Making a stew with potatoes, rabbit, pork ribs or cod in the countryside, is an excellent and usual excuse to organize a picnic with your friends. There are other examples of traditional meals, which although more common in former times are still made, when friends or families get together.

Two instances are ‘gachas’ and ‘puches’. ‘Gachas’are made with grass pea flour, garlic and red Spanish pepper. ‘Puches’ are made with wheat flour, cinnamon, and aniseed. They are sweet. Both of them have high energetic content and are very satisfying, and they are slow to digest. In the past they were eaten as the main course.

Another original meal was beetroot chips, specially popular in the past when beetroots were grown in the area.

On top of that, all festivities had and still have their own desserts and pastries: buns, ‘pestiños’, Easter week ‘torrijas’, etc.

The typical Christmas meal was chicken. Nowadays, local cuisine keeps faithful to these old recipes which have been enriched and improved: ‘Castellana’ Soup, garlic soup, white beans (sometimes with hare) and black beans, lentils, chickpea beans stew (‘Cocido Madrileño’) stewed potatoes with beef or rabbit, Cuban Rice, local vegetables (called Vegetables de la Vega). All these meals can be enjoyed in traditional and ‘homemade’ food restaurants. These dishes, which in the past were considered the main course, are eaten today as starters.