Monday 4 June 2012

A Celebration of the Orange

Walked in to the plaça in Fornalutx today, to be confronted by a huge boat made of oranges and lemons. It is a beautifully constructed thing, topped by a billowing white sail, a skilled sculpture of hundreds of oranges and lemons held together by rubber bands - albeit a somewhat strange sight in a mountain village in Mallorca. But the week long orange fiesta in the Soller Valley is filled with the unexpected and the bizarre. Every child thinks it is an excuse to beg, borrow or steal a pile of oranges, sit on his or her front door step with the citrus mountain in front of them and sell them to you one by one (10 centimos each) as if they are taking part in some ancient fruit worshipping ritual. Their parents are baking up a storm and erecting trestle tables wherever there is a space to sell you slices of orange cake and all the restaurants in the Soller Valley are offering specialities such as cod with orange aioli and local prawns marinated in orange vinaigrette, rounded off with orange sorbet and more orange cake and washed down with Angel d'Or, the local, extremely potent orange liquer - it could be quite a week!
Must go now, the local restaurant here in Fornalutx is offering scallops cooked in Angel d'Or liquer, salmon with cream of oranges and - wait for it - orange cake!

No comments:

Post a Comment