Mallorca

"A highly prized specialty amongst both the wealthiest and the poorest are the so-called panades. These can be made with meat or fish. To prepare the former, they first make a dough from fine flour, lard, oil and water which they then shape like a small pot. They add small bits of lamb or turkey with its bones still in, cover it with a bit of fat or sobrasada sausage, and then close it with the same dough and put it in the oven.

Panades are eaten all year long, but preferentially around Easter. The Saturday before Easter Sunday, no family in Palma or in the towns goes without preparing a larger or smaller amount of panades for the holidays to give to families, friends or people who, due to their poverty, can’t afford them directly. To make the panades, all families with certain economic means buy a lamb in one of the busiest markets in Palma near Porta de Sant Antoni. This specialty is also eaten on Pentecost.

The fish variety, panada de peix, is made in the same fashion as the meat variety, though the proportion of oil to lard is greater. The fish is chopped and mixed with parsley, salt and spices. The most widely-used fish for this dish is tonyina (“tuna”), mussola (“houndshark”) and molls (“mullets”). The fish panades are preferentially set aside for Lent, when people also eat another type of pie called cocarroi. After making a dough from flour and oil, it’s shaped into a type of little, pointed bag, shaped like a crescent moon, then filled with spinach, salt, raisins and pine nuts."

Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria. Las Baleares por la palabra y el grabado. Majorca: General Part. Ed. Sa Nostra, Caja de Baleares. Palma de Mallorca. 1982.