In two days, on the eve of the Three Kings or the Three Wise Men, however, you wish to call them, we'll once again follow the family tradition - cancelled last year because of the pandemia - and go out to the “Reyes” market in the Cabañal.
The Cabañal market is very well known in Valencia and it is the night when parents leave their kids at home asleep (with a relative watching over) and escape to buy a few last presents and give a helping hand to the overworked kings. Even though most presents have already been bought, a wander around the market in the early hours of the morning is a must, especially for my wife. From the neighbourhood, and after years of frequenting the market at Christmas, she knows every trick in the book on how to get a bargain and if you are prepared to hang around, she seems to know the right time to really push the bartering into fifth gear and walk away with ridiculous bargains, normally around 4:00am. At that time the sellers are tired after a long day's work, their opportunity to sell has come to an end, within a matter of minutes no one will have any reason to buy any presents at all and above all toys. This is when the toy prices plummet by over 50% so you can whip up some great presents for next to nothing.
Although we enjoy wandering around the market and picking up a few stocking fillers, the real reason we head down there every year is to feel the Christmassy atmosphere that is in the air and enjoy our seasonal ‘churros and hot chocolate’, normally the first of the winter season.
On a chilly night, at 2:30 in the morning a hot cup of chocolate and freshly made churros is pretty much unbeatable, just what you need to get you through to the end of the market! However it’s not all about shopping, the number of people you bump into is unbelievable and this makes progress sometimes painstakingly slow especially for me at least, as I am not much of a fan of crowded places so I get a bit irritable and would rather take a quick detour to the local coffee shop and wait for the women there!
I must admit I quite like this market though, its full of junk mostly but still it's fun and if you look hard you can come across some nice stuff and if you are cheeky enough you’ll get a decent price. But it’s this night that kicks me into “pudding” mode and I start to cook sweets at home, normally during the summer and autumn I don’t bother but when the cold arrives and the smell of churros is in the air, I can’t help myself. So I thought I would share a recipe for churros, you can’t always find them when you want them and honestly, they are not difficult to make. So here is a recipe I was taught and I hope you find it useful too. Remember the chocolate is the easy part, you can buy that in powder format in any supermarket, I normally buy the powder made by ‘Chocolates Valor’, which is really very good. Remember it must be thick!
The ingredients you will need for approximately 4 servings of churros is the following:
300gr Flour
400ml water(300ml if you want the churros slightly heavier, a question of taste)
1 tsp. of yeast/bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp. fine table salt
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
First you will need to heat up the water and add the salt. If you are using tap water drop a slice of lemon peel in, this will help get rid of that tap-water taste. Once boiling, remove the water from the heat and let it cool slightly. When you can pop your finger in without burning yourself, add the flour that you have previously mixed with the yeast (brand ‘Royal’ is ok) or bicarbonate of soda. Mix in the flour and yeast mix bit by bit until it has become an even mass without any lumps. It shouldn’t be a very thick mix (unless you’ve reduced the water, it will be thicker). Once ready, let it sit for an hour or so. It’s important not to use too much yeast otherwise they will swell up too much and absorb a lot of oil and become indigestible.
Now fill an icing syringe or bag with a wide nozzle and squeeze out about 15cm of churros mix, cut with scissors at the nozzle tip and let it drop into abundant hot olive oil, careful it doesn’t splash the oil! Let it cook until golden and repeat the process until all the churros are cooked. When you remove them from the oil place them on a kitchen towel to soak up excess oil and sprinkle with sugar. One trick is not to cook too many churros at the same time, the more in the oil the quicker the temperature will drop and for the churros to be crispy and not soak up oil, the oil must be very hot throughout the entire cooking process.
So as you see they are no more difficult than pancakes so give it a go and start dunking churros with a cup of thick hot chocolate!