Castilian-Manchego cuisine

Castilian-Manchego cuisine
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Castilian-Manchego_cuisine".

Castilian-Manchego cuisine refers to the typical dishes and ingredients in the cuisine of Castile-La Mancha region of Spain. These include pisto (a vegetable stew with tomato sauce), gazpacho manchego, the famous queso manchego (a type of cheese), the white wine of La Mancha, and the red wine from Valdepeñas. Dishes are generally simple and sensible, and generally of a modest, rural origin. The cuisine of this area was popularized by the famous Don Quixote de la Mancha, in which a number of traditional dishes were mentioned.

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1 Fruits and Vegetables
2 Meat and Fish
3 Cheeses
4 Wines
5 Specialties
6 Entrees
7 Deserts
8 References

Fruits and Vegetables

Local dishes tend to use diverse vegetables, with a number of traditional vegetarian dishes such as pisto manchego, pipirrana (a salad of onion, tomato, and cucumber), asadillo de la Mancha (roasted red peppers), and gazpacho manchego. A common ingredient found in almost all local dishes is garlic. A local sweet pepper, the ñora, is also a main ingredient of many dishes.

Meat and Fish

There are many local meat dishes, which consist primarily of sheep, goat, and, to a lesser degree, beef. The most important dishes are carcamusas (typical of Toledo), chanfarina, roast lamb, cuchifrito, gallina en pepitoria (chicken a la pepitoria), salpicón, paturrillo, and zarajos. In areas where there is a lot of hunting, a number of game based dishes are also popular, such as conejo al ajillo (rabbit with garlic), liebre a la cazadora (hare hunter-style), and caldereta manchega.

The traditional fish of the area is bacalao (salt cod), which can be found in a limited number of dishes.

Cheeses

See also: Manchego cheese

Queso manchego, or "cheese from La Mancha", is the best-known cheese from the area. Made from the milk of local sheep (Ovis Aries Ligeriensis) found in the pastures year-round. The cheese is hard, with a strong taste, mild bite, and greasy texture. There are many individual types of queso manchego depending on curing time and tradition (some are submerged in olive oil while curing).

Wines

Wine production is very important to the region, which has many protected designations of origin for the area. The major PDO is D.O. La Mancha, but others include: D.O. Valdepeñas in Ciudad Real; D.O. Méntrida in Toledo; D.O. Jumilla and D.O. Manchuela in Albacete; D.O. Mondéjar in Guadalajara, etc. In addition there are numerous home-made wines, such as the sacramental wines known as "pitarras."

Specialties

The dishes and specialties of the region as generally quite simple to prepare and rarely contain more than ten ingredients. Ingredients tend to be those most easily accessible by the locals. Dishes tend to be high in calories, ideal for the diets of laborers, farmers, and pastors.