Spanish Cooking with Mrs Uchuari
Some of our children are having Spanish lessons with Mrs Uchuari, and they recently made some delicious Easter treats. Here is the recipe in case you'd like to try this at home!
RECIPE
Torrijas – typical Spanish Easter treat (similar to eggy bread or French toast)
Ingredients
* 12 slices of bread *
1 litre of milk
2 eggs
Sunflower oil for frying
4 tablespoons of sugar
3 cinnamon sticks
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange
sugar and ground cinnamon to sprinkle over
Instructions
1. Pour the milk into a pan with the 4 tbsp of sugar, the lemon and orange zest and the cinnamon sticks. Put on medium heat for 10 minutes but do not allow to boil. Take off the heat and allow to cool until lukewarm.
2. Put the milk in a large, shallow container and place the bread in it. Turn the bread over so that the milk soaks in on both sides.
3. Next take the bread out and brush beaten egg on both sides of the bread and fry the bread in the sunflower oil. Make sure the bread cooks through but doesn’t burn on the outside.
4. After place the bread on a tray covered with kitchen roll to soak up the excess oil.
5. Allow to cool then sprinkle very generously with a mix of sugar and ground cinnamon.
This was a bit of trial and error, I had a go at home with my daughter and the bread turned out way too soggy. After many whatsapp messages to Spanish friends we made a few modifications to the instructions above, so hopefully you will make fantastic torrijas!
One friend also uses honey on hers, and adds brown sugar to the sprinkle mix, but that’s a matter of personal taste.
* PLEASE NOTE * the type of bread is key to the success of this recipe. The bread they use in Spain isn’t available here - what I found worked best was baguette, cut diagonally to make it bigger and about 4cm thick. Bakewell Coop baguette was too thin, Morrisons or Sainsburys make a thicker one which is better.