'd been in the fridge for five days], fresh sardines initial rejected, but won over by the irresistible smell.

Nick´s sardine special

We've been hunting out bars which offer pinchos, small tapas free with a drink. In Sta Eugina - the pilot book said:

The town claims to be the centre of the sardine trade and it is still sometimes possible to buy freshly cooked fish by the harbourside, grilled in the open over a bed of charcoal, a culinary experience not to be passed by

As you might imagine, this entry significantly influenced our choice of harbour in Ria de Arosa. However, our search of the docks for barbequed sardines only unearthed the usual fishing harbour smells. But... on our last night we found a guy barbequing sardines outside a bar. I started one of my over-ambitious conversations in Spanish [Ellen's note: Spench; mixture of Spanish, and bad French] which started off with a confident sentence from me in full Spench, followed by a look of puzzlement from the listener, ending in smiles and head nodding, with no useful information gleaned and Ellen disowning me. One day we'll find the region where fluent Spench is spoken. We decided to chance our luck in the bar and hoped for sardines on the menu. Our drinks arrived and we'd started translating the menu, when the sardine BBQ man came round to each table offering a pincho of three three beautifully cooked sardines. It was almost worth being laundry bound!

Feel free to post any recipe ideas. The more ridiculously ambitious the better. We'll let you know how we get on.