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Height = 125 x (outside temperature ºC – dew point ºC)
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So for example, imagine the temperature is 24ºC and the dew point 18ºC. The cloud you are looking at will be at a height of 125 x (24-18) = 750 m.

The dew point is the temperature at which water vapor begins to condense by cooling the air without moisture being fed or discharged. Once the dew point temperature is reached the air is saturated with water vapor and the relative humidity 100%. If you don’t know the current dew point, check this automatic dew point calculator.

Piña colada, barbapapá que se va / Piña colada, disappearing candy floss (2004) © elBulli Restaurant Photography by Francesc Guillamet

Ingredients (serves 10)

30 per cent Sugar Syrup

100 g water
30 g sugar

1. Mix water and sugar and bring to a boil.
2. Refrigerate.

Base for Rum Marbles

88 g of sugar syrup
2.5 g sodium alginate
35 g dark rum
105 g light rum

1. In a tall, narrow container, mix the sugar syrup and the sodium alginate.
2. Beat with an electric mixer until there are no lumps of sodium alginate left.
3. Add dark rum and blend again.
4. Add light rum and blend for three seconds.
5. Refrigerate in a sealed container for 12 hours.

Calcium chloride mix

1500 g water
6.5 g calcium chloride

1. Using a whisk, dissolve calcium chloride in water.
2. Set aside.

Making the rum marbles

200 g rum marble base (as previously prepared)
1500 g calcium chloride mix (as previously prepared)

1. Using a round spoon two centimetres in diameter, make 60 spherical rum marbles from the calcium chloride mixture.
2. Boil for two minutes and drain.
3. Keep covered with water until ready to use, but for no more than ten minutes.

Pineapple juice

1 pineapple, 700 g

1. Remove both ends of the pineapple.
2. Peel and core.
3. Liquefy in an electric blender.
4. Strain one fourth of the blended pulp, applying pressure to remove the juice.
5. Put the remaining pulp through a Superbag.
6. Mix the two amounts of juice together.
7. Refrigerate in a sealed container.

Coconut Milk

350 g Sicoly Coconut milk

1. Strain and put into a sauce dispenser (squeeze bottle).
2. Refrigerate.

Other

100 g sugar

Presentation

1. Put six rum marbles in each of the ten cocktail glasses.
2. Cover the rum marbles with chilled coconut milk.
3. Put two grams of sugar in the candy floss machine and collect with a skewer as it comes out of the machine.
4. Place a 12 centimetre tall ball of candy floss on top of each glass.
5. Serve the cocktail. The waiter will finish filling each glass with cold pineapple juice until the candy floss disappears completely.

The mascletá as we know it today seems to have its origin in an act of movement: the mascletá correguda or ‘runned mascletá’. In the mascletá correguda, long strings with fireworks (the so-called traca) are disposed along the streets of a village or neighbourhood. The fireworks are lit at one extreme and explode all along the way, allowing people to run under the exploding fireworks or along with it, ‘accompanying the fire’.

As the route could be quite long, in order to avoid monotony in the explosions, pyrotechnicians invented a new concept: to create rythm within the explosions using respectively stronger or weaker fireworks at certains points. And so the search for aesthetic enjoyment within the explosions was born.

The beginning and/or the end of the mascletá usually took place at the church square of the village or neighbourhood. Because of the traditional urbanism of these villages, the mascletá was developed in this way: a narrow run through the streets and a final apotheosis at the squares, being those the only places which would allow an important amount of fireworks.

This tradition developed through the years and led to the modern mascletás we can enjoy today at Valencia’s city hall square. Nevertheless, some villages –as the municipality of Godella does every summer– still hold mascletás corregudas as they once were. This video courtesy of Freakpyromaniacs (8′51”) serves as an excellent example of this tradition: streets taken over by a cloud of smoke and rythmic explosions that culminate in a symphony of thunder.