Spain is a very catholic country and therefore Easter and the Holy Week is one of the most important holidays in Spain.
Of course there are traditional and mouth-watering dishes to celebrate Easter as well. I promise that after reading this blog you can’t wait to try!
Don’t worry, you still have enough time to learn how to prepare these for Easter or simply buy them in a bakery if you can’t stand the craving 😉
One of the most famous things that are eaten during the period of Easter all over Spain are ‘Torrijas de Leche’. These are thick slices of bread, soaked in milk, sugar and egg, fried in olive oil. Afterwards they are sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon or dipped in honey. They contain a lot of calories, but Torrijas are totally worth it!
As well as that there are ‘Buñuelos’, little balls of dough sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. But there are many variations: some of them are stuffed with cream, different kinds of fruit or even cheese and vegetables.
What you should try as well are ‘Rosquillas de Semana Santa’, Easter doughnuts, which are made from bread crumbs and flavoured with cinnamon, rosemary and honey.
A popular cake to eat on Easter Day is called ‘La Mona de Pascua’. Traditionally, godparents give a Mona to their godchild as a gift for Easter Day. It’s a cake decorated with coloured feathers and big chocolate figures or even boiled eggs. Sometimes they are shaped as a character children like, as a turtle for example.
Cake shops compete to see who can make the most impressive ‘monas’ to place in their shop windows, some are so impressive that they even talk about them on the television news reports!
After all that sweet stuff there are also some hearty dishes for Easter. If you booked a course in Salamanca you have the pleasure to try the regional ‘Hornazo’, a Spanish pie filled with pork, boiled eggs and ham. There is also a sweet version, filled with almonds, egg and aniseed.
During the happy days of Easter Sunday and Easter Monday you traditionally eat lamb, as in many other countries.
But before you can enjoy el cordero, the lamb, on Easter Sunday, you have to survive lent and Good Friday, when you are not allowed to eat meat so typical recipes for that time are ‘Garbanzos con Bacalao’ which is Chickpea with cod or ‘Potaje de vigilia’ – a type of stew.
Another thing that is quite common during this time is ‘sopa de ajo’, a soup made from garlic, really delicious but you need to deal with the smell afterwards;)
I am sure that you can already feel your tummy rumbling for Torrijas, Buñuelos and Co. so come to Spain and taste the pure pleasure!
