Iberianature

Simon Rice has written for me this great guide to Catalan food. Here is on Catalan snails:

“Cargols – snails: dozens of small snails are washed and arranged open side up in special tin trays, olive oil is drizzled over them and the whole baked over an open fire and served with alioli or romesco or both as a dip. This dish is called cargols a la llauna and is a speciality of Lleida province, as indeed are many more snail dishes. As the snails are easy to collect after rain and are freebies, something close to the Catalan heart, the whole thing soon becomes a party with whooping children running amuck in a collecting frenzy and Hey Presto! You have a cargolada ! NB the snails don’t have a chance to clean themselves, i.e. to empty their horrible little bowels, before their cremation, so there’s a knack to nibbling the ‘flesh’ of from the ‘gut’ which is left on the end of your picking stick – personally I find the whole thing disgusting! ”

Simon Rice of the Iberianature forum and owner of this restored Casa Rabassaire has sent me a comprehesive guide to Catalan food. I’ll be posting this soon on the main site. Meanwhile, here’s Simon introducing Catalan sauces.

“Traditional Catalan cooking is often described as ‘Gothic’, which is just as well as some theorists claim that Catalonia itself descends from the word ‘Gothalonia’ or Land of the Goths. What this refers to, however, is that many Catalan dishes are based not only on old world ingredients, oil, garlic, wine, etc. but have a general gloomy ‘Gothic’ feel due to their dark brown appearance. This is due to the basic sauce element upon which many dishes are built. Indeed many dishes have an architectural quality as they are assembled by the addition of various combinations of pre-made sauces. So here we have the essential key to the cuisine: five sauces, a selection of which, having been made separately, are assembled in differing combinations to make a dish from ingredients indigenous to the region. In contrast, contemporary Catalan cuisine takes these themes and transforms them into culinary fantasies. While taking note of this, and the fact that Catalonia has more Michelin three starred restaurants than anywhere else in Spain, this guide concentrates on traditional aspects.”…

more soon

I finally got round to posting Frances Barrett’s extremely entertaining writings on food.
Francis Barrett’s Deconstruction of Catalan and Spanish Food A Guide for Newcomers. http://www.iberianature.com/material/spanishfood.html

A couple extracts below:

• Sitting in a scenic country spot with a glass of wine and watching Spanish family members preparing a paella over an open fire in a shallow pit is rather like attending a choreographed performance of gender roles; I suppose the same could be said about Americans or Australians or British or even Irish people at a barbecue.
• Butter { mantequilla } is considered a strange thing to put on bread, but can also be bought with or without salt. Manteca means lard, which can be used for cooking but does not make a good spread. Margarine is sold in supermarkets, but I cannot imagine what sort of moron buys it. Mermelada means both marmalade and jam, and is commonly eaten at breakfast with croisans [croissants] (usually made with manteca rather than mantequilla , so not as nice as the French variety). If you want to see Spaniards go into total shock, give them some Marmite or Vegamite.
• Â Cardes / cardos / thistles are not widely consumed in Catalunya, but are very popular in Navarra, where several of my friends come from. The stems have to be peeled and boiled for a very long time in salty water, but the result is very pleasant either on its own or in combination with peppered celery and / or broccoli. They have a high reputation as a heal-all, being supposed even to cure the plague. Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing contains the line: ‘Get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus and lay it to your heart; it is the only thing for a qualm…. I mean plain Holy Thistle.’ This presumably refers to external application, but many older Spaniards regard thistle soup as medicinal in the same way as soup made from / ortigas / nettles and / dock leaves. Galicians also recommend Rubarbio / rhubarb for medicinal purposes but I’ve never heard anyone here enthuse about their granny’s rhubarb recipes, and Catalans seem to regard all these plants as only fit for donkeys