Category — Catalan cuisine

DK Travel has published a guide to eating like a local in 5 cities in the world including Barcelona. They say “you can get to the heart of a city by sampling the local flavors. So if you’re looking for a memorable meal on your travels, we’ve uncovered the ultimate places to visit if you want to eat like a native.”

Their first piece of advice on Barcelona is to head for the markets. Agreed; the markets are attractive to look at, buzzing with life and you can get some good, cheap food there too.

However, they also say that for genuine Catalan food at a good price to go to “Agut or Set Portes for perfect paellas and seafood platters” and then go on to recommend tapas restaurants.

While the locals often eat both, neither paella nor tapas are Catalan, and you can do far better than Set Portes for a reasonably priced paella.

Read the entire article

Barcelona in October sees the air full of smoky goodness as street vendors set up stalls where they sell chestnuts and sweet potatoes cooked on charcoal braziers.

You can also cook them at home, using a special pan full of holes to allow the chestnuts to singe, filling the house with that delicious wintery smell while simultaneously covering the top of your cooker with a layer of charcoal.

The classic combination of ‘mar i muntanya’ – sea and mountain – is what has combined to give Catalan food, especially around Barcelona, its own unique features.

Barcelona is close by some wonderful unspoiled countryside, enabling a constant supply of fresh vegetables and fruit to always be at hand. In tandem with the riches available in the nearby Mediterranean and the animals grazing on the slopes of the mountains, this gives an abundance of culinary opportunities.

Catalan cuisine goes back at least as far as the 13th century, when the earliest recipe books have been discovered and its richness and variety help make it one of the most popular in the entire Mediterranean area.

So, what exactly can we expect of our specialities in Barcelona?

Well, firstly, expect there to be lots of tasty sauces. Allioli, literally garlic and oil, is common throughout Spain but in Barcelona it is classically produced without egg, and with just a little salt added. It is often served with rice and meat dishes. Samfaina is a sauce produced with chilli pepper and aubergines; sofregit with fried tomatoes, onions and garlic; and romesco with tomatoes, garlic, almonds, vinegar and olive oil. Picada, a seasoned mix of almonds, pine and hazel nuts, and sauces originating from the regional spiced pork sausage, botifarra, are commonly seen.

Also, it’s very usual to add dried fruit to meat and fish dishes. Aubergines, chickpeas, tuna, anchovy and cod are additionally very familiar ingredients in Catalan cooking.
Typical starters include ‘escalivada’, with aubergines, tomatoes, chilli peppers and allioli and also ‘esqueixada’, with cod, onions, beans, olives and assorted other vegetables.

On the main course menu, expect to find plenty of dishes based on beef and lamb as well as all kinds of game. Specific dishes include ‘mongonguilles amb sìpia’, meatballs and cuttlefish; ‘llagosta amb pollastre’, lobster and chicken in a hazelnut sauce; ‘farrillada’, grilled mixed fish; and combinations as diverse as chicken and crayfish, rabbit and rum and duck and turnip. You might also be a little surprised to see quite a lot of pasta – Catalan cooking is second only to Italian in the amount of pasta consumption.

Seasonally, you will see elsewhere on these pages that wild asparagus and calçots (large spring onions) are common in the spring and rovellons (mushrooms) in the autumn. In the winter, the locals like nothing more than churros (doughnut-type pastries) dipped in hot chocolate for breakfast and then the incredibly tasty escudella d’olla for their main meal. Literally meaning a large bowl, escudella is one of those comfort stews that you dip your bread into and just allow its taste and smell to overwhelm you.

The most famous speciality dessert is, of course, the ubiquitous Crema Catalana but mel i matò, cream cheese and honey, is also deservedly popular.

Enough of this; I need to stop now before my taste buds lose control. Suffice it to say, that, although there are many restaurants in Barcelona offering international cuisine of the highest standard, don’t neglect Barcelona’s own food specialities – they really are special.

At certain times of the year throughout Catalonia you see cars pulled over to the side of the road and people foraging in the undergrowth for something that will later end up on their plate. It doesn’t always end well though; the mushroom season often brings with it tales of families being wiped out by a wrongly identified variety and people disappear for days on end after losing their path in the woods.

This being March means wild asparagus is now in season and so people are out there clutching plastic bags as they search for those long green spears that are considered a delicacy here. As the wild asparagus is so thin it doesn’t stand up to steaming or grilling as I’d usually do and instead it is usually cut into pieces, sautéed and served in an omelette.

Unfortunately, with the exception of Spanish omelette, I can’t stand omelette!

Some years we’ve wandered into the forest at l’Escala only to find that someone had been there before us and been pretty thorough, but this year we managed to get there first and within a fairly small area picked a couple of handfuls within the space of an hour. Usually we go far further afield and harvest a smaller crop, so this year’s asparagus expedition was excellent.

Back home in Barcelona we washed and trimmed the spears and cut them up into smaller pieces. Sautéing them in a small amount of olive oil, I proceeded to serve them with three scrambled eggs made with plenty of butter, while my other half treated herself to an omelette, the authentic Catalan way.

Away from the restaurants serving all day English breakfasts and the fast food, visitors to Barcelona have a good opportunity to find out about Catalan cuisine. The key to Catalan cuisine is fresh ingredients cooked simply, and specialities like botifarra amb mongetes (Catalan sausage with beans) can be found in many restaurants for just a few Euros.

Other typical dishes worth trying are lamb cooked with 12 heads of garlic and suquet, a rich fish stew.

North of the border in French Catalonia the food is very similar. The difference is that basic Catalan cuisine is cooked with a French twist, resulting in the excellent combination of well cooked fresh food with a subtle mixture of flavours. This influence has made itself known in Spain too – an excellent restaurant in Boadella d’Empordà in the province of Girona is El Trull d’en Francesc.

The calçotada

Catalan cuisine also has some quite unusual examples of basic ingredients turned into an art-form. Among these is the calçotada, a true wintertime feast consisting of calçots served with a special sauce containing tomato, almonds, garlic and chilli, followed by a selection of meats cooked on an open fire.

Calçots are simply spring onions that have been grown in a way that results in a large spring onion that is milder and sweeter that normal and with many growths from a single bulb.

Planted in September or October, they are transplanted when the shoots break the soil. In the late spring they are dug up and stored in the dry until August or September, when they are replanted with earth packed around the new growth.

Cooked over an open fire, calçots are usually served in red brick roof-tiles and eaten by hand, with many restaurants providing clients with a bib.

Although calçots are available as early as October in some areas of Catalonia, they are difficult to find in Barcelona. The most traditional calçotada is held in Valls, near Tarragona, on the last weekend in January, when thousands of calçot aficionados congregate to eat this delicacy of Catalan cuisine.

According to food writer Coleman Andrews, Catalan cuisine is Europe’s last great culinary secret. His book is packed full of recipes gleaned from many of the top chefs in Catalonia and available from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.