17-09-26: Food at the Old Spanish Mill

When you use the Old Spanish Mill. there's several different ways to do it.  It used to be on a bookings site, like an air B&B  but the owner found that there was an unacceptable amount of damage done and mistreatment of the facilities so it is let more on personal recommendation and through their own site now.  

People can book just a room or two, plus the facilities as extras, it can be used as a self catering or catering can be done for you.
Lindsey booked the full Monty - all the rooms, use of the studio and the pool and all food included plus trips out and transport.  Completely inclusive, in fact.

The meals were a mix of UK with a Spanish slant and proper Spanish that would be 'acceptable' to a group of Brits.

So breakfasts were always fruit, yogurt, cereals, toast, plus blueberry pancakes for a few days and pastries (croissants, pain au chocolat, etc) on a couple of days.  Sausage and bacon were Spanish!
Lunch and dinners started with what was basically tapas - Spanish cured meats, dips, always a big platter of salad, cheeses, bread, etc.  To be honest, that would have been enough!  Then there was some sort of main and then dessert.  And drinks with wine in the evenings.
And there was always food on the side - fruit, nuts, crisps, cake and 'bars' - there was a particularly nice orange flapjack sort of thing and I might possibly had had too many of them!

I took a few photos of the meals at the Mill and when eating out.

As I said, meals were a mix of UK and Spanish - Darren was from the UK and, while not a 'proper chef', he was a jolly good cook.
This was one of the Spanish dishes - a proper, authentic Spanish tortilla de patatas and it was so delicious.
I made one this week but couldn't bring myself to use anything near the amount of evoo the recipe demanded so it wasn't quite the same but jolly good, all the same.

One evening, we had paella - or a version of it.  Like many local dishes, there are regional variations.

Darren made a chicken one (below) and a vegetarian one and both were superb.

He used a proper paella set up with that large shallow pan over a burner - I wish I'd taken a photo of it.

A sample of the salads.  Such a lovely mix of ingredients.

Self explanatory!

We went out for a few meals . . . 

When we went to the natural spa at Balsa de Cela (more about that in another post), we had lunch is a local restaurant, the Caseta Tia Matilde, a very friendly place with nice servers who were very understanding of our ignorance of Spanish (Lindsey did GCSE Spanish so had a bit).

This what I had and, while it looks like burger an chips, the pork burger wasn't made of pork mince, it was proper pork and the add ons were spicy and flavoursome while the patatas < grin > were NOT chips!

Fish is a local industry and Dan had a fish platter which was amazing!

There was one outing we couldn't do so instead we went to Baza.
On the 6th (the day we were travelling out), Baza held a traditional Fiesta which sounded extremely raucous and messy ( https://www.andalucia.com/province/granada/altiplano/baza/cascamorras-festival )

On Thursday evening we headed there to experience post Fiesta celebrations - basically a big fair in the town centre.

There weren't many street food stalls; instead there were proper restaurants under canvas but we did sample some Madeira (I think it was Madeira anyway) .

Afterwards, after dark, we had coffee/wine/beer and nibbles at a street café.  Great atmosphere.

On Saturday night we went to a restaurant in Seron and the rest of the photos are what some people had - I didn't take any of these photos.

Cod with prawns and brie (and various seasonings)

Salad

Steak

and the most amazingly plated calamari!!

Again, the staff were very accommodating and understanding of the language issue.

After all that, it seems almost unfair to say the Mill food was a bit of a disappointment, but only because I'd have loved full on Spanish and it wasn't, it was a fusion.

However, it was still amazing, beautifully cooked, not the least bit fancy, we ate a ton (and gained a ton, I expect) and now I am having fun looking up authentic Spanish cuisine.

('Disappointment' really isn't the right word at all, is it? )

I am NOT looking forward to getting on those scales at Slimming World tomorrow.

Coman bien todos 

(Google tells me it is Spanish for 'eat well, everyone')