Ryanair is to charge passengers at Palam airport who take on as hand luggage ensaïmadas which exceed the maximum permissible dimensions (55x40x20). The cost will be eight euros. It is a common to see passengers taking ensaïmadas onto planes, as they are typical gifts for friends and family on the mainland. There is a fear that the move could have a negative effect on ensaïmada production and retailing.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Showing posts with label Ensaïmada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ensaïmada. Show all posts
Friday, June 14, 2013
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Cereal Killers: Commodities and Mallorca's prices
Here's some bad news if you're someone who likes his or her morning fix of lard and sugar. Or news that you will be totally indifferent towards if you don't. The price of the ensaïmada is on the rise. I'm firmly in the indifference camp. They can charge what they like. I'm not buying anyway.
The ensaïmada may not qualify as a basic necessity of life, though for some it may do. Bread, on the other hand. Meat, too. Coffee? A questionable necessity, but something most cannot do without. What do they all have in common? They are all getting more expensive. Why? The price of commodities.
Strange to report, but ensaïmadas don't grow on trees. There aren't groves of these coiled frisbees hovering from branches in the late-winter breezes around Soller, and spreading sugary blossom. The ensaïmada doesn't come from anywhere, but a key ingredient does. The cereal for its flour. Coffee does not get pumped out of wells from fincas around Mallorca. It isn't expresso-ed from industrial Gaggias and transported in tankers. It comes in the form of a bean. Cereals, beans. Commodities.
The cost of cereals has risen to the extent that the price in the bar or the shop of the ensaïmada or bread may be affected by as much as a 20% increase. Meat is also affected, thanks to the increased cost of animal feed that includes a mix of grain. The rising cost of bread is aggravating a trend in the Balearics that has seen bread consumption fall significantly in the past decade. Per person, this consumption is half that of some other parts of Spain. The increased cost is clearly not the jam; it is the dripping of fears for the tenability of the local baker's shop.
Commodity prices generally are undergoing a boom time. Much of the reason for this lies with investment on futures markets by fund managers. Not content with having created recession, the bankers are now fuelling inflation and sending prices up thanks to their hedged and derivative mathematical models, and coining it in through the bonus system. The rich get richer and the poor can't afford to be given this day their daily bread. Or ensaïmada.
Cereals and meat may be on the rise, but they're nothing compared with coffee. The highest prices ever are being registered in trading in Kenya. I repeat, highest prices ever. The commodity boom is just one factor, another is poor weather, especially in South America. The price of coffee has been on an upward movement for some while. The current highest prices ever in Nairobi were predated by, for example, a 44% rise in coffee futures between June and September last year.
This doesn't mean a 44% rise in the price of your cortado in the local bar (or you would hope not), but the trading in coffee does have an effect. Obviously it does. The effect filters through the holes of the coffee supply chain to the wholesaler and thence to the shop or café and, naturally enough, to the drinker. Unless, that is, the retailer or the café-owner decides to absorb any rise and see his margin eroded. Or, he may opt for an inferior-grade coffee that is cheaper, but doesn't taste as good.
The rise in commodity prices comes on top of those for fuel and energy. The price on the forecourts has gone up, electricity rose by 10% at the start of this year, gas is also more expensive. Mallorca doesn't exist in isolation - well, actually it does in one respect, which is its own story - and so it is as affected by global trading and by the prices of commodities and oil as anywhere.
There may be an awful lot of coffee in Brazil, some of which has been affected by leaf rust, but there isn't an awful lot of it in Mallorca. In fact there isn't any, other than the awful of it that is drunk. And the price of your morning dose of caffeine and ensaïmada looks as though it might just get higher.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The ensaïmada may not qualify as a basic necessity of life, though for some it may do. Bread, on the other hand. Meat, too. Coffee? A questionable necessity, but something most cannot do without. What do they all have in common? They are all getting more expensive. Why? The price of commodities.
Strange to report, but ensaïmadas don't grow on trees. There aren't groves of these coiled frisbees hovering from branches in the late-winter breezes around Soller, and spreading sugary blossom. The ensaïmada doesn't come from anywhere, but a key ingredient does. The cereal for its flour. Coffee does not get pumped out of wells from fincas around Mallorca. It isn't expresso-ed from industrial Gaggias and transported in tankers. It comes in the form of a bean. Cereals, beans. Commodities.
