Catalan Pastis - Catalonian cakes E-Book

Cristina Berna

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 115

Beschreibung

Catalan Pastis is the third volume in our series World of Cakes. In Luxembourg A Piece of Cake we toured the incredible cake shop world in tiny Luxembourg. The variety far exceeds what you would expect in a country smaller than Rhode Island. The book was an unplanned accident. In Florida Cakes we continued the habit of taking pictures of some of the cakes we purchased. Our life took us to the sunny beaches of Florida for a while. The cake designs in Florida are just incredible. Now back in Europe we had business in Spain and especially in Catalonia, which we enjoyed during a number of months. Again, we took advantage of its uniquely enjoyable cake shops bombonierie making the most wonderful cakes pastis in Catalan - some which are not found elsewhere. There must be at least one thousand cake shops and cafes in Barcelona alone serving these great specialities. We will try to discover some of the secrets behind this formidable variety and quality of Catalan pastis Catalan cakes. You will be surprised! We very much hope you will enjoy the tour and will take the opportunity to visit Spain and Catalonia yourself one day! Many thanks to Concha Marchante of the Servei de Pesca Continental in Barcelona and Professor Emili Garcia-Berthou from the University of Girone for their kind assistance with very interesting information on the fish in the Tordera River.

Leseprobe

About the authors

Cristina Berna loves photographing and writing. She also creates designs and advice on fashion and styling.

Eric Thomsen has published in science, economics and law, created exhibitions and arranged concerts.

Also by the authors:

World of Cakes

Luxembourg – a piece of cake

Florida Cakes

Catalan Pastis – Catalonian Cakes

Andalucian Delight

World of Art

Hokusai – 36 Views of Mt Fuji and more titles

Outpets

Deer in Dyrehaven – Outpets in Denmark

Florida Outpets

Birds of Play

Vehicles

Copenhagen vehicles – and a trip to Sweden Construction vehicles picture book Trains

American Police Cars

American Fire Trucks

and more titles

Missy’s Clan

Missy’s Clan – The Beginning

Missy’s Clan – Christmas

Missy’s Clan – Education

Missy’s Clan – Kittens

Missy’s Clan – Deer Friends

Missy’s Clan – Outpets

Missy’s Clan – Outpet Birds and more titles

Christmas

Christmas Nativities Spain

Christmas Nativities Barcelona

Christmas Nativities Malaga

Christmas Nativities Sevilla

Christmas Nativities Madrid

Christmas Nativities Luxembourg Trier

Christmas Nativity United States

Christmas Nativity Innsbruck

Christmas Market Innsbruck

Christmas Market Vienna and more titles

Contact the authors

[email protected]

Published by www.missysclan.net

Cover picture: Tortell de Nata, Barcelona. ©Berna 2017

Inside 1 viewing Natcha shop window ©Berna 2015

Inside 2 Tortell de Nata - ©Berna 2015

.

Contents

Foreword

Catalonia

History

Barcelona Cake Shops

Halloween

Independence Movement

Gaudi

Language Jokes

Bomboneria Natcha

The Rambla

Terror Attack

Montseny

Tossa del Mar

Easter

Poblet and Montblanc

Christmas

Websites

Foreword

Catalan Pastis is the third volume in our series World of Cakes.

In Luxembourg – A Piece of Cake we toured the incredible cake shop world in tiny Luxembourg. The variety far exceeds what you would expect in a country smaller than Rhode Island. The book was an unplanned accident.

In Florida Cakes we continued the habit of taking pictures of some of the cakes we purchased. Our life took us to the sunny beaches of Florida for a while. The cake designs in Florida are just incredible.

Now back in Europe we had business in Spain and especially in Catalonia, which we enjoyed during a number of months.

Again, we took advantage of its uniquely enjoyable cake shops – bombonierie – making the most wonderful cakes – pastis in Catalan - some which are not found elsewhere. There must be at least one thousand cake shops and cafes in Barcelona alone serving these great specialities.

We will try to discover some of the secrets behind this formidable variety and quality of Catalan pastis – Catalan cakes. You will be surprised!

We very much hope you will enjoy the tour and will take the opportunity to visit Spain and Catalonia yourself one day!

Many thanks to Concha Marchante of the Servei de Pesca Continental in Barcelona and Professor Emili Garcia-Berthou from the University of Girone for their kind assistance with very interesting information on the fish in the Tordera River.

Cristina and Eric

Catalonia

Catalonia is a busy region in Northern Spain, bordering France. Through the region runs the major roads which day and night carry much of the exports of the other regions of Spain up to Europe and a major part of the imports as well. The main connections are to Paris and to Lyon, and via Germany to the Nordic countries.

