Dinner on the beach - Costa Tropical

It's incredibly hot here at the moment, many people feel it's unseasonably hot. After about 10am it's difficult to do too much physical work. A good escape is to do the 30 minute drive to the beach. But - the coast roads are busy at weekends during the summer. I tend to visit the beach during the week, or if I go at weekends, then late evenings are best to avoid the cars.

Last night at about 8pm, four of us drove down to the coast for dinner in a beach restaurant at Salobrena on the Costa Tropical.

The sardines were exceptional and the salad looked too good to eat. The air was warm with a light breeze. We ate to the sound of the waves, beach tennis and muffled conversation.

After a lovely evening cooling down, we drove home and I was happily asleep in my bed by midnight!

Sardines

The weekend is always off topic on this blog, so let's talk about sardines.
This is the time of year fish lovers have been waiting for, the return of the sardine.
I'm not a fish fan, I like tuna but I've stopped eating it because it's becoming very scarce and I preferto do without it rather than see it disappear, but sardines are something I couldn't do without.

Sardines are the most delicious fish that swims, no argument.
They appear for a few months in the summer then disappear again. They are one of the tastes of the summer.

The best place to eat them is on a beach in Spain, Portugal, France or Italy, where they are cooked on wooden spikes over a wood fire.

A few tips for succesful sardine eating:

• If possible, choose a restaurant where you can see the sardines being cooked over fire
• Give yourself plenty of time, they take longer to cook than you think
• Always eat sardines with your fingers
• Try them with a dash of lemon juice
• Sardines should be eaten within a day of being caught. Don't eat them on Monday's, (fishermen in the Mediterranean don't go to sea on Sunday)

Back to interior design on Monday with a very stylish olive mill.