Iberia · Volume 09, Gofio, the Guanche Grain Beneath a Castilian Table
Almogrote Gomero
La Gomera
Illustration
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Researched
- 4 sources cited
Multiple Canarian sources trace almogrote back to almodrote, a medieval Iberian sauce of cured cheese, roasted garlic and olive oil, itself carrying an Arabic-rooted name. What is specifically Gomeran here is the substitution of the island's own hard, aged goat's cheese, and the addition of tomato, a New World crop that could not have featured in any medieval original, marking this as a genuine post-conquest Canarian reworking rather than an imported dish. Its real origin is utilitarian rather than a delicacy invented from scratch: a way of using up cheese aged too hard and dry to eat on its own.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. The pepper soaks 15 to 20 minutes.
Ingredients
- 200 g mature goat's cheese, preferably from La Gomera
- 1 dried red pepper (pimienta palmera)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 50 ml extra virgin olive oil
- optional salt
- optional a few drops of vinegar
To serve
- to serve bread, potatoes or vegetables
Method
- Soak the pepper in hot water 15 to 20 minutes, then seed and chop it.
- Grate the cheese finely or break it into small pieces.
- Crush the garlic and pepper to a paste in a mortar.
- Add the cheese a little at a time, pounding.
- Still stirring, trickle in the oil until creamy.
- Taste for salt, and add a few drops of vinegar if you like. Serve on bread, with potatoes, or as a dip.
Notes
The recipe is Hotel Jardín Tecina's, on La Gomera. The Canarian government's CanariWiki makes it with a wedge of cheese, 4 ripe tomatoes, 2 garlic cloves and 2 hot peppers, stirred with oil to a pâté; it says the tomato is what separates the Gomeran almogrote from the medieval almodrote. TuCanarias adds a pinch of pimentón.
What a modern chef changes
A genuinely aged Gomeran cheese is not something a UK kitchen can easily reach, so this version solves that constraint honestly with a dehydrator rather than pretending a fresh cheese behaves the same way
Kit note
Method
- Take a good, firm fresh goat's cheese and dehydrate thin slices of it at a low, steady heat until properly hard and dry, the closest honest route a UK cook has to the naturally long-aged queso gomero viejo this dish depends on, since that specific cheese is not realistically sourceable here.
- Build the paste in a high-power blender rather than a mortar for a smoother, more emulsified final texture, while still adding the oil gradually rather than all at once.
- Char the dried peppers briefly over a direct flame before pounding them in, deepening their flavour beyond what a straight soak and grind gives.