Thinking & Drinking: Calçotada Edition
“Big onions,” porróns, vi ranci, Pere Torné Esquius, and some white wine bottle recs from Catalonia.
In Catalonia, it’s calçotada time. The calçotada is the beloved winter tradition of eating calçots, the local variety of tender green onions that are grilled over open flames until charred, then peeled and dipped them into a rich, smokey, nutty pepper-tomato-garlic sauce called romesco (recipe below).
Calçots are always a bit mystifying to Americans. “So that’s some sort of big onion?” replied one friend when I mentioned I was going to be enjoying calçots. “Didn’t Anthony Bourdain eat them?”
Suffice to say that it’s much more cultural significant than that. But it’s a messy, homely ritual, one you’ll want to wear a bib for.
Normally, these are outdoor affairs out in rural areas of Catalonia, but when I was in Barcelona last month, my friends Mike and Julia (he Catalan, she American) took me to a calçotada at a restaurant in El Clot called Casa Pepi. Mike gave us the basic demonstration on how to eat calçots in the video below. also, scroll down for my (Americanized romesco) recipe.