Passport & Plate - Calçots with Romesco Sauce
Spain | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 4 photos
Ingredients
5-8 Calçots per person (substitute scallions or leaks if not available)
1 oz toasted almonds
1 oz toasted hazelnuts,
4 medium-sized ripe tomatoes,
1 clove of garlic (roasted
2 dried red ñora peppers (or other dried red peppers of your choice)
a pinch of salt
1 dried guindilla pepper (or 1 tsp of cayenne pepper)
1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
How to prepare this recipeIdeally, you should make the Romesco at least a day ahead so the flavors have time to sit and meld. First soak the peppers in warm water for at least an hour, then cover the tomatoes and the garlic in a dish or aluminum foil and roast them in the oven at 300"F until soft, for five to seven minutes. While your tomatoes and garlic are baking, toast the hazelnuts, almonds and the bread in a skillet with a little oil (if you have bought your nuts and bread already toasted, you can skip this step).
Next, peel the baked tomatoes and garlic and put them in your food processor. With your knife on the cutting board, scrape the meat off of the peppers and slide them into the food processor as well. If you don’t like a lot of spice, try to separate the seeds and not mix them in, or use very mild peppers. Then add the almonds, hazelnuts and the toasted bread or breadcrumbs and blend a little.
Then, little by little, begin to add in olive oil until the mixture is a consistency you like. Some people prefer their Salvitxada very thin and liquid. Personally, I like it better when it’s very thick. At any rate, when the sauce has the consistency you desire, add in vinegar and salt to taste. You can serve it with calçots, or even with carrot and celery sticks, crackers or grilled chicken and tell your guests “Bon Profit” (“bon apetit” in Catalonian).
Rinse any dirt from the calçots and cut off the green tips and roots, then place them over a hot fire. They're done when they're charred on the outside, limp to the touch and begin to break apart at the ends.
Peel off the charred outer layer, and dip in Romesco sauce and enjoy.
The story behind this recipeMy father-in-law likes to garden. He doesn’t have a garden of his own, but he’s got a friend with a property an hour or so outside of Barcelona who lets him hoe and plant to his heart’s content.
The house is perched on an incline in an area that locals say some Nazis hid out after World War II. Inside, there’s a thick layer of dust on everything but the flat screen television. Outside there’s a sad-looking baby doll floating in the pool, trash tangled in her hair. It’s always a few degrees colder here than in the city proper here, but the scenery is gorgeous---all green valleys, mountain vistas and triangles of the sparkling Mediterranean in the distance. In the garden below the house, cherry trees are exploding into rosy popcorn-shapes, and tomato plants, eggplants, lettuces and cabbages sprout up in wobbly rows all the way down the terraced lot. But today we’re not here to work the land, we’re here to reap its rewards. Calçots are a spring specialty in Catalonia. A regional variety of scallions, they’re fire-roasted and served up with Romesco, a traditional sauce made from roasted tomatoes, red ñora peppers, garlic, olive oil and almonds. I make Romesco, also called Salvitxada, with a food processor, but purists insist the flavors meld more seamlessly when it’s prepared with a mortar and pestle.
Deep grey clouds of smoke float skywards as I watch yellow and red flames lick at the calçots. My husband singes his eyebrows leaning down to check them. They’re perfect—charred on the outside and creamy in the middle. I peel away the outside of one, drag it through the well of Romesco I’ve made on my paper plate and take a big bite. This is the taste of spring in Catalonia.
