Eating is a gift. Flavours are wonderful.

But it was only when I started cooking myself that I commenced to properly appreciate cuisine. I’m Marcel. I was raised in the southern Spanish province of Cadiz and I’ve been a vegetarian for most of my life, when it wasn’t easy at all to get something veggie in Spain (not even in larger cities!). That was an even better reason to cook myself! I came to live up North to lovely Leeds but my heart and my cooking skills still lie in the Iberian Peninsula.

Don’t make me laugh! Is there Spanish veggie food at all in Spain?

Is it that Spanish cuisine has no vegetarian food to offer? No way! It’s full of vegetarian delights, and even a lot of non-vegetarian dishes can be made veggie-friendly. Luckily, nowadays vegan and vegetarian restaurants are flourishing in Spain, with cities like Madrid or Barcelona offering highly sophisticated cuisine. Even most medium-sized cities now have a place to eat without fish or meat. The best about this is that many of these restaurants and bars have high quality food, since they have had to convince the meat-eating clientele of their quality dishes in order to survive.

…and why ‘Smoked Paprika’?

Choosing the right name wasn’t an easy task! ‘Pimentón’ was the suggestion of a friend, which I decided to translate into English to make it easier to remember. Although literally ‘pimentón’ would be just paprika, most Spanish paprika is smoked in the drying process. So when we refer to ‘pimentón’, we actually mean smoked paprika, as different, for instance, to the Hungarian paprika. Ultimately, by calling the blog Smoked Paprika, I’m warning you that you’ll need some of that spice for many of the recipes!

So what is the blog exactly about?

It’s all about Spanish vegan and vegetarian food (with recipes!), which to me is not only a healthy explosion of flavours but also a political statement. After all, I have always been a vegetarian stuck on my way to a cruelty-free vegan diet. I publish new recipes every other Wednesday, so stay tuned 🙂

Enjoy the recipes and get in touch. I’d love to hear what you think and what you’d like to see in the future!