(by Pablo Burgués)
Something that strikes me a lot when I travel somewhere is that any small town, no matter how trivial and shit hole it may be, has something Typic about which it claims to be the number one in the world. 99% of the times that “something” is a foodstuff, something you may eat or drink. The other 1% belongs to that strange group of goods that first were considered as building materials and that, as time goes by (don’t ask me why), people finally feels like eating. For instance, sobaos in Cantabria or the adoquín del Pilar in Zaragoza.
Well, in Ibiza, taking into account that they are very cool, they don’t have just one main product but five, and today we’re going to take them one after the other, as if it were a menu. There we go:
Starter: Alioli
It’s a delicious sauce done with oil, eggs, lemon and garlic, that is served with rustic bread like a spread. But be careful, my friends, because this dish that a priori seems to be harmless can turn out to be lethal in inexperienced hands… As it happens in Mexico with spicy food, there are places in Ibiza where the manliness and woman-ness is measured considering the amount of garlic you use in Alioli. I assure you that at some places, after eating Alioli, you don’t know well if you should brush your teeth or directly take them out and move on to other things.
Main course: Bullit de peix
Indeed it’s a two in one dish, a main and second course all-together now. First they serve you a tray with boiled fish (red scorpionfish, grouper, megrim…) with potato garnish and a fine sauce made with saffron and Alioli. Then, you’re served a banda rice done with the juice obtained with the fish boiling. It’s a simple but infallible recipe. I can assure you that there are few things you can enjoy so much being dressed.
Dessert (you choose): Flaó or greixonera
A flaó is a sort of cheesecake with mint, and the result is a kind of very cool chewable mojito. Traditionally it was taken on Easter Sunday, but today there are no decent people anymore and it’s taken any old how and without control 24 hours a day.
The greixonera is an avant-garde dessert, a visionary one that raised the flag of recycling much before than any hipster had done a table with a pallet. It’s a sort of pudding that is done making the most of the dry ensaïmadas of the previous day, which get a second chance, adding egg, milk, sugar, lemon and cinnamon. So we can say that the greixonera is for pastry-making what the croquette is for gastronomy: that funny and magical place where the boring yesterday leftovers become the food for tomorrow.
It’s the Ibiza version of a queimada. It’s prepared with a big coffee pot where later you add some pieces of lemon peel, orange peel, a lot of sugar and a fucking jet of brandy and rum. When you’ve mixed it all, the concoction has more alcohol degrees than inhabitants in Teruel, so, to bring it down, the drink is burnt before it implodes by itself. The result is a delicious coffee that makes North Korean nuclear tests feel small.
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Translation: Dora Sales
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