Let them eat coca

Maggie calls them fat pies: coca. Of course, it’s also the Spanish word for cocaine, but provided we’re thinking snack rather than snort, a coca is, to my mind, something like a local version of pizza. There was a time, maybe fifteen to twenty years ago, when it was one of the staples whenever there was free food at an event in Pinoso. No vol-au-vents, no cube of cheese and a silverskin onion on a stick; you got a rectangular piece of coca

The best bits were the ones from the middle of the baking trays: a spongy, bread-like base, heavy with olive oil and smeared with grated tomato, usually finished with a salty punch of anchovies or sardines. The corner pieces had too much pastry and not enough topping.

Just before Christmas, maybe five years ago the staunch women of Cáritas (the Roman Catholic charity) were running a fundraising breakfast from the community room alongside the parish church. One of the main things on offer was coca. It wasn't what I expected. They had a bowl of dough, from which they pinched off a small ball—about golf-ball size—then worked it into a thin disc, maybe 8 cm across, and cooked it on a plancha, a griddle or hotplate. I seem to remember it was two for a euro. If the earlier version was pizza-like, this was closer to a pancake or a pitta. There were toppings—cured sausage and the like—but they were good to eat plain too.

These disc-like cocas are now pretty much a staple when the local pensioner's club or housewife's association do some food alongside an event. They’re easy to produce and seem to have almost completely replaced the spongier, pizza-like version. 

The original idea of this piece was to describe a local tradition, well a local food as part of a tradition, so that newcomers would recognise it when they saw it. What I had, though, was a bit too vague even for me. So, looking for something more reliable than my memory i turned to machines. This is the abridged version of what ChatGPT gave me.

Coca can refer to three basic styles: a rustic flatbread usually eaten mid-morning, a savoury oven-baked pastry topped with vegetables or fish, or a sweet sponge cake.

Coca a la pala: the most familiar version here. A simple flatbread made from flour, water, olive oil and salt. Depending on the household or bakery, the dough may be unleavened or lightly rested with a little yeast. It’s stretched by hand into thin rounds and cooked on a hot metal plate. The result sits somewhere between bread and flatbread: dry enough to travel, but still flexible enough to fold.

It’s commonly served with olive oil and tomato; salted fish or anchovies; grilled sausages; cured meats; or seasonal vegetables.

Oven-baked savoury cocas have a softer, slightly thicker dough, with toppings spread directly over the base. Common versions include coca de tomate (a thin layer of tomato, olive oil and sometimes onion), coca de pimiento (often made with roasted red peppers and plenty of olive oil), coca de sardinas (with sardines, tomato and peppers), and coca with longaniza, a local sausage not unlike a traditional British banger.

So far, that’s broadly in line with my own recollections, but the AI then introduced coca de molletes, which it claimed are more typical of Alicante and Elche. These apparently have a base topped with flour-and-oil crumbs that turn golden in the oven, and can be served plain, with something sweet like hot chocolate, or in a savoury version with toppings such as anchovies.

Still unsure, and keen to be reasonably accurate, I asked my pal Jesús what he knew about cocas. Given that he almost never cooks and relies on Inma to keep him from starving, he wasn’t much help, though he did remember coca boba. The AI confirms that this is a sweet sponge cake, usually rectangular, topped with sugar, lemon zest and sometimes cinnamon.

The AI also defended the confusion, not by blaming decaying neurons, as I might, but by pointing to the vagueness of local tradition: “One of the charming things about food in inland Alicante is that people often care more about whether something tastes right than whether it fits a formal category. Ask five people in Pinoso what counts as a coca and you may get five slightly different answers. Some will focus on coca a la pala, others on tomato-topped bakery versions, and those with a sweet tooth might think of coca boba. And they’re all right. These foods were never designed as a neat culinary category—they evolved as practical dishes shaped by farming life, family traditions and whatever ingredients were available.”

So I give up and leave the matter to you, should you ever come across any of the varieties.