What do we, the Spaniards, eat during Easter?

Easter is also very important in Spain. Although fewer Spaniards celebrate this holiday nowadays, there are two desserts that cannot be missed during this holidays: arroz con leche and torrijas.

Then I will explain you how to prepare these recipes:

ARROZ CON LECHE

Arroz con leche is a very traditional dessert from Spain. Furthermore, just a few ingredients are needed to produce it. This dish is very common in Asturias, although it seems to have its origins in a medieval dessert of Valencia and Catalonia called Menjar Blanc.

Ingredients:

• 1 liter milk
• 200 g short grain rice
• 125 g sugar
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• A lemon’s peel
• Powdered cinnamon

Directions:

1. Put the milk with the cinnamon sticks and the lemon’s peel (only the yellow part, since the white can be bitter) in a saucepan and bring it to heat. When it’s beginning to boil, add the rice and reduce heat. Stir constantly to prevent sticking for about 35-45 minutes.

2. After this time, add the sugar and stir for another 3-5 minutes. After this time, turn off the heat and remove the cinnamon sticks and the lemon peel.

3. Once done, put the rice in dishes or individual bowls, sprinkle with cinnamon and… ready to enjoy!

TORRIJAS

This is the quintessential dessert during Easter in Spain. Although there are many variations of this same recipe, the most common are the sweet torrijas, that I will explain you how to prepare them. However, in Catalonia there are also salty torrijas prepared with different ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 1 stale baguette of bread
• 1 liter milk
• 1 cinammon stick
• A lemon’s peel
• 100 g sugar
• 2 eggs
• Sunflower oil
• Powdered cinammon

Directions:

1. Put the milk with the cinnamon sticks and the lemon's peel in a saucepan and wait until boiling. Once it has started boiling, turn off the heat and let stand the milk in a pan or fountain to cool.

2. Beat two eggs, pour the mixture into a bowl and pour the sugar in another bowl. In a pan, put abundant oil to heat.

3. Cut the bread into slices of 2-3 cm and soak them in the milk. It is important that the milk is cold because otherwise the bread could be undone. After soaked in milk, soak each slice in the beaten eggs and put them to fry in the pan with the oil already hot.

4. Once fried, put them on absorbent paper to drain them. Once drained, dip them in sugar. You can also sprinkle some cinnamon over each torrija.

Well guys, I hope you have enjoyed reading these recipes and if you want to taste a bite of Spain here you have two of the most typical of Spain desserts. Furthermore I invite you to travel to Spain to taste them, since there are people who cook these desserts really well. I'm just an amateur.

I am I and my circumstance

The Roman Castle and the Theatre of Sagunto

Well... who am I? As the philosopher Ortega y Gasset said: "I am I and my circumstance" but what more could I say about me? My real name is José though almost everyone calls me Pepe (it’s a diminutive, as in the Italian names Giuseppe=Peppe), I am 20 years old and study Translation and Interpreting because I've always enjoyed learning languages. The truth is that I'm not a very interesting person. I consider myself a person that has a screw loose, but I can be a bit shy when I don’t know the people around me. I was born in Sagunto, Spain and now I am studying in Graz thanks to the ERASMUS programme.

With regard to my hobbies, I love theatre, when I was a kid I dreamed with being an actor. As I grew up my passion for theatre led me to join a theatre course in my town. I still remember our first improvisation match. For those who do not know what this means, a improvisation match is a “battle” between teams in which each team makes a representation without any script, just a few keywords given by the public that thanks to the imagination of the actors end up becoming a small performance. The second year of theatre we did a play that I can remember like it was yesterday, it was the first time I felt that the theatre was part of me.

In my room I don’t have many things because in two suitcases in which only let you put 23kg of weight in one of them and 8kg in the other there can be only a few things. But something I could bring with me from my country was a "estelada", a flag that maybe you have seen lately in the news, is the flag that represents the Catalan people fighting for their freedom. Yes, in Valencia we also speak Catalan and some of us feel that we are more siblings of Catalan people than of Spanish. Another thing that I brought from Sagunto is a gift that my friends made me, is a banner with pictures and their messages. In the photo we are in Graz, some of them came to me this February and the truth is I had a great time.

Coming back to the Ortega y Gasset’s quote (“I am I and my circumstance”) and what it means: I'm not just me, I have also part of Graz inside me, part of Sagunto, part of my culture and language, and of everything that surrounds me; in short, my circumstance.