fritos

May 22, 2020

My maternal grandmother, my Yaya, enjoyed talking. It didn’t matter what she was doing, or if anyone was even within earshot, really, she would just talk and talk until my grandfather had had enough and implored her for "a few minutes of peace and quiet!" She talked about the past, regaling anyone listening with stories of her youth and family. I was shy in my adolescence and nothing made me happier than the fact that I could spend hours with my Yaya without ever having to utter a word. It was spending summers in her kitchen in northern Spain, watching her move with the certainty earned by years of repetition, that my love for history and the culinary arts developed.

It was during these sessions that I learned about the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and the devastation he wrought within my family. “Post-Civil War Spain was poor,” she would say, as she ladled spoonfuls of fritos batter into the frying pan. “We couldn’t even afford milk.” I had heard it a million times before. How her mother would make fritos, a Spanish version of fried dough, with nothing but flour and water.

My yaya would tell me about her uncle, a suspected communist, hiding in his closet while the national guardsman held a gun to his four-year-old son’s head demanding to know his father’s whereabouts. How only a few days after that incident, the local police picked him up and he was never heard from again. My grand-uncle was one of the disappeared. She would tell me about how she would sneak her father’s newspaper into bed at night to try and teach herself how to read. Or how both of her parents died when she was only 24 years old, making her the head of household for her five younger siblings, even as she was beginning her own family with the birth of my aunt.

She would talk, and I would listen.

Walking around my local supermarket these days, seeing the empty shelves, reminds me of the simplicity of my great grandmother’s recipe. I think about how in a time of abject poverty, political assassinations, and the absence of hope, my great-grandmother would try to conjure up a bit of happiness for her children by making them these treats.

I think of my Yaya, sacrificing so much to raise her siblings and children during a time when having only a few mouths to feed was a daunting task. I think of my mother, forced to choose between my father, an American expat, and her homeland of Spain, as naturalization laws of the time didn’t allow for women to pass on citizenship to their spouses or children. I think of how the only thing she brought with her to the United States were memories and recipes.

Now that I have a child of my own and another on the way. I’ve started to think about the importance of family memories and recipes, too. Fritos -- this is what I want to pass on to my children, but not just the recipe; I want them to hear our oral history. I want them to learn about my great grandmother, who worked so hard to form a foundation for her children from which they were able to build. I want them to know about the sacrifices my Yaya made in order to provide the kinds of opportunities for her children that she only got to experience in the dark, during her secret late night reading sessions. And I want them to know about my mother, who left everything she knew behind so that her children could have the choices that were denied her.

Ingredients:

1 cup of all-purpose flour

½ tsp of salt

½ tsp of baking powder

1 egg yolk

1 cup of whole milk

olive oil (enough to deep fry batter)

sugar for dusting

Directions:

1. Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, egg yolk, and whole milk in a large bowl until batter is smooth.

2. In frying pan, heat olive oil on high heat. Spoon one tablespoon of batter into oil (spooning in as many as can fit in the pan). Cook until golden brown on both sides (batter should rise a little in the oil, shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes to get golden brown on each side.) Remove from pan and serve immediately.

3. Serve with sugar on the side for dipping.

Danny Gillis graduated from culinary school and spent a decade in kitchens before pursuing a degree in History from Salem State University; he plans to be a social studies teacher.

This post is part of a series of student reflections by Salem State's Spring 2020 Introduction to Public History students.