Oh Christmas log,Oh Christmas log, How lovely are your...droppings?

At the risk of sounding like the legend herself- Gwen from Gavin and Stacy, I have decided to give the omelette speech a rest. Ok, I need to mention it, just one sentence. I did it I finally did it. The Spanish omelette was a roaring success. Hurrah! When I say roaring, I mean my mum didn’t dash to the bathroom or hide it in her napkin. Gone are the painful home economics days where nobody touched my apple crumble.She gave it the thumbs up and I did a little victory dance to celebrate. I realise I have gone over my sentence limit but this omelette was a particularly worthy one. Worthy of a few more words past the punctuation mark of doom.

Frying the potatoes and whisking an egg.

A little on the brown side but perfectly cooked!

This is how you do it.

Now that the omelette victory is out of my system and no that is NOT just another picture of the last very burnt attempt , on to more important matters. It’s Christmas time! Or it was Christmas time at the time of beginning this post. Merry merry Christmas to those near and far! I have decided to gift you all, for a little post Christmas cheer, to some knowledge of a Catalan Christmas.

When looking at the title of the post I know a few people, mainly siblings, will be saying the usual, ‘ if you don’t know the lyrics stop singing the song and making up dance routines like you own it’. Yes, it’s true I have an inability to remember all the lyrics to a song and still continue to sing them with all of me  as if I actually wrote the songs myself. However, this is different. The log I am referring  to is the traditional Tio de Nadal. The faint hearted or those who are not a fan of toilet humour may want to turn away now, shut their laptops or just read on anyway. The log is commonly known as Caga Tio which can be translated as, ‘ shit log’. He is what Santa is to our children.

Caga Tio, was originally just a log of wood but with time has transformed into a snazzy log who is a little less rough around the edges, a reformed character. A pair of eyes with eyebrows to match, a rounded nose and a dazzling smile later and you have a modern Caga Tio. He usually enters the Catalan household on the 8^th of December  ( the day of immaculate conception) until the 24^th or 25^th of December. Caga Tio is well looked after unlike our Santa who gets at best a few cookies and night cap for the chimney hopping. He is covered with a blanket so that he doesn’t get cold and also fed turron as well as orange peel every evening. He does, after all, need his strength for the big delivery day. The general idea is the more they feed him, the more he will poop out.

In order to aid his digestive flow on the 24^th or 25^th of December one would hit him with a stick and would poop out Christmas goods for children. The harder he is hit, the better the goods! So, the kids (or me in this case) hit the caga tio with a stick and sing a little song. The general gist of the song is that Caga Tio should poop out very good turron and not salty fish. Wise words I’d say. After hitting Caga Tio they look under the blanket to see what Caga tio left for them!

Caga Tio is ready to do the deed!

Oh Hello, Christmas surprise!

My next post will be about the famous, ‘Caganer’ in Catalonia, a traditional character in nativity plays who is constanly squatting and doing a number two. I’ll leave you with that thought.

I hope you had a wonderful, wonderful Christmas and have a fantastic new year!

An eggxellent and eggciting vogue of egg- tortilla de patatas

Upon my arrival in Balaguer, I was greeted by the most delicious welcome dinner prepared very kindly by my wonderful tutor now friend. After eating this tasty meal of ‘tortilla de patatas’ with a flavoursome salad to accompany it, as the salads here are hands down the BEST I have ever had as far as my salad experiences have gone,  I quizzed her on this style of egg. In my broken Spanish, ‘ pero como es GRANDE’( actually it might have been in English that day so just in case), ‘ but how is it so BIG’ hand actions and everything. ‘How could this omelette feed an army?’ I wondered to myself. I waited for a secret ingredient like baking powder, magic dust, an exotic herb that makes food high (and rise).The secret turned out to be a very uncomplicated and what now seems a very common sense idea: the number of eggs in the omelette. The ingredients were simple, yet the meal was delectable, I could not stop thinking about that Spanish Tortilla! As a result of this dreaming about eggs, I decided that this week’s mission was to master the Spanish Tortilla. Or at least give it a go before putting it up there with the chef-like standards of my pan con tomate.

However, this time was different; I was cooking for an esteemed guest. A very honest, brutal but beautiful food loving younger sister. I knew that this taste testing would be the truth.  It was crunch time.This was the equivalent of Michel Roux tasting a masterchef dish. So, I consulted my trusty ‘ Tapas De ayer y de hoy’ and looked for something that would help me recreate the eggcellent magic again. The primary aim of this week’s venture was to have zero burns on me but more importantly on my tortilla.  

