Échale guindillas al pavo
Across from our apartment in Zahara was a restaurant called Pradillo that was run by a gay couple who the town referred to as the Geishas. Sweetest guys in the world and man could they cook. We’d stop in for a bite and one day we had a soup of garbanzos, carrots, celery, onions, broccoli and it was so profoundly tasty I kept asking what the spices were. It had saffron of course, but they said it had guindilla. Well I went off all over the village in search of getting some guindilla to bring home. I went to the fresh market and they said I would have to get it dry. Then I scoured the two groceries and nothing. I went into a smaller store and asked for it and they directed me to the very back and there it was – cayenne pepper.
[blogger’s note: The title of this entry is from a song but as memory is sometimes spotty as we age, everyone remembered it as guindilla instead of guindas.]