Summer recipes to toast with Pazo Baión

We propose three summer recipes whose flavours, textures and aromas pair wonderfully with Pazo Baión’s Rías Baixas

How many lunches or dinners with friends do you have during this month? Will you invite your family to eat during the August 15th long weekend? Are you worried about finding a tasty, healthy, simple menu that pairs well with superb wines? To help you conquer the palates and stomachs of your loved ones, we will tell you three summer recipes that have one characteristic in common with the Rías Baixas: their freshness.

In the past, a meeting with friends or family was synonymous with a copious meal that required you to unbuckle your belt and wait 24 hours to eat again.

Culinary feasts that end in annoying binges are a thing of the past. Today, most people want to eat well without becoming saturated, and we prioritize flavour over quantity.

For this reason, we have designed a menu made up of three summer recipes that will not require you to cook all day and ensure that all your guests enjoy a gastronomic experience that matches the affection you show them.

Ceviche & Pazo Baión

If there is a gastronomy that has become extraordinarily influential in recent years, it is, without a doubt, Peruvian cuisine. We can find Peruvian restaurants or restaurants in practically every city that fuse their gastronomy with ours. For this reason, traditional dishes such as ceviche have become very popular in Spain.

After all, ceviche shares many characteristics with some of our summer recipes, such as seafood salpicón.

Precisely for this reason, it is a dish that pairs wonderfully with a 100% Albariño wine such as Pazo Baión. The notes of flowers and white fruits of the Best Young White Wine of Spain 2024 are complemented by the aromas of the ceviche, composing an exquisite Peruvian-Galician gastronomic experience.

Preparation

Unlike other summer recipes, ceviche is not a dish governed by strict rules since although it is typical of Peruvian cuisine, it also shines in Ecuadorian cuisine, and variations of this dish are made throughout Latin America. The most important thing to prepare a good ceviche is, no more and no less, the quality of the fish used. In this sense, Galicia has an advantage because the Galician fish markets offer some of the best fish in Europe.

How is this recipe prepared? First, prepare a cup of fish stock and reserve it. Then, cut the sea bass or the chosen fish into small pieces. Also, squeeze the lemons, cut the onion into julienne strips, cut the chilli bell pepper into slices and chop the coriander. Then, mix all these ingredients and let them rest together to combine the flavours. While the mixture rests, cook a corn cob cut in pieces until the grains are soft.

Afterwards, all that remains is to plate the ceviche, accompanied by the corn and a wine capable of maximizing its flavours and aromas, such as Pazo Baión. This preparation condenses in its interior the soul of the albariños and stands out for its intense varietal perfume and for pairing deliciously with the best seafood. There are many summer recipes in which the sea is the protagonist, but few are as original and aromatic as this one.

Barbecue of lamb chops & Fontán’s Vines

If we talk about summer recipes, we cannot forget the embers. The good weather invites us to eat and cook outdoors. Besides, barbecuing is a simple task as long as we tame the embers well and control the exposure time of the meats.

To avoid the classic churrasco of beef or pork, we propose a delicious barbecue of lamb chops. The toasted aromas of a very special Rías Baixas, Vides de Fontán, enhance this wonderful product.

Preparation

Among the different summer recipes on this menu, this is undoubtedly the simplest. Slice the garlic and mint as finely as possible. Then, both ingredients, plus oil, salt and pepper, are used to marinate the chops. Afterwards, the coals are prepared, and when they are ready, the chops are placed on the fire until they are browned on both sides.

What’s left to do? To plate them and open a bottle of Vides de Fontán. This Rías Baixas wine, aged for three years, stands out for its brioche notes, its smoky notes and its ample and long finish.

Peach Ice Cream & Gran a Gran

If grills play a crucial role in many summer recipes, we must not forget another protagonist of summer cooking: the freezer. Few annual moments are more pleasurable than tasting the season’s first ice cream.

We could not close this review of summer recipes for cooking a simple, fresh and fun menu without including an ice cream made from a seasonal fruit: the peach.

Besides being sweet and tasty, this dessert is the perfect dance partner for a raised Albariño such as Gran a Gran, which contains notes of jam and stone fruit.

Preparation

To prepare the last of our summer recipes, prepare syrup by bringing the water and sugar to a boil to make a syrup. Once it boils, it is removed from the game. The next step is to pit and cut the peaches and add the juice of a quarter of a lemon, the rum (if you want to give a bolder touch to the ice cream), the syrup and the cheese. Mash everything together until a homogeneous puree is obtained. Finally, pour it into a container and put it in the freezer for about three hours, stirring every hour to achieve a creamier texture.

Before serving this dessert, let it cool for about ten minutes to make it easier to make balls. And finally, fill your guests’ glasses with Gran a Gran, a semi-dry Rías Baixas that goes well with some of the sweetest summer recipes and is smooth and creamy in the mouth, like the best ice cream.

In short, the summer recipes in this menu proposal are very simple to prepare, highlight the value of the raw material, require few hours of preparation and, above all, become more exquisite when accompanied by albariños with five centuries of history, such as Pazo Baión, Vides de Fontán and Gran a Gran.