THE CANARIAN GASTRONOMY, A WORLD OF FLAVOURS

The Canarian gastronomy comes, to a great extent, from the samples of the indigenous people, from the advantage of the resources which the setting offered and the continuos exchanges with America, the rest of Spain and, nowadays, because of the tourist activities, with the European countries. The wise combinetion of all those factors has been successful respect to a rich and special gastronomy, though in some way unknown.

The Canarian ancestors lived in caves and huts, and devoted their main work to the livestock farming, and in a less extent, to the agricultural activity. Their feeding was pretty frugal, based on the resources the ground and the sea offered to them; they know the fire and grinded the roasted barley between stones; in that way they obtained the roasted maizle meal, but it also came from roots, specially the ones of the ferns, which were roasted like the ceral . The native diet included also fish and shellfish, such as slimpets, “burgados”, prawns, sardines and small tuna they fished in the coast because they lacked the necessary means to throw to the further sea; they also ate fruits, wild berries and honey, apart from milk and meat coming from goat and pig shepherdy. From that time it is the starting point of the influence of the livestock products in the Canarian cooking, and the extended tradition of the products derived from milk since, according to the archaelogists, the prehispanic people fed on “tabefe” and serum, it is not strange that they knew how to keep milk, though it seems not likely they knew the methods to elaborate cheese, put in the archipielago at the end of the XV century.

From that time, and through the wide relationship with Central America and South America and the mainland, the island agriculture started to consume other cereal like sweetcorn, tubérculos luke potatoes, fruits like the banana and vegetables like the tomato which not only have acquired, and still have, an important role in the Canarian economy, but also an outstanding position in their gastronomy.

With all the ingredients contributed by the native people and the population that came later, the Canarian cooking has characterizad its own way, standing out its lack of fats, surely because of the warm climate, and its peculiar use of scent plants, such as coriander, marjoram, thyme, parsley and “hierbahuerto” or “hortelana”, island names which stand for mint.

The Canarian menu, according to the experts, is established over the four meals which constitute the vegetable stew ( made of watercresses, hedge mustard or coriander), the fish broth, the stew and the parboiled meat. To these main dishes, there would have to add others made with rabbit, pig, lamb and goat meats, the so called meat stew, meat and fish salmagundi, the vieja fish seasond with sauce, the pejines, the tollos and the boiled potatoes with a lot of salt and served without peeling them and sprinkled with any kind of sauce, made with oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, red pepper and cumin seed.

Cheese is a very important food, regarded as the “canal” or the inseparable partner of any dish; it is present in all the meals as concomitant to stews, doughy roasted maize mail and also raw onion.

Its also worth to mention the desserts, which thank to lay receipts, they take out an excellent result to the land products characterized by their huge variety; for instance, crushed and boiled corn, the bienmesabe, brown sugar from La Palma, the cottage cheese from La Gomera, the sponge cakes of Moya, the pastry of Los Realejos and the cheesecakes from El Hierro. Finally, the ever seen roasted maize, food of the meat stew and to make thick the vegetable stews, it also has been taken in the subject of pastrymaking.

Gastronomy, fairs and celebrations are linked in the Canary Islands as in any place in the world. All the remarkable dates along the year, as for instance, Christmas time, patron saint festivities and Carnival festivals, stand out for the ellaboration of typical dainties. Some of the most valuable are the roasted milk, the Herreña cheescake, the “lengüillas of Guía, the nougats and doughnuts and more recently, the roasted maize ice cream.

Till a few years ago there was not any “potatoes collection” which did not finish with the ritual of the meat stew, when the families came together to take part in the cropworks.

In the local shrines a number of land products are offered to the patron saint of the municipality. Local and seasonal feasts like the flowering of the almond tree or the collection of the mullet in the Festivities of El Charco in San Nicolás de Tolentino have achieved a great popular rooting.