Friday 14 October 2011

Callos con garbanzos, a treat worth looking for

(c) Alberto Bullrich 2011
JIMENA Let's get this over with right away: callos is a nice word for tripe. In English, tripe can mean intestine, but in Spanish, callos means stomach and no further. What you get here is pork tripe. How you cook it is your business. We like to eat it, not cook it, so the answer is to find somewhere they make them well. We have, and it's right across the street from the office at Bar La Parada. Mari's version includes chick peas, chorizo, morcilla, a sauce to kill for - and a chunk of great campo bread to mop it up. Natch, you need a drink, which is where beer comes in so well in this unseasonable heat. But then, you might have someone with you who doesn't like tripe (many don't, can't think why!), so La Parada can offer a host of montaditos, the rolls with a filling of almost anything - try the roquefort and anchovy (roquefort con anchoa) or smoked salmon (salmón), or, if it's around breakfast time, the bacon and quail egg (bacon con huevo). (None of them cost more than €1, which is the best news!)

1 comment:

Simon said...

That's one of my favourite tapas - I shall go to La Parada and sample it pronto but I will leave the bits of callos to one side sorry :-(