A lesson or two in Spanish Cooking....

Eager to learn more about this dish and drink that we've established as a Spanish favorite and classic a group of friends and I signed up for a cooking class. We learned to make some montaditos as tapas as well as paella and sangria. All of this took place in a small restaurant in the Barceloneta area. First we learned how to make a standard sangria consisting of: red or white wine, fanta, ice, sugar, lemons, limes, oranges, and rum. (I may be leaving out a few ingredients?!) It was a great experience being able to roll up our sleeves a little and try to make this infamous drink for ourselves instead of simply ordering it at a restaurant.

Here's Meg pounding some of the fruit onto the ice in order to make our table another jar of sangria: 

And here's the finished product, with the white wine instead of red:

The end product was delicious and something that my roommates and I have continued to make and drink throughout the semester! Next in our cooking class we learned how to make seafood paella. While this section of our class was a lot less hands on the teacher took us through all of the steps and created a HUGE pan of paella for around thirty people!!!


Here's our instructor watching over the pan to make sure that the rice doesn't burn too much to the bottom of the pan:

Afterwards, we all had the turn to help him stir the paella and help add a few ingredients! Here's a picture of my friend Shay stirring the huge pan:

When it was finally finished cooking and everyone had taken their turn assisting in the creation of our dinner, the paella was absolutely delicious! Being a seafood paella the dish included rice, vegetables, oyster juice, and TONS of different seafood from squid to prawns, good thing I had gotten over my seafood fears earlier! Overall it was a great dinner and a great experience to learn how to actually cook an authentic Spanish dish on our own!