Coca with tomato, the most menorcan

Summer is a time for dinners outdoors and on the seafront, for family gatherings, for friends, for going out to stay, for living life in the middle of the street, and it also has a gastronomy that adapts to these modus vivendi, it is that which is cooked at home and eaten cold and at the same time is easy to take to the chosen place.

Stuffed aubergines and courgettes, Vienna rolls with sobrassada, omelettes with marrania (potato, onion, green pepper, red pepper, aubergines and courgette) or the well-preserved omelette with potatoes, in addition to the breaded steaks, the salads of tomato, cucumber, onion and capers, and also the ensaladillas, despite the risk of salmonellosis when this was or is made with homemade mayonnaise.

But if we have to talk about the queen of snacks and dinners outdoors or on the seafront, this is undoubtedly coca, both savoury and sweet, because we Menorcans like it, we delight in it and we can say that we are addicted to coca, but don't get me wrong, we are addicted to cocas, those that are cooked at home with a dough of tallow or cooked butter, with or without yeast, one, two and even three soft, with fruit, with vegetables, with fresh fish, canned, with meat, with sausages, with pumpkin... And the fact is that our cocas allow almost all the ingredients that the island offers us on top or between them, where they also pair sweet and savoury, fruit with sausages and in this way we will have apricot cocas with sobrasada, and if we mix fish with vegetables we will have tomato cocas with herring, coca tapada with fish, and also this repertoire of sweet cakes such as cakes with apricots, with cider, with plums, with figs, with sobrasada and sugar, with jam... and the savory ones with sofregit, with chard, with spinach, with roasted red peppers, but if there is a very characteristic cake of Menorca, it is the coca with tomato.

The coca with tomato is a simple coca, garnished with half summer tomatoes, large and ripe, juicy, which are sprinkled with a pinch of garlic and parsley, breadcrumbs, red pepper, a pinch of sugar or honey and drizzled with olive oil, and which is sometimes also accompanied by slices of fresh fish such as mussola, gató or ratjada... This coca is the most Menorcan, and we will not find it in the bakeries of the other islands, and it is never missing from outdoor dinners or in its individual, round version, with half a tomato in the middle, it is found in the bakeries and is still the snack or snack of many Menorcans, who also have their own ritual for eating it, and it is none other than breaking off a piece of the dough that will be dipped in the tomato and taken to the mouth to eat it. You have to have skill, perhaps we Menorcans have it innately, to not get dirty.