Canarian Recipes for Shrove Tuesday

 by: Pamela Heywood

For the British at least, Shrove Tuesday is probably better known as Pancake Day. Those wonderful delicacies, smothered in sugar and lemon and often tossed around in village competitions. As you will see from the recipes below, the Brits certainly don't have the monopoly of this type of fare for the occasion:

REBANDAS DE CARNAVAL

This a great way to use up stale bread at any time.

Ingredients:

1 "yesterday's" Canarian loaf (any crusty white bread like a French stick or baguette will do just as well), 1 egg, 1 cup of milk approx., Sugar, Sprinkle of ground cinnamon.

Method:

Slice the bread diagonally into 1/2 to 3/4 inch slices and discard the ends of the loaf. Beat the egg, milk and cinnamon together in a bowl then soak the bread slices briefly in the mixture. Lift them carefully and fry gently in oil in a shallow frying pan, turning once. Remove when golden, arrange on a plate and sprinkle with sugar. Watch them disappear fast!

(A variation on this recipe is to substitute half the milk with white wine.)

TORTILLA DE CARNAVAL

Ingredients:

Gofio, Plain Flour (optional), Three or four egg yolks, Ground cinnamon, Half a litre of milk, Sugar, Aniseed liqueur or Marie Brizard.

Method:

Mix the egg yolks with the milk, cinnamon and sugar (the amount of which you can vary according to taste), along with a dribble of the aniseed liqueur. Beat well, then add the gofio a little at a time, until you have a consistency resembling custard. (You can mix flour with the gofio, again according to preference). Fry small amounts of the mixture until golden in hot oil to make little pancakes. It is customary to eat them at Carnaval time, accompanied by coffee.