Still Discovering Spain...

Twelfth Night is the festival marking the coming of the Epiphany and concluding the Twelve Days of Christmas. In medieval and Tudor England, the Twelfth Night marked the end of a winter festival that started on All Hallows Eve — now more commonly known as Halloween. The Lord of Misrule symbolises the world turning upside down. On this day the King and all those who were high would become the peasants and vice versa. At the beginning of the Twelfth Night festival, a cake that contained a bean was eaten, and the person who found the bean would rule the feast. Midnight signalled the end of his rule and the world would return to normal. The common theme was that the normal order of things was reversed.

 The origins of the Three Kings' Cake appear to date back to the 2nd century BC, when the Romans celebrated the Saturnalia – also known as the Slaves' Festival as they didn't have to work – with a round pastry that concealed a bean. The bean symbolised the imminent arrival of prosperity thanks to the Spring and to Saturn, the god of agriculture. Its symbolism has changed greatly since then, and the recipe even more-so. The Romans spread it across Europe, but its consumption died out with the arrival of Christianity. However the French preserved the tradition and it was common among bourgeois families to eat the cake, which they prepared with a coin inside it.

Food and drink are at the centre of the celebrations in modern times, and all of the most traditional ones go back many centuries. Around the world, special pastries and bread, such as Roscón de Reyes, La Galette des Rois and King cake are baked on the Twelfth Night and are eaten for the Feast of the Epiphany celebrations. In English and French customs, a Twelfth Night cake was baked to contain a bean and a pea, so that those who received the slices containing them should be designated king and queen of the night’s festivities. 

Over the centuries this tradition has changed. Gold coins began to be introduced as a reward to whoever found the Roscón treasure, it was later decided to hide a figurine of  King and a bean at the same time to find out who was the 'lucky one' and who was the fool with the bean ... until today. Nowadays most Roscón have the figurine of a King and dehydrated bean, only now the person who finds the bean is not only the fool but also has to pay the cake!

Traditionally, however, there was a time in Spain when whoever found the trinket (which would have been a figurine of baby Jesus) had to take it to the nearest church on February 2, Día de la Candelaria (Candlemas Day), which celebrates the presentation of Jesus in the Temple. According to the Jewish tradition, an infant was to be presented to God in the Temple forty days after his birth. The use of candles on Candlemas represents the light of Christ presented to the world. The Kings’ cake (Roscón) in Spain is traditionally eaten after lunch on the 6th of January and if you fancy making one this year, here is a simple recipe:

Ingredients:

Sourdough mix:

100 g of strong flour
60 ml of warm milk
2 g yeast

Decoration:

1 beaten egg
Glacé fruits
Almonds
Sugar

For the final dough:

162 g of sourdough 
330 g of strong flour
60 ml of milk cooked with cinnamon and the peel of 1 orange
2 eggs
80g sugar
30 ml of honey
110 g butter
15 g of pressed yeast (or 5 g of dry baker's yeast)
3 teaspoons of rum
2 teaspoons of random water
Zest of half a lemon
5g salt

Preparation:

The day before, prepare the sourdough. To do this, mix the flour, milk and yeast and knead it sufficiently so it is well mixed.

Let it ferment for 30 minutes at room temperature and then leave it in the fridge for at least 12 hours.

The night before you also have to make the milk infusion with, cinnamon and the peel of 1 orange without the white part. Heat the milk with the ingredients to just before boiling point and then remove from the heat and cover. Let it cool and then refrigerate.

The next day, mix all the ingredients for the final dough, except the sugar and butter.
You will have to knead it in 3 steps:
 1) 5 minutes as is. 
 2) 5 minutes in which the sugar is incorporated in 2 batches until you can see no lumps are left each time.
 3)Now the cold butter is added and kneaded for another 10 or 15 minutes until the dough has absorbed all the butter and is smooth.

Let it ferment for about 2 hours. Form into a ball. Wait 15 minutes and then form into an even ring

Ferment for another 2 and a half or 3 hours: it almost triples its volume (then hide the figurine and the dehydrated bean).

Brush, decorate and bake in an oven at 180 ° C. Baking time is about 20 minutes (if fan assisted;  if not, slightly longer).

Let cool on a rack. Once cold, the roscón can be cut in two halves and filled with sweetened whipped cream or truffle cream, as you prefer.

However, if this seems like too much effort they are available in all supermarkets across the country. According to one of Spain's leading consumer organisations, the OCU, after analysing Roscones in nine major supermarkets, the best value-for-money Roscón de Reyes comes from Día and retails at €11.71 for a kilo.

The OCU looked at Roscones sold in Eroski, Carrefour, Alcampo, El Corte Inglés, Ahorramás, Mercadona, Lidl, Aldi and Día, and said the best quality ones were the cream-filled versions from Eroski and Alcampo, followed by those sold at El Corte Inglés, although in terms of price and quality combined, Día's cream-filled one came out top.

They retail at between €6 a kilo in Carrefour, Aldi and Lidl, and €17 a kilo in El Corte Inglés, although the OCU warned that in most cases, the cheapest prices reflected the quality of what you're buying.

Those with the lowest price tags, in general, had a greater quantity of vegetable oils and fats – coconut and palm oil – compared with the higher-priced ones, which contained cream and butter.

This said those seeking to avoid animal-based produce would find the cheaper ones suited them better.

Whatever you decide to do - Happy New Year!

In case you get a little bored while having a coffee today, here are 50 curious facts about Spain that maybe you didn't know!

1. The Spanish language has a word that exists grammatically and can be pronounced, but it can not be written. That's why I can not tell you what it is.