The cost of cereals has risen to the extent that the price in the bar or the shop of the ensaïmada or bread may be affected by as much as a 20% increase. Meat is also affected, thanks to the increased cost of animal feed that includes a mix of grain. The rising cost of bread is aggravating a trend in the Balearics that has seen bread consumption fall significantly in the past decade. Per person, this consumption is half that of some other parts of Spain. The increased cost is clearly not the jam; it is the dripping of fears for the tenability of the local baker's shop.
Commodity prices generally are undergoing a boom time. Much of the reason for this lies with investment on futures markets by fund managers. Not content with having created recession, the bankers are now fuelling inflation and sending prices up thanks to their hedged and derivative mathematical models, and coining it in through the bonus system. The rich get richer and the poor can't afford to be given this day their daily bread. Or ensaïmada.
Cereals and meat may be on the rise, but they're nothing compared with coffee. The highest prices ever are being registered in trading in Kenya. I repeat, highest prices ever. The commodity boom is just one factor, another is poor weather, especially in South America. The price of coffee has been on an upward movement for some while. The current highest prices ever in Nairobi were predated by, for example, a 44% rise in coffee futures between June and September last year.
This doesn't mean a 44% rise in the price of your cortado in the local bar (or you would hope not), but the trading in coffee does have an effect. Obviously it does. The effect filters through the holes of the coffee supply chain to the wholesaler and thence to the shop or café and, naturally enough, to the drinker. Unless, that is, the retailer or the café-owner decides to absorb any rise and see his margin eroded. Or, he may opt for an inferior-grade coffee that is cheaper, but doesn't taste as good.
The rise in commodity prices comes on top of those for fuel and energy. The price on the forecourts has gone up, electricity rose by 10% at the start of this year, gas is also more expensive. Mallorca doesn't exist in isolation - well, actually it does in one respect, which is its own story - and so it is as affected by global trading and by the prices of commodities and oil as anywhere.
There may be an awful lot of coffee in Brazil, some of which has been affected by leaf rust, but there isn't an awful lot of it in Mallorca. In fact there isn't any, other than the awful of it that is drunk. And the price of your morning dose of caffeine and ensaïmada looks as though it might just get higher.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Not The Same: Ensaïmadas
Say sweetbreads to me and I'll come out in a cold sweat. It's all to do with the memory of a meal in the Dordogne. The dish looked appetising enough, until I was told what "ris de veau" actually meant. I had mistaken the "ris" bit to be rice. Tucking into pancreas isn't at the top of my list of culinary experiences to be repeated. Nor, come to that, is sweet bread.
Sweet bread is making an appearance in the US. The separation of bread from sweet presumably overcomes the connotation with offal, making it more a waffle, or maybe the Americans don't know what sweetbreads are. Whatever. Sweet bread is available in Starbucks. Mallorcan Sweet Bread, aka the ensaïmada (so long as the aka is not used, it would seem). The Americans can lard their asses even more, courtesy of Mallorcan lard. Or can they?
The key ingredient of the ensaïmada is pork lard - "saïm". The word is derived from the Latin for fat. An unfathomable peculiarity of an otherwise healthy Mallorcan Mediterranean diet is that they go and wreck it by shovelling lard and sugar down their necks. What on earth are they thinking of?
The reverence shown to the ensaïmada baffles me. It has its own "day". It gets hauled off in boxes by passengers from the airport, intent on inflicting it on unsuspecting relatives and friends on the mainland. It has been 15 metres in diameter, such as at Inca's Dijous Bo a couple of years back. It has been, according to a press reader survey in February 2009, the seventh wonder of Mallorca (at least it wasn't the first).
The ensaïmada has also been a victim of recession and of rival Mallorcan products. Production and sales have fallen.
According to Starbucks' US website, one of its Mallorca Sweet Breads contains a mere 60% of your daily saturated fat intake; indeed it has 39% of total fat intake for the day. The site bigs up the bun by saying that (in Mallorca) "one wouldn't dream of starting the day without a coffee and this traditional sweet bread". Ah yes, you wake up and the first thing that comes to mind is to get off to the bakers or the local café and give yourself a sugary moustache.
Going through the lengthy list of the sweet bread's ingredients on the website, there seems to be no mention of "saïm". Maybe the pork lard is covered by something else, but if not, then it isn't, strictly speaking, the saïm thing. Were it to be, then who knows how high the fat content would be.