The mountainous region Aragon to the west of Catalonia does not have North – South bound road capacity to carry the Spanish exports. The only other entry into the Iberian peninsula is via the Basque countries west of Aragon, especially at Irun, with connections to Bordeaux and up North in France to Benelux and UK.

The Catalan region is 32,198 km2 and has a population of 7.523 million (2016). All Spain is 505,990 km2 – and Spain’s total population is 46.56 million (2016).

We lived in Barcelona regularly since 2014 and the first edition of this book was written 2019.

Desigual is one of the many successful textile companies based in Barcelona, Catalonia. ©Berna 2016.

In comparison Florida is 170,305 km2and has 20.61 million inhabitants (2016) and Denmark is 43,560 km2and has 5.731 million inhabitants (2016).

20 per cent of the Spanish exports also come from the Catalonia region itself – which produces 13,000 cars daily at Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Seat plants here and processes crude oil into various products. Catalonia also has a huge textile sector and several big pharmaceutical companies.

A huge insurance company, Catalana Occidente and two international scale banks, Sabadell and Caixa Bank, grew up here.

The wealth in Catalonia is visible in the expensive tastes – here sandals from Jimmy Choo in the Christmas shopping window. No price tag and of course very, very expensive. ©Berna 2015.

Catalonia and especially the main town Barcelona are however probably best known as popular tourist destinations.

Barcelona has been promoted relentlessly for 25 years as a prime tourist destination and in 2016 was visited by 32 million tourists. 8 million stayed in hotels and 24 million stayed in tourist apartments. This spreads wealth directly to apartment owners, many of whom are “small” people. 23 million tourists were day-trippers.

There are abt. 75,000 hotel beds and abt. 50,000 beds in legal licensed tourist apartments, plus an estimated 50,000 illegal beds. An estimated 17,000 apartments have been converted into tourist apartments. This is claimed to put some pressure on the market for accommodation for the population of 1.6 million inhabitants. A conflict between apartment owners and renters. But this on the other hand creates investment and employment in construction.

The city has enacted a new planning law to limit new permits for tourist beds with estimated effects from 2019. Spain can be expected to enjoy increased inflow as a tourist destination, after radical Muslim terror attacks have made many tourists concerned about visiting countries like Turkey, Egypt and in North Africa.

The tourist sector accounts for over 12% of the 72bn euro (89 bn USD - £61bn) GDP of Barcelona, according to figures for 2014.

The sector is said to pay only half the average annual income and employs many immigrants.

Barcelona von El Carmel ©Berna 2012

History

Depending on where you start history is a long thing.

The Romans conquered the peninsula over a couple of hundred years from 219 BC and made it part of Rome. Barcelona was founded as a Roman city but the Greeks already had trading settlements on the coast. The Emperor Trajan was born in Italica close to modern Sevilla 53 AD with full citizen rights.

After the fall of Rome the Germanic Visigoths came and took control from the 5th to the 8th century in a kingdom that also comprised southern France. The area incl Catalonia was called Tarraconensis.

In 711 AD the Muslims invaded the peninsula as part of a war of Visigoth succession. The brutal invasion soon conquered most of the land.

The grandfather of Charlemagne, Charles Martell beat a large Muslim force in 732 AD at the Battle of Poitiers (Battle of Tours) and stopped the Muslim expansion into Europe by the Western route.

Resistance against the Muslims continued around the Pyrenees incl the present day region of Catalonia which was called Marca Hispanica 760 – 785 AD.

Charlemagne, another Germanic based up in modern Germany close to Luxembourg, used the Marca Hispanica as a buffer against the Muslims.

Charlemagne was made Holy Roman Emperor on 25 December 800 AD by Pope Leo III in return for supporting the claim by the Roman bishopric as supreme over Constantinople.

Charlemagne bust in Aachen, Germany. ©Berna 2014.

Charlemagne was less lucky with the Navarran tribes – his army was annihilated by the mountain tribes in the Battle of the Roncevaux Pass on 15 August 778 AD and it was necessary to

Barcelona. The buildings show that the wealth is not just of recent origin. Casa Perez Samarillo (Circulo Equestre – the riding club) (built 1910), av. Diagonal 502, architect Josep Hwervas. It is one of the must see buildings in Barcelona. ©Berna 2015.

use a bit of propaganda to cover up the humiliating defeat – see the Chanson Roland. It resulted in Charlemagne not expanding his Spanish territory beyond Marca Hispanoca.

