Gran Canaria's big bloom

Tejeda - Off to the Almond Mountains

The mountain village of Tejeda is famous for its wines and cheese. It lies at an altitude of 1000 meters and is not to be confused with the Parador and the Cruz de Tejeda, 500 meters higher up. But above all, it is famous for a product that is sometimes referred to as the "healthiest of all dried fruits". In Gran Canaria, it has almost become synonymous with Tejeda: the almond!

If you ask the people of Gran Canaria what there is in Tejeda, the answer is inevitably "almond trees...". But of course, the landscape in the mountains of Gran Canaria also has a very diverse, indigenous flora. When asked what you can buy in Tejeda, we are told: "Bienmesabe made from almonds". You might also hear about "almond polvorones", "stuffed almonds" and a few other delicacies that also have almonds in their name.

Just think of the bienmesabe. The typical sweet from Tejeda. This sweet not only has the best name you can find. Bienmesabe, the dessert of the region, is also the best accompaniment there is, the partner of the year. A mixture of sugar, almonds, egg yolk and cinnamon that goes perfectly with every ice cream imaginable. With any. And also with cakes or anything you want to sweeten.

And then, of course, there is Tejeda marzipan... We haven't forgotten about it, but want to dedicate an extra section to it. Almost all the women in the village make marzipan, and many of them (who were young in the 1960s or before) also worked in the almond harvest. "My grandmother always had marzipan for Christmas, and marzipan was also made in September for Socorro, the feast of the Helpful Virgin," says Rosa Mari Medina, the village's best-known confectioner.

The families who owned almond trees in Tejeda or had almonds because they worked for a neighbor who did, made the cakes themselves from boiled, ground almonds. The almond paste was mixed with the same amount of sugar and placed in the oven of the village pastry shop to bake. This is how marzipan was made.

When the late corn was sown in September, the young women of the village set off to work harvesting almonds in remote areas such as Hoya de la Vieja, where they slept on gorse branches in a cave. "We stayed there for maybe four or five days. The men worked with the stick (vara) and the women collected the almonds on the ground. They were placed in baskets, which were then emptied into sacks," says one of the women, who was young at the time, in the 1960s.

The almond trees in Hoya de la Vieja belonged to a woman from Los Manantiales. She also worked with the harvest and slept in the cave like everyone else. She also prepared meals from a simple potato soup with a few onion leaves and a tomato mojo made from almonds, which became known as the "mojo of Paca Navarro". This was served with gofio, which was mixed in water.

Francisca Navarro was still guarding her recipe as the 20th century drew to a close and she herself was already in her eighties. She had inherited it from her mother, who had inherited it from "Tía Francisca Pérez, an aunt of my mother's, more than a hundred years ago..." She always called her spicy paste simply mojo, but it became commonly known as the "mojo of Paca Navarro", especially among the women she hired to harvest almonds back then.


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