Making Do: Calçots in New York City
My friend Jaume called the other day to brag that he’s in charge of the annual calçotada in his village again this year. He grows his own supply of calçots, the sweet spring onion sprouts that are the raison d’etre of this particular Catalan eat-a-thon, but he’ll keep those to himself, as his little kitchen garden can’t produce enough for the event. He’ll have to buy them, though he won’t go so far as to import them from a grower down in calçotada country around Valls, Tarragona where calçots get the IGP seal of approval (indicació geogràfica protegida — the real thing, so to speak).
Jaume is in the Empordà, some 100 miles north of the calçot heartland, and while normally he’s pretty cocksure what they eat down in southern Catalonia is just not on a par with his own Empordanese cuisine, he is not above shameless imitation on this one. There is just nothing better than eating calçots in early spring and if you can’t get to Tarragona to do it you have to do it where you can.
A good calçotada has got to be big. Not big as in those tour bus feedings orchestrated by Tarragonese restaurants for Barcelonins who are too prissy to build their own fires. But big as in rusty old bedframes scavenged as grills.
Big as in guest lists that include friends of friends of friends. At a good calçotada, you’ll drink unmeasured amounts from a porrón. Grilled sausages are mere palate cleansers. Jaume figures he and his neighbors will go through 6,000 calçots and right now he’s working out the logistics of making enough salsa per calçots for 500 people. No question he’ll use a restaurant blender instead of the traditional mortar and pestle. “My problem is,” he says, “I like the sauce to be really smooth, but passing that much romesco through a chinoise is a bitch.”
So romesco and salsa per calcots really are one and the same sauce? “I didn’t say that,” Jaume hedges, “but everybody’s got their own little secrets.” Some people say that while romesco can be made with raw tomatoes and garlic, salsa per calçots has to play up the flavor of the fire: the nuts should be toasted, the tomatoes and garlic roasted, the red pepper smoked. The recipe I brought home from Valls twenty years ago has raw and roasted garlic. I call it romesco because Americans like that word. And I know for a fact it works well on all things grilled. After I hung up the phone with Jaume, I went out to the grocery store in New York City, laid in a couple of bunches of those big Texas spring onions (bigger and sweeter than scallions), and roasted them in the oven. You couldn’t really call it a calçotada, but slathered in sauce, they did me, Ed, and our two neighbors just fine.
Calçots in the City
a side dish for 4
12 big spring onions
a little olive oil
kosher or sea salt
Heat oven to 400F. Drizzle a little oil on a baking sheet and smear it around, lay the onions on the sheet in a single layer, and roast about 45 minutes, until the onions are very tender through and browning.
Serve with romesco. The prep work for the sauce eats up a little time just because there’s some toasting and roasting involved, but you can do that ahead of time, even the day before if you happen to have the oven for something else. Once the ingredients are ready, making the sauce is just a matter of whirling everything in a blender.
Romesco Sauce
makes about two cups
1 cup good olive oil
1/2 cup (about 3 oz.) toasted hazelnuts and almonds
4 small tomatoes (because they’re roasted, even the hothouse “vine” ones will do)
6 big cloves garlic (4 will be roasted, 2 used raw)
2 nyoras (these dried smoked sweet red peppers can be found in the US, imported from Spain) or 1 ancho chile (a smoked poblano pepper )
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar (red wine vinegar is OK too)
kosher or sea salt to taste
Put the dried peppers in a bowl and pour boiling water over them to soak and soften. Heat oven to 375F and roast the tomatoes and 4 cloves of garlic (skin and all) in a small baking dish slicked with a little olive oil for about 45 minutes, until they’re bubbly, caramelized, even and a little brown; peel the garlic after it’s roasted. Turn the oven down to 350F, and toast the hazelnuts and almonds at 350F for about 10 minutes, until they take on a little color and smell toasty. No need to peel the nuts, but after they cool take a minute to brush off skin that comes off easily.
Drop the roasted nuts, tomatoes and garlic in a blender. Add the two cloves of raw garlic. Take the peppers out of their soak, remove and discard the stem and seeds, and add the pulp and skin to the blender. Add the olive oil and whirl until well blended. I don’t pay any attention to what Jaume says about straining the sauce — the slightly chunky nuttiness is nice. Whirl in the vinegar season to taste with salt.