Map of Iberian peninsula abt 200 BC, showing native tribal areas, Greek and Roman conquests.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ethnographic_Iberia_200_BCE-es.svg

Charlemagne’s son Luis I took direct control over Marca Hispanica in 801 AD from the Muslim emir, who sat in Barcelona.

Poor communications and a distant central power allowed basic feudal entities to develop often self-sufficient and heavily agrarian. Each was ruled by a small hereditary military elite. These developments in the territories that later would become Catalonia followed similar patterns in other borderlands and marches.

For example, the first Count of Barcelona Bera was appointed by the King in 801, however subsequently strong heirs of Counts were able to inherit the title such as Sunifred, fl. 844–848. This gradually became custom until the Countship became hereditary (for Wifred the Hairy in 897).

The County became de facto independent under count Borrell II, when he ceased to request royal charters after the kings Lothair and Hugh Capet failed to assist him in the defense of the County against Muslim leader al-Mansur, although the change of dynasty may have played a part in that decision.

Eventually the rulers and people of the March became autonomous and claimed independence. Out of the welter of counties in the region emerged the principality Catalonia divided into a myriad of counties with the county of Barcelona as their main power centre.

Most of the territory was the Kingdom and Crown of Aragon and the County of Barcelona was brought under the same rule as the Kingdom of Aragon in the 12th century, and it became united with Castille and Leon under the Catholic Kings – when Isabel of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon married 19 October 1469.

Ferdinand and Isabel were busy with the Reconquista (Spanish and Portuguese for the reconquest) which is the period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula of about 780 years between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492.

The Reconquista was completed just before the Spanish discovery of the Americas—the "New World"—which ushered in the era of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires.

In the years after the civil war (1936 – 1939) life was difficult. With Spain devastated and cut off from international trade by boycotts, Catalonia, as a commercial and industrial center, suffered severely. The economic recovery was very slow and it was not until the mid-1950s that the economy reached the prewar levels of 1936. In 1959–1974 Spain experienced the second fastest economic expansion in the world in what became known as the Spanish Miracle and Catalonia prospered greatly from the expansion as Spain's most important industrial and tourist zone. An interesting legal case was how General Franco retaliated against the international boycott by allowing Banca March to take over Barcelona Traction, which made the March family very rich (International Court of Justice, Belgium v. Spain).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Las_Palmas_Banca_March.jpg

Natcha coca of the day (large cakes, in English) ©Berna 2015.

Barcelona Cake Shops

We are now on the verge of discovering one of the key reasons for the wonderful cake shops - bomboneria - and bakeries – panederia here in Catalonia and especially Barcelona.

The Catalans have a good life-style compared to the average in Spain. This can also be seen in the cake shops.

However, all over Spain there are the most wonderful cakes. The Spanish love cakes and always have.

The cake to the left in the picture above is a crème brûlée style with a crust of caramelized sugar, the one in the centre is a chocolate cake and to the right is a cake with marzipan.

Just to mention it. Crema Catalana is not a cake but an important desert. Crème Catalana is a very old traditional dessert to the region.

Behind this discrete facade lies one of the loveliest cake shops in Barcelona – the Bomboneria Natcha on Av. de Sarrià, 45 behind av. Diaginal and close to Les Corts. ©Berna 2015.

In many ways it looks like a crème brûlée and the main ingredients are eggs and milk. However, unlike a crème brûlée, Crema Catalana is not baked but left to set and it is flavoured with cinnamon and lemon peel, not with vanilla. Finished off with a crust of caramelized sugar, it is a must-try for those that like creamy set sweets.

Coca with crème caramel mixed with egg layer on top, a layer of whipped cream and a mocca bottom. Detail from the picture above. Yummy! ©Berna 2015.

A coca is what is called torta in Spanish (pie type).

One of the reasons for the fantastic cake shop sector in Catalonia is the wealth created by the many industrialists here – past and present.

As we saw in Luxembourg – A Piece of Cake – wealth leads to creativity and capacity to cater to good taste. And there is a lot of wealth here!

According to the Forbes magazine, which compiles lists of wealthy individuals all over the World, Catalonia is home to the greatest number of billionaires in Spain – 28 compared to only 24 in Madrid, the Spanish capital (2016).

On the Forbes list the President of Mango, Isak Andic, is still the richest Catalan, with a fortune of 4,200 million euros. In fact, the founder of the Mango fashion chain is ranked fifth overall in Spain. Mango is the trade name of Punto Fa, S.L. and owned by the two brothers Isac and Nahman Andic. Mango is found all over the World and employs 15,000 people.

Andic are followed by Sol Daurella