Memories from Mallorca

My Mallorcan bread, la ensaïmada, was flaky and wonderful and perfect with strong, black coffee this morning.

When I was very young, my family and I spent some time on the island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean. Later on, Mallorca was invaded by tourists, but in those days it was still quite untouched. Mallorca was my first visit to Europe outside of Scandinavia. It was my first taste of the Mediterranean, and an encounter of warmer latitudes that later far more exotic and tropical destinations have failed to live up to.

My mother claims that I was never actually inside the cathedral in Palma, known as La Seu, but I think she remembers incorrectly. I feel like I must have been there. La Seu sits sand-colored and majestic on top of a hill, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It’s a splendid building, one that commands respect. I imagine the insides now, smoky of incense and heavy with prayers, and that a soft rustle of rosaries can be heard as well as an endless stream of Ave Marias, going up, up.

My memories from Mallorca are few but intense: I remember Chopin’s piano, a Pleyel, in the village of Valldemossa. I recall a finger pointing and a voice saying it had belonged to Chopin, and that he had been very sick on Mallorca. He had coughed blood. Later on, much later on, I traced Chopin’s heart to Warsaw where it had been smuggled in a jar of cognac, and where it still rests, enshrined in a pillar in the Holy Cross Church on Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw. Chopin had come to Mallorca with his flamboyant mistress George Sand in hopes of finding a cure in the warm sun. Instead they found an island enveloped in wintery gloom. It was in Palma de Mallorca that Chopin got his death sentence: The TB diagnosis. But it was also on Mallorca, on that Pleyel in Valldemossa, that he managed to finish composing his famous Raindrop Prelude.

I remember Sa Foradada, a rock formation that shoots out into the sea and the crashing waves, and in which a dramatic 10 meter (or 32 feet) diameter hole can be seen from far away. I stood and looked down at it and someone, probably a guide, said:

“A truck could drive through it.”

I remember Geraldine Chaplin eating at a table close to ours in a fish restaurant by the harbor. Well, I remember the fish restaurant with its wet floor and high ceiling and I recall the enormous fish tank from which you would choose your dinner. My parents remember Geraldine Chaplin, a big star in those days, and I have created a memory of her from them telling me. I see her in my mind’s eye, sitting alone in the blue light, her face a pale oval: Sad and beautiful. And a flock of waiters criss-crossing around.

My last memory of Mallorca has to do with the preparations for the feast of Santa Catalina: Les Festes de la Beata. Catalina Thomàs was a Mallorcan  in the 16^th century, who at an early age had conversations with God. She was canonized in 1930. I’d never heard of saints before nor had I ever heard of any hagiographies, and I was very moved by her story, which I prompted my mother to repeat over and over again.

In an effort to tease out more memories from Mallorca, I decided to bake a traditional Mallorcan bread last night, called la ensaïmada llisa. The real recipe calls for lard, but I substituted it for butter. I also cut corners in how I made it, as traditional ensaïmadas are quite time-consuming to bake. In the end what I did, was this:

Ingredients

6 oz lukewarm milk

2 teaspoons dry yeast

3 cups flour

2/3 of a cup superfine sugar

2 eggs and 1 egg yolk

150 gram butter

Confectioner’s sugar

1. Stir milk and yeast in a small bowl until the yeast has dissolved. Wait for it to foam (4- minutes).
2. Combine flour, sugar, eggs and yolk with the yeast mixture. Knead the dough until soft and elastic. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 45 minutes.
3. Roll out the dough on a well-floured table. Make a large rectangle out of it, as thin as you can. On top of this, spread the softened butter. I used my hands to spread the butter. Then roll into a long, narrow cylinder. I pulled it a bit to thin it out. Coil it. Place a large upturned bowl on top and set aside to rise for another 1.5-2 hours.
4. Pre-heat to 356F. Bake until golden (I had to put some aluminum foil on top towards the end so as not to burn the ensaïmada) about 20-25 minutes. Dust with confectioner’s sugar.

Mallorca.