Chocolate Con Churros

Not far from La Puerta del Sol in the center of Madrid is La Chocolatería San Ginés. Although I am not an expert on the subject, I have been told by native madrileños that the CSG is the world-wide standard for chocolate con churros. It is the standard by which all other churros are measured. It's like the Yankees to baseball. It's Yellowstone to national parks. It's the Louvre to art museums. It's Elvis to rock and roll. It's Everest to mountains. It's El Camaron to flamenco. It's Coke to soft drinks. It's Saudi Arabia to oil. I could go on, but the point is that the CSG is the gold standard.


The churros at the CSG are served plain, without sugar. There are sugar packets at the table that you can add to your churros on your own. There is no cinnamon in sight. The churros are served with hot chocolate. As you can see, it's served in a cup, but it is barely liquid. It's more like warm, thin pudding. It's a very rich chocolate much stronger and closer to dark chocolate than your basic hot chocolate in the US. The churros are fried dough, of course, but are not overly greasy. There is a good crunch and a light, steamy interior. They are satisfyingly crunchy and chewy. You dip them in the chocolate.

Chocolate con churros is a common mid-afternoon snack, una merienda it is called. It is a very filling snack what with all the fried dough and the thick chocolate. It is substantial, but the truth is that you need a filling merienda around 5:00 p.m. to tide you over, because you probably won't have supper around 10:00 p.m. In other words, without la merienda, you'd starve while waiting for dinner.


By pure chance, we stopped for the night one night in Astorga in northwest Spain. Astorga is located along the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgramage route to Santiago de Compostela, the site of St. James' remains (more on this some other day). Aside from the pilgramage business (which was and still is a business), it turns out that back in the 1800s and 1900s, Astorga was one of the main chocolate manufacturing centers of Europe. There is not much chocolate manufacturing in Astorga any longer aside from a few artisanal producers. I guess the Swiss cornered the market somehow. Aside from chocolate, there are a few other interesting sites in Astorga. For example, there is a gothic cathedral for the pilgrams that is famous mostly for being overwrought (pic here).


Right next to the cathedral is the most famous site in town, the Palacio Episcopal (above). It was designed by Antoni Gaudí, a famous Spanish Catalan art nouveau architect who lived around the turn of the 20th century. The building was commissioned by the local bishop to be the bishop's residence, but upon completion, it was deemed so extravagant that nobody dared live there.


El Museo del Chocolate of Astorga.


The cathedral and Palacio Episcopal were interesting, but for us, the most interesting site in Astorga was El Museo del Chocolate. The museum itself was not all that interesting. There were lots of displays of antique chocolate-making mortars and pestles and forms. There were also a very large number of displays of antique promotional items like the one above. The coolest thing, though, was a video that showed the old-school technique that they used to make the chocolate. This was very interesting. Afterwards, the gift shop was also very interesting, because you could sample and then buy all sorts of different handmade chocolates of varying percentages of cocoa. After extensive sampling, we eventually bought some dark chocolates and some milk chocolates, both with almonds. They were all very good, but the milk chocolate had a richer flavor and creamier texture to my palate. The dark was good and flavorful, but a little too brittle and waxy. The brittleness lessened the richness and creaminess that I prize. We also bought package of the chocolate that you use to make the chocolate for chocolate con churros. I think we left the place with five pounds of chocolate (literally).



Here is a picture of Lisa's first batch of chocolate con churros from just a few days ago. It took us five months to get around to making them mostly because neither of us has ever made a churro before. The chocolate came from the bar we bought in Astorga. The churro recipe was from Lisa's brand new Spanish cookbook, Spain and the World Table. The first batch of churros was excellent, but next time, we will omit the cinnamon and probably use one less egg to see if we can come closer to matching the CSG churro gold standard. And the chocolate? Delicious!