CARGOLS A LA LLAUNA/CARACOLES ASADOS

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What you see here is a typical dish of Lleida, at least the way of cooking the snails because they are also eaten in other places of Spain and in some other countries too ( France, Portugal, etc… ). This dish is called “Cargols a la llauna“. “Cargols” is snail, and “llauna” is the special iron pan with handles used to cook them in a barbecue.

Salt, cayenne and olive oil are added to the snails and they are left in the heat. They have been carefully chosen, one by one, to discard any dead snails.

They are served with this sauce similar to mayonnaise and called “allioli”. Outside Catalonia they call it “alioli” too. It means “garlic and oil” because these two ingredients are the main ones. It contains also egg.

Snails are taken out of their shells by this special tool, a spike, and dipped right after in the sauce.

Complete menu may include “escalivada” which is eggplant and pepper ( sometimes tomato and onion too ) roasted in barbecue and then peeled. This is usually eaten on a toast, seasoned with oil and salt. Traditionally the toast is previously rubbed with tomato or garlic, or even both, but skipping this is step doesn’t make it less tasty.

“Mona de Pascua” is a traditional Easter cake which is eaten on Easter Monday in places like Catalonia and Valencian Community. I don’t know if “mona” is eaten in other places of Spain because there are already many types of traditional Easter pastries around the country, so they don’t need to eat more :P. For example in Balearic Islands they eat “crespells”, a star-shaped special biscuit and “robiols” a pie made of the same dough and filled with a sweet made of pumpkin and syrup or cottage cheese, among other fillings.

“Mona de Pascua” was formerly a plain cake with hard-boiled eggs which godparents gave to their godchildren as a present on Easter Sunday. There was an egg for each year-old of the child. Nowadays it’s the same but cakes are very elaborate ( for example with jam, chocolate, butter, etc… inside ) and eggs are made of chocolate or have been replaced by figures. In Catalonia even the cake has disappeared in some cases and the “mona” is only the figure, by the way very big and extremely elaborated.

This is a little example of “mona“. It hasn’t a chocolate figure because different kinds of chocolate ( plain, white, strawberry, milk… ) are spread on the top, so there is enough, LOL.

This other one has a milk-chocolate figure, a bunny.

The bottle you see in the pictures is “cava“, the Catalan version of the French “champagne“. For those who want to make a toast.

The chocolate bunny figure in detail. Yes, I guess a scantily clad chocolate bunny on the phone is a bit strange ^^U:

The typical image of Easter in Spain are the processions everywhere, but specially in Andalucía. Those people wear tunics and some of them conic hats ( the ones that are doing penance ). They belong to several brotherhoods, called “hermandades” in Spanish. Each one has its own “paso” ( or more than one) a figure generally representing a scene of the Passion of Christ. They have also a characteristic tunic design. The figure is carried around the town in procession.

You can have a look at these link, to see some pictures:

Holy Week Procession