Now you must be thinking,’but Natasha how egg-otistical of you what did your sister think of the dish?!’. Well, the day the VIP arrived, preparation for this dish was going well, A-ok, like a pro one might say. Many pictures were taken to monitor the progression of this dish. Then, the unthinkable and unexpected happened. After I whipped up the 3 eggs, lightly fried the thinly sliced potatoes, seasoned and mixed everything together; I thought to myself ,' this is going to be a good one'. An egg like I’d never seen before. I added the egg to the hot pan with enough olive oil for the whole of Balaguer so nothing would burn and it happened. It burned. It was not the kind of burn where you could cut off the egg and hide by garnishing it with herbs or the kind of dish you could quickly turn into scrambled eggs. No, it was smoky, black and burnt.  So my sister did not get to try what should have been a fine version of tortilla de patatas but tried one in a restaurant and agreed that it was yummy.

My advice to anyone who wants to try this dish is, well I'm not sure. I'll let you know when I figure it out for round two. Once the scars of this venture have faded. For now I say stick to sunny side up, or even better boiled. 

Everything was ready for the materpiece

It looked as if it was going so well!

The final piece and that was the least burnt side!

Tomato toastie de Catalonia...like a pro.

Today I took the plunge after flicking through my new ,’Tapas De ayer y hoy’ recipe book, a very kind gift, and decided I would become a cooking extraordinaire. So I began with what I thought would be simple, ‘ Pan con tomate’. As at that moment in time I luckily had the last of a loaf of bread, half a tomato and a lot of garlic waiting to be used, this was the perfect dish. Pan con tomate is a popular dish in Catalonia and despite its boring translation of bread with tomato my previous experiences of this dish had been delicious. The first thing I did was crush a clove of garlic and mixed it into a tablespoon of olive oil. I then added the garlic flavoured oil to a hot pan and after a while added the bread. It sizzled which is normally a good sign, so I left it for a while and then it really sizzled and began to burn. I quickly turned off the heat and saved what I could of my project. I managed to salvage half a piece of bread, which was made up of random bits of to work with. Finally I cut a quarter of a tomato and smothered it all over the bread.  Despite a few burnt bits of garlic it was scrumptious! A semi success of my first Spanish dish unsupervised. It is one I would recommend as a starter or to accompany any fish, meat or veggie dish. Oh what a chef I have become!

Before

After

Mi casa es su casa...via the www.

I have officially been in my new surroundings for just over a month and how time has flown. To celebrate my one month anniversary, taking inspiration from Julie Powell after virtually sobbing watching 'Julie y Julia', I have decided to start up a blog to document my Catalan adventure for the next seven months.This is a way for me to keep you all updated and share a little bit of me with you every once in a while.


So I'm going to begin by saying that  my experience thus far  in Catalonia has been completely different to my experiences of China. Was that a, ' Natasha but Ni Hao is it different?', I hear you say? Well, whilst living in China I lived in Tianjin, a city  which has a population of 10.43 million, here I live in a small town called Balaguer which has a comparatively small  population of 16779 and work in a beautiful tiny village called Montgai where there is a grand total of  24 students in my school. In China, I had no prior knowledge of the language and in Catalonia, even though I should be in the same boat as the prevailing language is Catalan, I am luckily surrounded by wonderful people who are willing to listen and help me improve my now somewhat rusty Spanish. They are so wonderful and patient that they don't even snigger at my Spanglish accent. Being able to communicate through language , either a native or widely spoken language, in some way does make all the difference and I sense this is part of the reason why things have seemed slightly easier to being with.

Balaguer, a small rural town North West of Barcelona in the province of Lleida, is my new home. It is nothing like I had expected when I was informed that I would be working in a small rural area. In fact, it has risen above and beyond any expectations I ever had. The town is beautiful as there is a gothic yet modern mix of buildings, both old and new set against a mountain backdrop. One of the most striking buildings is the Santa Maria Church, from which you can see picturesque views of Balaguer, which dates back to the fifteenth century.Just walking to the library (no Catalonia has not changed me into a crazy party girl-yet) I have the pleasure of seeing the most stunning views. Unlike my previous expectations of Balaguer having one bakery, a hairdresser, possibly a bank and let's not forget my good friends the cows and the goats (I say friends but really I mean foes after I was almost attacked and killed on the edge of a cliff by a goat who wanted my peanut butter- but cows are good and sacred) it has almost everything one could need. There are endless numbers of bars, cafes, restaurants, bakeries, butchers, gyms and strangely most of all hairdressers. They're everywhere.


Additionally, I thought that perhaps I'd be the only Indian in the village but to my surprise there's a large immigrant community in Balaguer. From Chinese people to Moroccans, Africans, Spaniards and of course Catalans there is a vivacious community of people from different origins. There is even a Chinese restaurant called, ' Ni Hao'! The world truly is global, all the Anthropologists are right. 

New Amigas of mine saying, 'Ni Hao' at Ni Hao!

So, all in all Balaguer so far has exeeded my expectations and I think it will make an interesting, action packed, adventurous home as being in a quieter, smaller area surrounded by natural beauty makes you want to exercise more. Top off the athletic bodies (of the many cyclists) with a choice of 1000 haircuts- this is my new home.