June, the month of Saint John

Bep Al·lès / Ciutadella — In Ciutadella, June is not merely the beginning of summer: it is the time when the city starts to breathe Saint John. The air changes, houses open up, pantries are checked, and the festivities announce themselves before the horses fill the streets. One of the most popular preludes are the festers, community fires of conversation and music, where gin with lemonade, songs, coques, pastissets and Vienna rolls with sobrasada form part of the same Ciutadella ritual.

The gastronomy of Saint John cannot be understood without Menorca’s natural calendar. June is the season of apricots, cherries, brevas and early pears, also known as Saint John’s pears or Saint Peter’s pears. It is also the time when cows produce less milk and cheese production decreases. For this reason, in many homes the loaves set aside to provide a supply of old or cured cheese are opened, as are the largest sobrasadas, expressly reserved for the feast.

This is a cuisine of celebration, but not of long, still tables. Saint John is movement, street life, visits, breakfasts, afternoon snacks and meals that allow people to keep up with the intense rhythm of the festivities. Bread with companatge plays an essential role: sobrasada, cuixot, carn i xulla, white botifarró and cheese. Alongside it, ensaimada with cooked chocolate preserves the strength of family rituals, while rubiols filled with minced meat, coques with tomato, peppers or sofrito, and sweet coques with apricot or cherry explain the gastronomic identity of Ciutadella better than any speech.

At festive meals, meatballs with hazelnut or almond sauce hold a prominent place, although meatballs with tomato have been gaining ground.

In the past, dishes such as rabbit with peppers or with onions were also common, foods that could be served hot or cold. More recently, the feast has incorporated calderetas, rice dishes with lobster, seafood, and lunches or dinners in restaurants, a sign of a celebration that evolves without entirely losing the thread of the pantry.

Desserts complete this map of flavours: manjar blanco with crespellets, almond tart, cream fritters, seasonal fruit, sugar cubes with water and aniseed, macaroons, sugared almonds and hazelnuts.

Saint John means horses, caixers i cavallers; Saint John is music, protocols and emotion. But it is also cuisine. In Ciutadella, eating for Saint John means taking part in an ancient story made of countryside, sea, pantry, fire and street; a story that is renewed every year, yet preserves intact the essential taste of the patronal feast.