Coca de llardons is a flat pastry cake made with eggs, sugar, pork crackling (llardons) and pine nuts, which is traditionally eaten around Carnival time, to get people ready for fasting during Lent.
They are usually accompanied with sweet wine, Moscatell, Malvasia or cava.
Greixons or Llardons were originally made to celebrate Carnival when meals were often made high in fat in order to prepare the body for the abstinence of Lent. The first written recipes for ‘coca de llardons’ (lardon pastry) date back to the 19th century. In the rest of Catalonia differing varieties can be found with various names: ‘llardons’, ‘greixons’, ‘cotnes’, ‘camallots’, and so on.
The ingredients used are fat trimmings and salt. The meat is minced, mixed with the salt, fried and pressed. In Vic the making and consumption of this food is a deeply rooted tradition, either as tapas, a side dish, in salads, on coca (pastry), and so forth.
Method
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- 100 g sugar
- 200 g pork crackling
- 1/2 kg flour
- 100 g pine nuts
- 100 g baker’s yeast
- 20 dl oil
- a glass of anisette
- water
Method
Mix the 3 eggs, oil, 100 g sugar and the yeast, dissolved in a little warm water.
Slowly add the flour until it forms a smooth pastry dough.
Mix in the crushed crackling and anisette.
Spread the dough out on a baking tray coated in oil.
Brush it with whisked egg, spread out the pine nuts and sprinkle the rest of the sugar over it.
Leave it to ferment and rise.
Put the pastry in the oven for about 25 minutes at 180 ˚C.
*Recipe Coca de llardons. Fundació Institut Català de la Cuina i de la Cultura Gastronòmica.
*For more info:
http://culturapopular.bcn.cat/
http://www.gastroteca.cat/en/product-details/coca-de-llardons-lardon-pastry/