The Mallorcan ensaïmada is a registered "brand", but the president of the ensaïmada regulatory council, which has faced its own financing issues, reckons that there isn't a lot to prevent Starbucks from promoting the bread. It is promotion, after all. But the name "ensaïmada" isn't actually being used, albeit that the website gives a brief background to what is "called ensaïmada in Spanish". The president also points out - most important this - that the Starbucks' bread has been coiled in the wrong direction. And yes, there is a right direction. To the right. Clockwise.
The ensaïmada isn't only to be found in Mallorca. It is not uncommon in, say, the Philippines or Latin America, but the pork lard ingredient is what makes it distinctively Mallorcan. It would be telling porkies to claim that the ensaïmadas of the world, without a dash of pig, are really ensaïmadas.
As for my own personal less than great regard for the ensaïmada, don't take this as some holier-than-thou health assault on pastry or cake in general. Not at all. I can have my cake and eat it, too. Many times over, thanks very much. Just that the ensaïmada, rather like another hugely over-rated breakfast bread, the croissant, is terminally dull. And it confirms that the Mallorcans, like the French, don't understand breakfast. Mind you, neither are as mad as the Dutch who put chocolate bits on bread and butter.
No, it's nothing to do with health or the presence of pork lard. It's everything to do with breakfast. Bacon and sausages a-sizzling. And an egg being fried. Preferably in lard. The ensaïmada? Doesn't even get near.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sweet bread is making an appearance in the US. The separation of bread from sweet presumably overcomes the connotation with offal, making it more a waffle, or maybe the Americans don't know what sweetbreads are. Whatever. Sweet bread is available in Starbucks. Mallorcan Sweet Bread, aka the ensaïmada (so long as the aka is not used, it would seem). The Americans can lard their asses even more, courtesy of Mallorcan lard. Or can they?
The key ingredient of the ensaïmada is pork lard - "saïm". The word is derived from the Latin for fat. An unfathomable peculiarity of an otherwise healthy Mallorcan Mediterranean diet is that they go and wreck it by shovelling lard and sugar down their necks. What on earth are they thinking of?
The reverence shown to the ensaïmada baffles me. It has its own "day". It gets hauled off in boxes by passengers from the airport, intent on inflicting it on unsuspecting relatives and friends on the mainland. It has been 15 metres in diameter, such as at Inca's Dijous Bo a couple of years back. It has been, according to a press reader survey in February 2009, the seventh wonder of Mallorca (at least it wasn't the first).
The ensaïmada has also been a victim of recession and of rival Mallorcan products. Production and sales have fallen.
According to Starbucks' US website, one of its Mallorca Sweet Breads contains a mere 60% of your daily saturated fat intake; indeed it has 39% of total fat intake for the day. The site bigs up the bun by saying that (in Mallorca) "one wouldn't dream of starting the day without a coffee and this traditional sweet bread". Ah yes, you wake up and the first thing that comes to mind is to get off to the bakers or the local café and give yourself a sugary moustache.
Going through the lengthy list of the sweet bread's ingredients on the website, there seems to be no mention of "saïm". Maybe the pork lard is covered by something else, but if not, then it isn't, strictly speaking, the saïm thing. Were it to be, then who knows how high the fat content would be.
The Mallorcan ensaïmada is a registered "brand", but the president of the ensaïmada regulatory council, which has faced its own financing issues, reckons that there isn't a lot to prevent Starbucks from promoting the bread. It is promotion, after all. But the name "ensaïmada" isn't actually being used, albeit that the website gives a brief background to what is "called ensaïmada in Spanish". The president also points out - most important this - that the Starbucks' bread has been coiled in the wrong direction. And yes, there is a right direction. To the right. Clockwise.
The ensaïmada isn't only to be found in Mallorca. It is not uncommon in, say, the Philippines or Latin America, but the pork lard ingredient is what makes it distinctively Mallorcan. It would be telling porkies to claim that the ensaïmadas of the world, without a dash of pig, are really ensaïmadas.
As for my own personal less than great regard for the ensaïmada, don't take this as some holier-than-thou health assault on pastry or cake in general. Not at all. I can have my cake and eat it, too. Many times over, thanks very much. Just that the ensaïmada, rather like another hugely over-rated breakfast bread, the croissant, is terminally dull. And it confirms that the Mallorcans, like the French, don't understand breakfast. Mind you, neither are as mad as the Dutch who put chocolate bits on bread and butter.
No, it's nothing to do with health or the presence of pork lard. It's everything to do with breakfast. Bacon and sausages a-sizzling. And an egg being fried. Preferably in lard. The ensaïmada? Doesn't even get near.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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