Monday, March 2, 2009

Barcelona: Caracola



Nothing makes me happier than a good bakery and I was lucky enough to find a great one on my first morning in Barcelona. The woman behind the counter was kind enough to put up with my Spanish and I learned some new words from her too. The most important was "caracola," which is the name for my favorite kind of pastry. It's a flat spiral of dough with either raisins or poppy seed between the layers. Auf Deutsch, they're called "Schnecken" and this bakery makes an outstanding example of the raisin variety.

This morning I was in another part of town and couldn't make it my Stammbäckerei, but I popped into a "bar" on the Diagonal for breakfast. "Cafe con leche y caracola," said I, as I sat down at the counter. I gestured to the pastries in a glass case as I said it, but there was a mix up in our communication. Caracola does mean Schnecke, and Schnecke means snail, so called because of the spiral form, but in España, I guess I should have said "una caracola," because what I got was a plate of garden snails in a light butter sauce with sage and rosemary.

Como se dice "yum?"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

so did you eat them? Maybe with a few raisins so you could imagine the were the other kind of snail.

heheheh

Anonymous said...

hui... heavy breakfast. at least you like snails - it would have been hard for me to get out of this.

happy trails down there
Bernd

Christopher T. Terry said...

yes, I did eat them, or at least some of them. It's important not to lose face in situations like this.