A Taste of Heaven
Yesterday, my husband and I went for a visit to Santiago. There's always something to see or revisit in that city of stone. This time, we went to the Monastery and Seminary of San Martiño Pinario, right next to the cathedral. It dates in reality back to the tenth century, but there's nothing left from that time except a chapel that is now annexed to the cathedral. The present building was rebuilt and reformed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and is a mixture of baroque and neoclassical architecture. It was the richest monastery in all of Galicia, with many priories that depended on it. Now it houses a museum, the seminary, a guest house, and a specialty store. There's also a university department in it, I believe, and the archive of the archdiocese of Santiago. It's big enough.
The museum has some treasures from its time of greatness, including a couple of halls dedicated to explaining the role of the monasteries in primitive medicine and pharmacopeia. The choir stalls behind the altar are impressive, with detailed wood carvings on the lower stalls showing the life of Christ from the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary and his family tree, to the Ascension. If you look down at the base, however, you can tell that time does not forgive even art, and some of the bases are crumbling. But it's still beautiful to contemplate.
After the visit, we went through the guest house to the specialty store, where we had heard there were sweets and desserts from different convents and monasteries all over Spain on sale. It was a sweet tooth's dream, and a diabetic's nightmare. All sorts of confections, bigger, smaller, sweeter, even sweeter, were lined up on tables and shelves. They weren't exactly cheap; they were all handmade and were destined to create funds for the upkeep of their communities. I couldn't resist a little package of panellets and some fruit shaped and colored marzipan. The panellets looked scrumptious, and the marzipan fruits reminded me of the ones I used to beg my mother to buy in the North End when I was a child. They cost 25 cents each back then, and my mother didn't consider them a weekly necessity. But when she did buy me one, it was a beautiful moment of sugary delight, with the caress of almonds. I also bought a chocolate and mint tablet for my daughter, whom we later saw. She later told me it had been delicious.
Many of the recipes the convents use for their singular confections are ancient. Pestiños, glorias, tocinos del cielo, yemas de Santa Teresa, huesos de santo, and many others with strange and curious names, originated in convents and monasteries. Most of the recipes came from ancient families, whose origins were as varied as Spanish history. When a woman joined a convent, she brought her family's recipes with her, and sometimes her cook. All those that use almonds and honey to a certain extent, were of Jewish and Arabic origin. They still resemble modern day Arabic desserts. Then there were those that used pork fat, such as mantecados or polvoróns, incorporated onto the Christmas table. One might argue that their origin was Jewish or Moorish, but the original recipe had been changed by adding pork fat, so the conversos would be seen as true believers by the viejos cristianos. The desserts completely created with just egg yolks and sugar, such as tocino del cielo and yemas de Santa Teresa, and others, were created because certain wine producers used egg whites to clarify their wines, and donated the yolks to the monasteries and convents. I imagine it was a same-day donation.
One might think that cloistered nuns have plenty of time to cook all day, but they have a day about as free as the rest of society. Depending on the community, they get up around six, pray and attend morning Mass, then have breakfast at around eight or nine. Then they go to their respective jobs in the convent until twelve, when they pray again and then eat. After lunch they tend to have a free hour, then pray and go back to work until prayer and supper around eight o'clock. They go to bed anywhere from nine to eleven; those communities with older sisters earlier, while those with younger sisters later. I like routine, but I don't think I could take that kind of strict routine for the rest of my life without a break beyond one day of reflection a month. It takes a very strong love of a God to dedicate one's life to that.
But I do appreciate their love and dedication to the ancient recipes.
The museum has some treasures from its time of greatness, including a couple of halls dedicated to explaining the role of the monasteries in primitive medicine and pharmacopeia. The choir stalls behind the altar are impressive, with detailed wood carvings on the lower stalls showing the life of Christ from the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary and his family tree, to the Ascension. If you look down at the base, however, you can tell that time does not forgive even art, and some of the bases are crumbling. But it's still beautiful to contemplate.
After the visit, we went through the guest house to the specialty store, where we had heard there were sweets and desserts from different convents and monasteries all over Spain on sale. It was a sweet tooth's dream, and a diabetic's nightmare. All sorts of confections, bigger, smaller, sweeter, even sweeter, were lined up on tables and shelves. They weren't exactly cheap; they were all handmade and were destined to create funds for the upkeep of their communities. I couldn't resist a little package of panellets and some fruit shaped and colored marzipan. The panellets looked scrumptious, and the marzipan fruits reminded me of the ones I used to beg my mother to buy in the North End when I was a child. They cost 25 cents each back then, and my mother didn't consider them a weekly necessity. But when she did buy me one, it was a beautiful moment of sugary delight, with the caress of almonds. I also bought a chocolate and mint tablet for my daughter, whom we later saw. She later told me it had been delicious.
Many of the recipes the convents use for their singular confections are ancient. Pestiños, glorias, tocinos del cielo, yemas de Santa Teresa, huesos de santo, and many others with strange and curious names, originated in convents and monasteries. Most of the recipes came from ancient families, whose origins were as varied as Spanish history. When a woman joined a convent, she brought her family's recipes with her, and sometimes her cook. All those that use almonds and honey to a certain extent, were of Jewish and Arabic origin. They still resemble modern day Arabic desserts. Then there were those that used pork fat, such as mantecados or polvoróns, incorporated onto the Christmas table. One might argue that their origin was Jewish or Moorish, but the original recipe had been changed by adding pork fat, so the conversos would be seen as true believers by the viejos cristianos. The desserts completely created with just egg yolks and sugar, such as tocino del cielo and yemas de Santa Teresa, and others, were created because certain wine producers used egg whites to clarify their wines, and donated the yolks to the monasteries and convents. I imagine it was a same-day donation.
One might think that cloistered nuns have plenty of time to cook all day, but they have a day about as free as the rest of society. Depending on the community, they get up around six, pray and attend morning Mass, then have breakfast at around eight or nine. Then they go to their respective jobs in the convent until twelve, when they pray again and then eat. After lunch they tend to have a free hour, then pray and go back to work until prayer and supper around eight o'clock. They go to bed anywhere from nine to eleven; those communities with older sisters earlier, while those with younger sisters later. I like routine, but I don't think I could take that kind of strict routine for the rest of my life without a break beyond one day of reflection a month. It takes a very strong love of a God to dedicate one's life to that.
But I do appreciate their love and dedication to the ancient recipes.
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