2. Spain has had three monarchs under 10 years of age: Carlos II, Isabel II and Alfonso XIII.

3. Spain is the first country in the world in terms of acceptance of homosexuality, only 6% of the population believes that it is "morally unacceptable".

4. Despite what most people think, 58.6% of Spaniards affirm that they never sleep a ‘Siesta’.

5. Spain is the second most visited in the world, surpassed only by France.

6. The most expensive restaurant in the world is located in Ibiza, it is called Sublimotion and the dinner costs 1,700 euros per person.

7. Spain has a bar for every 165 inhabitants.

8. Cádiz is the oldest city in Europe, it is traditionally said to have been founded 80 years after the Trojan War.

9. The symbol of the dollar ($) is a Spanish invention, an evolution of the abbreviation Ps (pesos - eighth's 1/8).

10. The Spanish alphabet lost 2 letters in 2010 - ‘ch’  and ‘ll ‘

11. Spain has almost as many airports as provinces, in total, 48.

12. On December 7, 1969, Ángela Ruíz Robles, a Galician lady, invented the 'Mechanical Encyclopedia', considered today the first prototype of an ebook.

13. The most consumed fruit in Spain is orange. 

14. The ‘menu of the day’ - menu del dia -  was an invention of Franco, promoted by the Ministry of Information and Tourism in the 60s, to promote Spanish cuisine.

15. 30,000 years ago,  it was as cold as it is in Denmark.

16. The Royal Family was assigned the numbers from 10 to 99 for their DNI, although Nº 13 was annulled by superstition.

17. The shortest reigning King of Spain wore his crown for only six months and twelve days,  Luis I de Borbón.

18. Querétaro, the name of a Mexican city that means 'island of blue salamanders', was chosen in 2011 as the most beautiful word in Spanish.

19. To travel the kilometres of Spanish coastline (7,905) would be almost the equivalent of making a trip from Madrid to Moscow and back. 

20. Spain is at the forefront of Europe in the consumption of cocaine.

21. The Spanish drink 11.2 litres of pure alcohol per person per year, which is almost double the world average (6.2).

22. Spain is the leader in organ donations.

23. Spanish inventions are the mop, the Chupa Chups lollipop, the submarine, the stapler, the table football (although disputed) and the digital calculator.

24. According to the Guinness Book, in Spain, we have the largest mortar in the world (3.29 meters high and 3.07 in diameter) and the largest cup (4.73 meters long and 0.85 in diameter), they were built in the City Council of Macael (Almería).

25. There are 44 sites in Spain that are a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which places Spain as the third country in the world with more wonders to visit.

26. The Alhambra in Granada is the most visited place in Spain.

27. Spain has a good number of rare museums, for example, the Museum of Museo de Microminiaturas  (Micro-miniatures) in Guadalest (Alicante) or the Parque de la Vida (Park of Life) in Luarca (Asturias) that has a total of nine giant squid.

28. The most popular names in Spain are Antonio, José, Manuel, Francisco and Juan as a boy and María Carmen, María, Carmen, Josefa and Isabel among women, according to the INE.

29. The largest earthquake in Spain took place in Torrevieja (Alicante), on March 21, 1829. A 6.6 on the Richter scale.

30. Spain’s National Library contains around twenty million pieces of work.

31. With 14 holidays a year, we are one of the countries in Europe with the most non-working days.

32. The Inquisión burned a total of 59 witches in Spain.

33. The first medal that Spain achieved in an Olympic Games was for the ‘Pelota’ pair formed by José de Amézola and Francisco Villota at the 1900 Paris Olympics.

34. Spain is one of the European countries with the lowest rates of suicides.

35. There is evidence that 800,000 years ago, in Atapuerca, our ancestors practised cannibalism.

36. The caves of Altamira and El Castillo harbour the oldest Palaeolithic art in Europe.

37. Spain is world leader in downloads of content protected by copyright.

38. Women were able to vote for the first time in Spain in 1933.

39. According to research published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, people in northern Spain, as well as Salamanca and Madrid live longer than people in the south.

40. In Spain, you can be fined up to 100 euros for driving with your hand or arm out of the window.

41. The tradition of the twelve grapes on New Year's Eve has its origin in 1887 when the Mayor of Madrid imposed a new tax for the night of the Epiphany celebration and the poor protested in the town square by eating grapes on the 31st of December.

42. Before Instagram, scallops were the irrefutable proof that pilgrims brought back to show that they had completed the Camino de Santiago (Way of St James). In the Middle Ages people trafficked with scallops so much that the Church had to prohibit it.

43. The first draw of the National Lottery was held in Cadiz in 1812, the intention was to increase the revenues of the Public Treasury without having to resort to raising taxes to citizens.

44. Mayonnaise was invented in Mahón (Menorca), the legend says that when Armand Jean du Plessi, cardinal and Duke of Richelieu (1585-1642) arrived on the coasts, he demanded to eat something and, as there was nothing prepared, a chef mixed several ingredients to give them consistency ... and that's where the magic comes from.

45. Dying is much cheaper in Gran Canaria (around 2,600 euros) than in Barcelona (about 6,400). Think about it.

46. In Spain, there are 8 Nobel prize-winners, 7.5 if we count the double nationality of Mario Vargas Llosa.

47. According to a survey conducted by the World Values Survey worldwide, Spain would be among the most tolerant countries: only 10% of respondents would object to having a neighbor of another race.

48. Fidel Pagés, Spanish military doctor, was the discoverer of epidural anesthesia.

49. Spain holds the record for most editions of Big Brother broadcast in one country - 18!

50. The hottest temperature ever recorded in Spain was in Montoro, Cordoba during the summer of 2017 where it reached 47,3ªC. a record previously held by Murcia.