Holy Week is coming. Let's cook torrijas!

Perhaps many of our foreign followers, when reading the title of this article will be very surprised. What are torrijas? What is the relation between torrijas and Holy Week?

Torrijas is a traditional Spanish dessert usually cooked during Holy Week. It's a very old dish that originated in convents, when nuns used their stale bread to cook this simple dish with milk and eggs. During the 15th century, torrijas were given to women after childbirth to nourish them; two cookbooks  written in 1607 and 1611 included different recipes for them. At the beginning of the 20th century, torrijas, accompanied with a glass of wine, was a very popular dish in the typical taverns of Madrid.

An old story explains the relation between torrijas and Holy Week. The dish represents the life and death of Jesus. According to Catholicism, it was during Holy Week that Christ was condemned to die. The bread symbolizes his body and stale bread is bread which has “died”; milk and eggs are symbols of the different liquids used to clean Christ’s body before his resurrection; the frying of the bread represents his suffering. Torrijas symbolizes the “dead” bread that is transformed into a glorious, delicious dessert.

After this strange religious legend, let me explain to you a very easy way to  make it.  I'm sure you’ll enjoy cooking - and especially eating -  torrijas!

The basic ingredients are very easy to find and not so expensive: bread, milk and eggs.

Ingredients (for 6 people):
2 French-style baguettes; or a large special loaf for torrijas; or conventional sliced bread

1 litre of milk

4 eggs

3 teaspoons of sugar
1 or 2 cinnamon sticks

lemon peel

sugar

cinnamon

olive oil

For the syrup:
100 g of sugar 

100 ml of water

Directions:

1.- Cut the baguette or the special loaf for torrijas into  thick slices.

2.- Place the sugar and the cinnamon into a small bowl and mix them together. Cover the  surface of a serving tray with this mixture.

3.- Pour the milk into a pot. Heat until it is warm. Then add 4 eggs and beat together with a hand mixer until the mixture is smooth. Add three teaspoons of sugar, one cinnamon  stick and a lemon peel as desired. Transfer from the pot to a big bowl.

4.- Pour enough olive oil into a large frying pan to cover it and heat until the olive oil is bubbling. If you put in a lemon peel or a crouton and it begins to fry, it's the right temperature. Be careful that the oil doesn’t burn.

5.- Soak the slices of bread in the milk-egg mixture. Lift the slices out of the mixture and let the excess milk drain before putting them into the frying pan.

6.- Fry the slices of bread in the hot olive oil. As the slices turn golden brown (2- 3 minutes more or less), turn them over and fry the other side.

7.- Remove the slices from the frying pan and place them on the serving tray. Sprinkle them with the mixture of sugar and cinammon as desired. Cover them with the syrup.

8.-  For the syrup, pour 100 ml of water and 100 g of sugar into a pan. Boil for 2-3 minutes. When the syrup is done, add cinnamon to taste.

Serving

- Serve in individual plates or on a beautiful serving tray.  

- Torrijas can be accompanied with a jug of syrup if you have a sweet tooth!

TIPS

- You can use different kinds of bread. If you have bread more than a day old, you need to soak it for 2 or 3 minutes more so that  it softens up. If you use conventional sliced bread, be careful that bread doesn't soften too much because it might crumble.

- It's very important that torrijas don’t burn. After cooking two slices of bread, pour more olive oil into the fryng pan to prevent this.

- If the olive oil is very dark, filter it and clean the frying pan to eliminate any remains of burnt bread.  

As you can see, it’s a very easy dish that you can cook any time you like.

And here is a video of the procedure!

The Life Sailor