ORANGE BLOSSOM BREAD - PAN DE MUERTO
Bournemouth Friday 13th October 2017
Orange Blossom bread
Pan de muerto
My hands smell orange blossom, my palms are very soft and they feel like if I have lost all my fingerprints. I have been preparing and kneaded the dough to bake this amazing and tasty seasonal orange blossom bread: dead bread and better known in my loved Mexico as a “pan de muerto”.
Memories in my head are coming and going without prior notice, memories of when I was a child an we used to eat it with a very frothy sweet and bitter hot chocolate with spices and cinnamon, a perfect balance for the orangey taste of the dead bread. My mum used to buy it, an expensive one, this is a luxury that we where allow to have just once a year, so needed to be worthy.
The day of the dead in Mexico is magical, more for children; it is a fun day and is our tradition to celebrate it with big family gatherings. People, food, drinks, music and a lot of chatting transform this day, in more like a party rather than a sad day, in a party to remember those that are gone and are waiting for us and those alive that are celebrating dead and acknowledging that in future all, dead and alive, eventually will be together.
Mexican children are taught that dead is something that will happen to all of us, sooner or later, but will happen. I remember having as homework a “calaverita”, a very bizarre kind of poem in which we have to rhyme the verses, its content is about “The Catrina”, she is the dead herself, she is coming from where she “lives” to take us all with her, to a better place, to a better life. We know with certainly we will meet her, some day or some night, but while we are in this world we can always flee, run away and escape from her.
I remember writing “calaveritas” about my parents, they were so much fun; my parents would feel honoured and feel proud and when read them they would laugh. The “calaveritas” are often topped up with a little sugar skull bought in the nearest market, the seller would ask you for a name and then he would write it with colouring icing in their fronts. We basically eat ourselves and sometimes eat each other, bite to bite we absolutely loving each bit of our 100% sugar skull own representations. Later in the years the skulls where chocolate made with nuts and peanuts, others with marshmallows, and lately, the new and healthy options, are made with amaranth, chia and all kind of seeds.
My dad is a teacher, the kind that teaches those whom want to be teachers. Every year, this season, he used to come back home with a vast amount of edible skulls. Mexicans, we are very much in food, and particularly this season, we put a lot on weigh. It is definitely sugar heaven for children, the bakeries are packed and manly the only bread that they are baking is the orange blossom breads (panes de muerto) the markets have an amazing displays of chocolate skulls and dry sweet fruit, cocadas (coconut sweets) and fresh pumpkin.
I love the “dia de muertos” in Mexico, the tradition of celebrating and bringing alive those that are dead and believing it, make this special days in something surreal, try to image!, alive want to be dead and we want to bring dead alive. Just Mexicans proudly represent this grand occasion, it is not a surprise then that even the little girls want to be dressed as the Catrina and the millions of home and public Altars that have been displayed all around houses and plazas would make you feel that you have actually died, it is a happily dreamlike season.
The Altar is a beautiful Mexican custom that brings so many different memories to my mind, the odours of the orange blossom bread, the wax of the candles burning, the intense smell of the marigold (cempasuchil) flowers, burning incense sticks and all the offerings like the fruits, tejocote, limes, sugar cane, oranges, apples and jícamas made me felt like if I was in a market, and also, and usually, very much hungry. The tequila or mescal for that uncle that passed away and liked to drink, the things that our deceased used to like so much like a packet of cigarettes, that when I was teenager used to seal, those belonged to granddad that spent his life coughing and coughing but nevertheless he always was smoking. The tasty mole negro for our Oaxacan aunty Estela that when alive used to cooked it and eat it with exceptional pleasure and the favourite toy that litter Juan used to play with and now has been left behind.
The Altar is completed with all their pictures. There is also a big candle, the biggest one, and it is burning permanently, it is next to a back and white big picture that always takes a very privileged position of the Altar; she is Grandma, she just comes out from that dusty corner every year to be the centre of all attentions, how would I like to had met her alive and in real life. The stories I have heard about her are tales make her a warm-hearted, loving and hard working person, loyal and reserved, fragile in appearance but tough as a steel, honest and funny, and with some other adjectives that make her very much like me.
My mother always puts in her Altar salt to protect our loved ones from bad spirits, delicious pieces of Oaxacan dark chocolate; those that my displeased mum had to keep replacing; my sister, dad and me used to eat every time when passing by the Altar, and water, no just to give our deceased energy in the way there but also to help them to purify their souls. The Altar must have colours and be pleasant for the visitors. I remember being seated with cousins for hours making “papel picado”, which now is considered a Mexican folk art, it is basically paper being cut into beautiful and elaborate designs, this lovely activity surely helped my mum to keep us very much entertained and busy, we had to be very precised when cutting it, a bad cut intro the paper could be the end and needed to be started again.
But Catrinas, calaveritas, sugar skulls, Altars are just the pick of the iceberg, the magic actually happens in the cemeteries; all of them, once a year suffer a total transformation, from being completly neglected to be full of life, beautiful colorful designed carpets made by hand with flowers petals cover the corridors between the tombs, they would be packed with more flowers and candles that will burn all nightlong and for 2 nights the cemeteries this season will be full of people, entire families that will drive from all over the country to that grave(s) that unite them, all will bring food, drinks and party, the guitars will be played until their strings break, the voices will sing until are aphonic; and just for one night, on the 1st of November for the children and on the 2nd of November for the grown ups; the consciousness of being together, the warmth of all of us visiting our gone loved ones and the wish to see them again will bring them back, from where they are, bringing them ALIVE.
Elisa Ponce
