As a food lover and healthy conscious, I love exploring all sort of cuisines and finding truth gems of dishes around the world. A chef's ability of meeting flavour, texture, colour, smell and yet healthy is a real challenge and I sincerely appreciate that.
Getting healthy or losing weight? That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy going out eating out or visiting amazing restaurants. During my holiday in Spain this week I have been exploring the cities of Valencia, Granada, Ronda and at last in Sevilla. Yesterday I found myself in a wonderful tour of different and sometimes unknown flavour journey through an 21 small tasty dishes... Yes 21 courses... which were spread in almost 4 hours of real pleasure and definitely guilt-free options.
The restaurant's name is Bardal which is located in Ronda (small town in the south of Spain). Benito Gomez is the chef who is the founder of this Michelin star restaurant. HIs approach is contrasting the flavours of the local ingredients of the Andalusia and using the cold, warm, nitrogen, creams and textures.
This green herbs soup with a touch of citric olive oil and using tapioca (cassava flour) was simply an example of his signature.
Nutritional Fact Analysis
This dish was a excellent example of low carbohydrate, yet very tasteful and with a nice crunchy in it. It was a baby lettuce cooked in tomato and clams water, which gives a nice natural salt flavour. On the top, it had three cubes of tuna, two drops of goat's cheese cream, black olive tapanada and mint leaves.
Carbohydrates: 1,7gr
Proteins: 3,5gr
Fats: 1,4gr
Calories: 33,4 Cal
This next course was a great way to show how you can introduce good fats in your meals in great style and flavour combinations, benefiting from the micronutrients combinations. Bare with me for a minute here and you will understand how important is to combine nutrients in order to maximise their benefit in your body.
This delicious avocado corn soup was made with real organic corn and coconut milk, so you can imagine the texture and richness of the a natural sweet flavour. In the soup you see some coriander olive oil drops and caviar (which could be replaced with a black olive tapanada). The avocado was grilled with a drop of coriander oil on it.
Did you know that avocado is rich in Magnesium? coconut milk rich in manganese? Magnesium help our body to assimilate better manganese. Manganese is a powerful antioxidant that seeks out the free radicals in the human body and neutralizes these damaging particles, thereby preventing many of the potential dangers they cause. And Magnesium is highly important in our neurological and muscular functions.
Carbohydrates: 6,9 gr
Proteins: 0,3gr
Fats: 11,7gr
Calories: 134,1 Cal
Bringing it all to our daily lives
I believe that we all can learn a lot from the best chefs and bring their ideas into our own reality and adjusting the ingredients and portions to our own needs.
As you see on these three dishes above here, there is no such an unknown ingredients that you won't be able to find in the normal grocery store. You could prepare each of these dishes on your own way but remember that portions are the real key.
You probably realise that our society is programmed nowadays to an excessive amount of food. You see that on the supermarket (get 3 and pay only for 2)... and marketing campagnes and it goes on and on. Let's not get influenced by the society and let's make our own choices. Set your precise shopping list, cooking plan and meal portions. Think about the balance between flavour, texture, smell, colour and above of all, nutrients in your meals.