Andorra: Trinxat

Andorra is a little pimple of a country tucked in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, so you’d think it might share some exquisite cuisine with France or Spain, or even share in the Basque or Catalan cuisine. However, Trinxat, a potato and cabbage pancake, seems to be the closest thing to a national dish that we could find.

There’s not much industry in Andorra – 80% of GDP comes from tourism, and the main two industries are skiing and being a tax haven. Apparently the skiing is the best in the Pyrenees. And the food?

Andorran cuisine … has been shaped by centuries of isolation. With snow having blocked the mountain passes for several months it’s very much centred around the local produce which could survive the harsh conditions and sustain the workers in the fields. Staples like potatoes, cabbage and beans, lamb from the hills and cured meats such as bacon and sausages.

Trinxat is a truly basic and cheap meal. It has little more than potatoes, cabbage, and pork, three things that almost anyone can grow and raise, even in poor growing conditions. The potatoes and cabbage are boiled separately till soft, then mashed together. You create a pancake out of the potato/cabbage mixture then fry it on both sides till crisp, and put some pork or bacon on top. Here’s a picture of what Trinxat looks like – although our pancake looked better

This is the recipe we used, although we halved the quantities shown and didn’t use the fatback.

• salt
• 1 2-lb. savoy cabbage, tough outer leaves discarded
• 2 lbs. russet potatoes, peeled
• 12 thick slices of meaty salt pork or bacon
• 3 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
• 2 1/2 oz. fatback, rind removed, thinly sliced
• freshly ground black pepper

You can look at the online recipe for the original details – what follows is a slight modification.

We looked for savoy cabbage at Sunflower but they only had regular cabbage and napa cabbage, so we used regular cabbage. We also figured there would be enough fat from the bacon that we didn’t need the fatback. I mean, we have statins, but there has to be a limit.

The original recipe calls for cooking the cabbage whole and the potatoes optionally whole. It’s almost as though they don’t have knives in Andorra. After all, the potatoes and cabbage will be mashed so why not cut them smaller so they cook faster?

Anyway, that’s what we did, dice the cabbage and cut the potatoes in small chunks and boil separately, then when soft we combined them in a large bowl and mashed them together.

Then we fried the garlic in olive oil and mixed that with the potato/cabbage mixture. We also took half the bacon and cooked and shredded it in the pancake because it seemed that the pancake would be better with bacon in it rather than on it, but we did keep the other half to put on top.

After mashing up the cabbage and potatoes, with olive oil, garlic, and shredded bacon, we poured half the bacon fat in the skillet and made one big pancake directly in the skillet, mushing it down so that it filled the skillet from side to side and was of even thickness. After cooking for about 10 minutes to brown the base, we had to flip it.

Shaking the pancake in the skillet was a strange experience because it rippled. The base was crisp but the main part of the pancake was somewhat mobile, so it looked at though waves were flowing through it. Very strange. To flip it we put a large plate over the skillet and upended everything so the skillet was now crisp side up. We then poured the rest of the bacon fat into the skillet and slid the pancake back in, cooking the second side for another ten minutes.

Once it was done we divided the pancake in to and put the rest of the bacon on top, then went to watch The Reader on DVD while we ate.

What a great movie, although it was very annoying that the young student, Michael Berg, didn’t have the courage to tell the truth about his former lover, Hanna Schmitz. What a wimp. On the other hand, Schmitz was also a coward for not admitting she was illiterate. So, a story of lack of courage on the part of the two main protagonists.

Where it gets more interesting is in thinking about what she could/should have done as a Nazi camp guard. It’s easy to be judgmental from a distance, as was the chief judge. On the other hand, Schmitz pretty much shut everyone up when she asked “What would you have done?” No easy answers for that one when you know that disobeying orders might result in death.

It’s so easy to be moralistic from a distance, especially when you are on the winning side and thus making the rules. It makes me think of the Nürnberg Trials, where being ordered to do something was no excuse. Easy to say when you are accusing others, but much harder to implement when it’s your own people being accused, as we’ve seen in Vietnam and Iraq. As they say, victor’s justice.

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