When I'm a little sad, I like to go to the kitchen and sweeten my sadness with a piece of chocolate. One, because if it were up to my addictive mind I would eat the entire tablet.
I have to confess that I am not a VIP chocolatier and I often deserve the disapproval of experts in the field for keeping the bar in the refrigerator, a habit, they rightly say, that detracts from its aroma and depth of flavor. But I'm a creature of habit and I love the click of cold chocolate when I break it between my teeth.
The love for a specific candy is personal and non-transferable. If I think about angel hair, I see myself in La Bisbal buying a bisbalenc or in the old Chinese neighborhood of Barcelona enjoying one of the roscos from the now deader than alive Casa Leopoldo. And if, for example, a craving for marzipan comes to me, I want the days to pass before I can find the bean in a roscón de Reyes bought at the Canal pastry shop, to name one of the greats in Barcelona. And if I go further in time, I remember the caress on the palate of the Catalan cream that my grandmother Josefina prepared.
My other grandmother, Rosa, poured all her popular and proletarian origins into a homemade cake prepared with Maria cookies, sweet wine, butter, cream and chocolate shavings. It was a cake reserved for big occasions and was usually accompanied by a bottle of Gramona cava, called champagne in those days, bought by my grandfather Evaristo.
That no one is bitter about a sweet is evidenced by the number of contests dedicated to pitting celebrities against each other in the search for the best dessert. The latest, Bake Off: famous in the oven, is the sugary version of Master Chef without Jordi Cruz, but with Paula Vázquez at the helm. The thing about celebrities being baked is funny, because some of them deserve to be baked. And it's also funny, because they are part of the group of celebrities who go to all the celebrity pageants. Madrid inbreeding.
On any network, on any platform, you will find a contest in which the protagonist is the candy. A contradiction since we live in a time in which nutritionists put ears and tails on everything that gives joy to the body.
During the pandemic, many households tried to cope with boredom by dedicating themselves to pastries sung by YouTubers or influencers willing to share their wisdom and the majority of citizens emerged from the three months of confinement with a few extra kilos and a greater passion for desserts. .
The expansion of chains and more chains of pastry shops/pastry shops/coffee shops are swallowing up a large part of the establishments considered traditional. A symbol of postmodernity. The tragic thing is that chains like Vivari, for example, are gaining ground based on products of poor quality. They do business, we allow them to continue expanding like mushrooms selling something similar.
A few days ago, Cristina Jolonch and I were talking about the passion for sweets and she told me that a good cook is not always a good pastry chef because the pastry specialist is more scientific, more mathematical. He told me to hear my opinion and I told him maybe, although he had never thought about it. We were talking, of course, about good pastry chefs.
What I can assure you is that the sweet is as fashionable as the television programs dedicated to its preparation. And also, no one is bitter about a sweet if it is right when it comes to satisfying the desire. You have to know how to choose the place and the time, and not get carried away by media pressure and chains that do something similar. Cheap is very expensive if it doesn't give you the pleasure you were looking for.
