Week 1: El Desayuno - Spain

TORRIJAS

Let's begin our journey in Spain!

I know you may be wondering, "Spain, what a curious first selection?"  Well, here in Toronto you couldn't help but become swept up in Euro Cup 2012 fever.  So why not celebrate Spain's decisive win with some delicious breakfast?

In Spain, breakfast or El Desayuno, is usually the lightest meal of the day and most times will feature a sweet pastry of some sort accompanied, of course, by Cafe Con Leche (coffee with milk).

For our inaugural post we will be featuring a breakfast sweet most commonly seen during Lent - Torrijas.  First off, what a great word - Torrijas!  (the "j" is pronounced with a "y" sound)  Say that a couple dozen times before breakfast (go on, you know you want to) and you are ready to start your day with some verve.

What is a Torrija?  Basically it is the older cousin of French Toast/Pain Perdu.  Probably invented as a way to use up old, stale bread, the concept is simple:  take day old crusty bread, dip it in milk, then egg, fry, coat in cinnamon sugar and serve with syrup.

Before anyone complains that this is not exactly "outside the cereal box" stuff here, let me explain.  It was the details that really drew me.  The milk is boiled with a selection of spices (for our experiment we chose cinnamon, brown sugar and cardamom) and instead of merely dipping the bread you soak it - for up to 1 hour!  It was this step that really added that special something to this sweet pastry.  The added soak time infused the spicy sweet goodness of the milk right into the bread and gave the inside a soft custardy texture that contrasted beautifully with the crispy fried outside.

The syrup was a fun change from our old stand-by maple syrup and it was extremely simple to make as well.   While the bread was soaking, I boiled down a couple of cups of water, sugar and some spice until the desired sweetness and consistency had been reached.  I chose star anise and cinnamon to complement the Torrijas.

And just for fun - Torrijas Borrachas or "Drunken" Torrijas:

This variation on the Torrijas uses sweet wine in place of the milk mixture.  The colour on these was unbelievable, however, wine before 10 am might just be an acquired taste....

Jon and I deliberated and here is our verdict on Torrijas (all ratings are out of 5):

For Ease of Preparation: 

For Degrees of Separation (from our regular breakfast food):

For Guestability (appeal for visitors):

For Sustainability (how long until we were hungry):

Overall Appeal:

We enjoyed the Torrijas a lot.  They were easy to make, looked and smelled great, and best of all were delicious.  An excellent beginning to what I hope will be a long journey....  Join us next week as we continue south to Morocco.