My journey started on New Year’s Day. A five minute walk away from my house sits a small white trailer, which looks like a burger van from a fair. It’s always there, and is usually open on Friday and Saturday nights, and Saturday and Sunday mornings. You wouldn’t be able to buy a burger there though, and as if to prove this, a drunken predecessor of mine is famed for having tried to. It is a churreria, which sells churros.
Churros are common all over Spain. They are either eaten as a treat for children, for breakfast, or in the place of a greasy kebab on the way home from a night out to soak up any excess alcohol. They are essentially long thin strips of doughnut dough either in a long coil to be cut up later or in smaller rods, piped directly from a star-shaped nozzle into a vat of bubbling oil, where they’re left to fry until they’re crispy on the outside and soft and piping hot in the centre. They’re then given a liberal sprinkling of sugar –often cinnamon sugar – and are typically served in portions of six with a hot chocolate sauce to dip them in. Very VERY piggy.
Anyway, it sounded like it was the done thing to eat churros con chocolate after having seen the New Year in at about 4am. As I was happily dead to the world at about 1am, this wasn’t really an option for me. So when I woke up again on the right side of 2012’s first sunrise, I decided that today was the day. I was going to have churros for breakfast.
At the time, it felt decadent. But really I could have done with someone to share them with. My eyes bigger than my stomach, I felt it was my duty to eat all that I had been given… and they were naughtily delicious… but it was also effectively like eating six chocolate covered doughnuts in one sitting. I felt pretty rubbish for the rest of the day, and vowed only to eat vegetables for the foreseeable future, which of course was a futile vow!
Mostly it was futile because the following day I was offered a polvoron, which dashed all of my plans for healthy eating. Remember my post about the mantecados (lardos) a month or so ago? Another variety of Spanish Christmas biscuit, polvorones are essentially the same as mantecados, but possibly even better. Mantecados have the same reassuring solidity to them as all-butter shortbread. Polvorones, although made from the same ingredients, are finer in texture. In fact, polver means "powder", so I was effectively eating a powderoni. As soon as I bit into my first one, it dissolved into a delicious sweet and nutty smush in my mouth. The problem was, because it didn’t seem very substantial in my mouth, I might have had to have two…
And then the day afterwards at lunch time with my colleagues, I tried something very bizarre. One of the women was sprinkling what I thought was really finely grated red Leicester cheese down the middle of slices of ham, rolling them up and eating them. Except then I read the cheese packet, and it said HUEVO (egg) in big letters. I was so surprised to see grated egg yolk in a packet that I had to ask if it was normal. I was assured that it was. My surprise went even further when the woman went on to explain “it’s sweet. Have you really never tried it? Go on, have some”. Before I knew it I was sharing a roll of egg and ham with a Polish colleague who had never tried it before either. It was SO STRANGE. It didn’t taste of egg – I wouldn’t have had a clue what I was eating if I hadn’t known. The closest taste sensation that I could link it to was a pancake with ham and maple syrup – it was that kind of sickly sweet. Honestly I found it a bit of a pointless addition to my encyclopaedia of gastronomic experiences, but an interesting one nonetheless. After all, whoever first thought “I know what’ll work really well. Let’s process a load of egg yolks, mix them with sugar, squeeze them through a mini spaghetti machine, pack it in plastic and charge lots of money for it – I bet the shoppers’ll flock around it!”? He’s probably a rich man now.
My final introduction to Spanish cuisine came on Thursday lunchtime. Friday was 6th January – a national holiday in Spain – so we “celebrated” it on Thursday at work with a traditional cake. The 6th of January is the day when the three wise men / kings were supposed to have reached Bethlehem and given their gifts to Jesus. Traditionally in Spain this is the day when children receive Christmas gifts, not 25th December. Father Christmas doesn’t come to them, instead it’s Los Reyes – the kings. Because of globalisation and America’s influence across the world this is in a state of change, with more and more Spaniards exchanging gifts on 24th or 25th December each year, but the 6th is still an important day. And on this day they eat a special cake. It’s in the shape of a ring, and the hole in the middle holds a cardboard crown.
The cake itself, called the Roscon de Reyes, is like a sweet bread – in the style of brioche or pannetone - rather than a sponge cake, and is decorated with candied fruits and sugar crystals. It is split in half and sandwiched together with fresh cream, or custard, or chocolate icing, or any other filling. Baked into the cake is a little figurine (traditionally it was a dried fava bean, but commercialisation favours toys), and whoever finds the figurine is crowned king or queen for the day. I was spared the embarrassment of the crown – my first slice was figurine-free
So was my second slice. And my third one….
Hasta Luego!!
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