Ensaïmadas

I am a perpetually mildly sad person, but in Ibiza I’m euphoric. I never knew I could be so happy.

So wrote Norman Lewis, British journalist and travel writer, of his time spent on the White Isle in the early fifties. Travelling to Ibiza in search of the landscape of calm and creativity promised by the artists who flocked there post-war, he found himself unprepared for the raw beauty of the terrain: He was in a state of complete delirious shock by the time we got to Santa Eulalia… He wasn’t getting his breath back, his eyes were popping out of his head, and he was lost for words, his daughter later described. Leasing a dilapidated cubist jewel of a house on the eastern coast, hastily abandoned by a Turkish princess when her only daughter fell in love with a local fisherman (you can’t make this stuff up!), I imagine he was lost for words at such a steal of a sub-let.

Sixty years later, some of us are paying top euro but still trying to find that slice of happy that the red dust of the Ibicenco earth and the white dust in the Amnesia toilet cubicles have been promising travellers and club-goers for decades now. Perpetually mildly sad would be laying it on a little thick, but August has been hard. I’ve been buried in work the way holidaying children have been burying one another in sand, and finding the energy to jostle through the tourist throngs after hours of linear equations and i-before-e-except-after-c has felt like a big ask. The hard-won identity I’d enjoyed earlier in the year as ‘that solitary English girl who almost speaks Spanish and wanders around reading a lot’ has been TAKEN from me like a hopeless teen in a Liam Neeson movie, as other pale twenty-somethings have sprouted in my favourite haunts and I’ve blended into the visiting foreign mass.

In the face of such (meagre in world terms of course, but allow me this) difficulty, it’s easy to romanticise the island as it must have been for Lewis and his pals: unadulterated by tourism; the air lousy with the scent of the fig trees that hadn’t yet been felled to make space for hotels; a buoyant, single pound buying you enough rioja and manchego for a month. But, an Ibiza without a tourism industry would be an Ibiza in which I don’t have a job so, you know, swings and whatnots…

As a summer of sweltering days and sultry nights winds to a close and September blows wisps of cloud over a still-fierce sun, I’m all about finding that pre-season euphoria again. In a mere week I’ve snorkelled in the crystal waters of Cala Xarraca, watched the sunset from Illa Sa Conillera, visited the goats of Es Vedra and even made my first real Spanish friend. Mama, I’m a big girl now! I’ve also made an important personal discovery - the winning combination of early mornings and breakfast.

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Ensaïmadas

It’s a pretty well established theory that there are morning people and not-so-morning people. Larks and owls. Smug-smoothie-drinking-already-done-pilates-ers and those of us clutching, Gollum-like, onto a third cup of precious coffee at 9.30am. (I say 9.30am but really, I’m self-employed, and we know I mean something closer to 11am). Recently however, I’ve been starting lessons as early as 7.30 in the MORNING. This is a point of horror for both myself and the poor students I’m faced with at this unholy hour, but the soothing balm to these potentially wretched lessons has been the discovery of ensaïmadas.

Ensaïmadas are a kind of Spanish brioche. A milky, yeasty bread that is prepared the night before and has the power to fill a morning kitchen with the smell of golden baked goods and the notion that everything’s going to be alright. They take their name from the Catalan word Saïm meaning lard because (you guessed it) pork lard is a key ingredient. Though traditionally Mallorcan, these little burnished coils of goodness are served throughout the Balearics, often stuffed with cream, nutella or the local cabell d’ángel - shredded pumpkin jam. My recipe is plain as can be, so they can be smeared with a spread of choice or, my favourite, dunked in an cafe con leche.

Ingredients

For 6 golden coils of goodness

225g Strong White Flour

5tbsp Lukewarm Milk

50g Caster Sugar

2 tbsp Sunflower Oil

1 Egg

1tsp salt

1tsp Dried Yeast

50g Lard (Melted) (You can use vegetable shortening or butter if preferred)

To Decorate - Icing Sugar

Instructions

1) Warm the milk a little and stir in the yeast till dissolved and frothy.

2) Combine flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl.

3) Add egg, oil and yeasty-milk to dry ingredients.

4) Mix with spoon to create a sticky dough.

5) Knead on well-floured surface till elastic and all cares of the day have faded away (10mins usually does it).

6) Place dough in oiled bowl, cover with cling and leave to double in size.

7) Knead dough again and split into six equal parts.

8) Take one dough ball and roll (on a floured surface) into a very thin rectangle. Starting with the side furthest away from you, curl up one edge and roll into a long sausage shape.

9) Then curl this long strap of dough into a plump snail shape, tucking the tail firmly under the main coil.

10) Place on a greaseproof-papered baking tray. And when it has been joined by its doughy friends, cover with cling film and allow to prove over night. If pressed, they can prove for an hour instead - but you can’t beat the recommended eight hour shuteye to allow these beauties time to ferment and garner size and flavour.

11) Wake up with vigour and excitement, safe in the knowledge the you can take on the world today and preheat your oven to 180C. The neat coils should by now have exploded into messy chignons of pastry and they go into the centre of the oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

12) Dust with icing sugar and devour!