Food of Tenerife

Fish
The natural environment provides an abundance of marine life in both quality and variety, with some older and new species and various families of Tuna including  the sama, the bocinegro the Salema, the cherne that are abundant on theses shores.

The most popular being Mackerel, sardines and horse mackerel and the brunette which is served fried. These varieties are often prepared in very simply peasant cooking styles in a marinade cooked or baked rubbed in salt and accompanied with potatoes and mojo Kinks.

Meat
A typical holiday meat dish is marinated pork tacos prepared for the celebrations of the people in ventorrillos fairs, bars and homes. The rabbit salmorejo, kid, and of course the beef, pork and poultry are also typical of the meats consumed.

Wrinkled potatoes
Wrinkled potatoes with mojo.
Both fish and meat accompanied by potatoes in a jacket, is a typical dish of the Canary Islands where the potatoes are cooked with water, lots of salt and unpeeled in their jackets.

Mojos
The word is probably of Portuguese descent and is used to convey the use of sauces typical of the islands. The mojos are a real world of flavours, colours, and textures and include more commonly used the mojo cilantro, parsley, paprika and the distinguished flavour based on the mojo picon pepper.

The cooking styles of mojo is very broad and these ranges of sauces are often embroidered on with different ingredients in their development such as almonds, cheese, saffron and fried bread.

Cheese
On the conquest of the islands, one of the leading economic activities started immediately was the market for cheese, being an industry adding value to small livestock like goats and was used in the barter system and an essential food in agricultural areas,

Of interest are the producing farms in farms Arico, or Orotava Teno, that produces a variety of cheeses cured, semi-cured or smoked and mostly handmade. Today goat cheeses are predominant over sheep and cow milk served as a quick snack Canarios cheeses have international acclaim for their smoothness and flavour.

The Canarios cheeses have a distinctive flavour that sets them apart from traditional European cheeses, winning with the cured cheese from Tenerife a goat cheese covered in pepper Gofio Arico in it’s  category at the  “The best cheese in the world final” of the 2008 World Cheese Awards held in Dublin.

Tenerife is producing over 3000 tons per year of cheese representing 50% of the total production of the province and 25% of the entire archipelago. Today there are at least 75 cottage cheeses available at a General Health Food stores.

Tenerife cheese now have a “quality mark” promoted by the Foundation for Rural Tenerife that ensure quality standards and benchmarks and the promotion of the main qualities of the cheese and their products.

Gofio
Gofio scalding.

Gofio is one of the traditional elements of the kitchen and particularly Canaria de Tenerife. It is a food made with cereal grains that are roasted and then ground. The Gofio has increased the consumption on the island of wheat and to a lesser extent millet and chickpea or combinations of the grains and pulsars.

It has always been a staple of the Guanches and a popular food in times of famine and food shortages today it is served as a single dish gofio scalding or in combinations with various dishes of meat, fish, stews and even desserts. Even a prestigious chef has made a Gofio ice-cream.

Pastry
The pastry represented in Tenerife and heavily influenced by the palm bakery with delicacies such as bienmesabe, milk asada, Prince Albert, the frangollo, moles eggs, cheese pastries and similarly rosquetes and various types of cakes and the rosquetes of Guía de Isora.

Wine

The Vine growing in the Canary Islands and Tenerife were introduced after the conquest when settlers brought vines and varieties that proved the nobility of the Canarios wine. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wine farming in Tenerife engaged many families in the cultivation and subsequent industry.

The Malvasia Canary has come to be regarded as one of the best wines in the world and was coveted by the European courts and the largest wineries in Europe and America.

Writers such as William Shakespeare and Walter Scott refer in their works to some of these wines. The island now has five certificates of origin: Abona, Valle de Guímar, Orotava Valley and Tacoronte Acentejo-e-Ycoden Daute-Isora