El Mejor Cocina de España

The best food made in Spain is hands-down from the kitchen of my beautiful host mother. She spends many hours of her day cooking for her family and actually loves doing so. She is an absolutely phenomenal chef and says that she learned most of her abilities form her mother and grandmother. When they were young, my host mom, Ana, and all of her siblings use to love to help their grandma cook when they visited her. She has carried this tradition on with her own children teaching then how to cook at an young age as well. She also told me that she has a friend that cooks very well too and they have shared many tips and tricks in the kitchen.

My host father said that it is a good thing that Ana knows how to cook, because he know nothing about his way around a kitchen and would probably die from starvation if he did not have Ana. 

Some of Ana's recopies have been used by local restaurants because they are that good! 

Ana also goes food shopping every day! She told me that fresh meat, fruit and everything else is supper important to her cooking and she wouldn't be able to cook so well if she did not shop every day. She doesn't go to a single supermarket though to get all of the necessities on one stop. She goes to individual meat, fish, fruit, vegetable and bread stores every day to get exactly what she wants from people that she knows around the neighborhood. The craziest thing though is that when she does the shopping, Ana does not even know what she is going to cook that day. She only thinks about what she wants to buy, and then that afternoon and evening for lunch and dinner she wipe some amazing dish together with the fresh ingredients that she bought. She obviously knows how to cook a plethora of different foods if this is her shopping/cooking tactic (I can personally attest to this fact because I have not had the same dish here more than once in my 5 weeks thus far). She also doesn't have a favorite dish to cook because she cooks so many dishes and variations, she never thinks that two time can be the same. 

I had the honor of being able to help prepare a dinner and clean up after the meal with Ana. It was a very great experience and she truly knows her way around the kitchen. We made a dish very similar to chicken cordon bleu with salad and hard boiled eggs. I wasn't able to help a whole lot because she likes things to be pretty perfect in her kitchen and I'm no experienced chef.

When I asked Ana if she liked the show MasterChef, a very popular cooking competition show here in Spain, she said she doesn't watch it much, but thinks that she could probably win it... I have no doubt in my mind that she would take home the gold.