Coca de Vidre

“Coca”. Say the word and it conjures up all sorts of connotations – mostly illicit. But in Catalonia, coca is a traditional flatbread which has echoes in other Mediterranean societies, the best-known being Italian pizza and focaccia, along with pita bread and its more distant cousins the matzah or even Indian chapati. Coca can be covered with either sweet or savory topping, and its sweet guise reveals the kinship of the word “coca” with the English “cake” and the German “Kuchen”. Coca was developed as a way of using bread dough that didn’t rise. Thank goodness leavening agents don’t always work: they have left us the legacy of both cocas and the American invention par excellence: brownies.

Cocas are a dish for both rich and poor; the topping reveals which. Some are simply sprinkled with sugar, which caramelizes in the oven, others with olive oil and salt, scrumptious in and by themselves, while yet others are loaded with delicacies like seafood or vegetables, chocolate or pastry cream. Either way, in the past Catalan households had no ovens, so after the town bakeries were done baking their bread for the day, they let the neighborhood housewives bring their cocas and bake them in their ovens. Sometimes the bakeries would even donate their unsellable bread dough that failed to rise. Nowadays, bakeries sell ready-made cocas, often with roasted vegetables like peppers, eggplants, and onions on top, although any homemade version is infinitely better. They also make sweet cocas, like the famous “coca de vidre” (more on that delicacy below).

Cocas are often associated with holidays in Catalonia, such as the “coca de reis” and the “coca de Sant Joan”. Coca de reis is eaten on the Epiphany, January 6^th, when according to the Bible the Three Wise Men, or “reis mags”, reached Baby Jesus bearing their gifts. Coca de reis always has two surprises in it: a diminutive ceramic wise man, which brings the person finding it good luck, and a dried fava bean, which means that the person who bites into it or, in a more cowardly fashion, digs it out with their fingers, has to pay for the coca next year. But beware: they are both hard on the teeth!

The “coca de Sant Joan” is eaten on St. John’s Eve, June 23^rd, when Catalonians take to the streets to return to their pagan, solstice-celebrating roots, couched in Christian terms. They stay up all night lighting fireworks, building bonfires, drinking whatever is at hand, and waiting to welcome dawn on the beaches, most in a drunken stupor by then. They then eat this candied fruit-laden coca with a glass of “cava”, Catalan champagne, to welcome the summertime. Many a coca de Sant Joan has been eaten with no recollection whatsoever, I imagine, just as many other midsummer night’s frolics have quietly, thankfully drifted into oblivion after the inebriated revelry.

On to my favorite: coca de vidre (literally “glass flatbread”). It was so named because of the crystallized sugar that forms as it bakes. The dough used in Spain is more similar to pizza dough, but coca de vidre is equally – if not more – delicious using a flaky homemade pie crust. Yet another name for coca de vidre is “llengua de gat”, or cat’s tongue, because of its elongated shape.

Here’s the recipe: there is none. Like most traditional dishes, each cook has her own way of making it, and they’re all valid. How should you make it? However you like. However it tastes the best to you. But if I must: you preheat the oven to – I don’t know, maybe 400? Roll out the dough, brush a thin coat of olive oil on it, smother it in white sugar, and add pine nuts that toast up nicely in the oven. When is it ready? When it’s ready! How do you know? Does it look delectably edible? Yes? Then it’s ready. As soon as you remove it from the oven – and this is the key – spritz it with anisette (anise liqueur); this immediately liquefies the sugar with a satisfying sizzle, which then hardens into a glass-like coating. Hence the name. Don’t stint on the sugar: coca de vidre is emphatically NOT a diet food, so indulge… and enjoy! And eat it hot, right out of the oven, when all the flavors infuse the senses with the delightfully cloying sweetness of the anisette-glazed sugar, the toasted earthiness of the pine nuts, and the buttery flakiness of the crust.

I don’t know… it’s fairly heady stuff. So maybe coca de vidre should be considered a controlled substance after all, bringing into closer kinship with its better-known namesake.