tourismPallarsSobirà
It was used, most of all, to make bread, soups and traditional pastry. There was a baking oven almost in every village, private or communal. To grind flour, they would go to the mills, in the region known as moles (millstones). A typical dish based on flour was a kind of soup known as farinetes (porridge). Firstly, a broth was made with sausage and finely sliced onion. Wheat flour was added and then constantly stirred until it thickened. It tasted better as a hot dish and eaten up right after preparing them. If it had to be consumed when cold, it was sliced or cut into the desired piece and warmed up in a frying pan with a trickle of olive oil.
Bread soups were, and still are, boiled in most of our country houses. One can have them boiled or menestra-like. Boiled means putting all the ingredients in the saucepan and bring them to the boil (bread, oil, bacon, salt, pepper and water). The menestra is when the breads and the vegetables are thinly sliced, put on the dish or saucepan, and boiling water is poured over them.
The traditional pastry or cakes, coques and redorts, are also a delicious custom everywhere in the valleys and all over the county of El Pallars. Just baked from the oven, sugar was sprinkled on top and, using a little bouquet of basil branches as a brush, they were painted with aniseed. The dough is the same, but the redort has a whole in the middle, cut in the shape of a cross and then each part in bent over itself to make a beautiful pattern.
From all this selection of flour recipes, the only one that can be purchased is the redorts, which can still be found in the village bakeries.
