People around the Empordà differ on the subject of who makes the best recuit––the wheyful cheese of Catalonia that’s so perfect on a little toast with tomato jam. Or drizzled with honey for dessert.

There are those who like the cow’s milk recuit made by Quim, a sweet guy with a roadside stand just outside Fonteta. He makes a good goat’s milk version too, and I prefer its tang. Others swear by the recuit––also goat’s milk––made by the crotchety Nuri in the village of Ullastret. I’m in their camp.

Despite the inviting cursive of the “Nuri d’Ullastret” sign hanging above her door near the road out of that village, you can pretty much count on Nuri to act annoyed to see you coming. There’s something exciting about wresting a little pillow of cheese from her. You tell yourself her attitude is calculated to keep outsiders from scooping up the small batches meant for regulars.

Now there is another recuit in the neighborhood. Made by Manel and Natalia at Formatgeria Mas Marcè, this one is in a class by itself. It is also hard to get because most of the production goes to restaurants. Sometimes they have it at their farm stand in Siurana d’Empordà, near Girona.

I met them at the region’s big cheese show, La Fira de Formatges Artesans del Pirineu in La Seu d’Urgell with some of their prize-winning aged cheeses: El Set is a dense, butter-colored cheese with a natural rind, firm and slightly shardy at two to four months. Llanut is whiter, soft, and melting, eaten just a few weeks old. Manel wraps it in a layer of clean wool––you remove that, of course, before digging in. It makes the cheese just a little sheepish.

But it is their simple recuit de drap that matters in my memory right now.

What makes their little cloth-wrapped fresh cheese so unforgettable is fat. Ewe’s milk fat. And not from just any ewes. Manel and Natalia are raising Ripollesas––a breed of sheep native to Catalonia, but now so rare they’ve been put on the Slow Food Ark of Taste for salvation.

The milk Ripollesas give is much richer than that of other breeds at upwards of 8% milk fat. But hardly anybody raises them because they produce damn little of it: each ewe gives only about 30 liters per year. Meanwhile, Manel tells me, farmers here have gotten used to imported breeds that produce up to 600 liters a year. “You can see why my father, a sixth generation shepherd, who grew up with that level of production, thought ours was a terrible idea.”

A smile takes over Manel’s face as he looks out over the pasture. “That’s him out there with the sheep. He works as our shepherd now.”

The formatgeria is small, but the family’s commitment to it is huge. Besides bringing the Ripollesas back from the edge of extinction, they’ve brought the land into line with standards for certified organic pasture. While they were at it, they decided to revive another lost tradition: they make their cheese with vegetable rennet. The thistly cardoons they use to produce it grow wild on their land.

One more thing Manel’s dad thought was crazy: Manel and Natalia wanted to bypass large cooperatives––a guaranteed outlet for their milk––and keep everything from grazing to cheesemaking right on the farm. Manel set out looking for customers who would care about their project, taking samples of his milk and cheeses directly to chefs. Sure enough, Ferrán Adrià (mastermind at El Bullí) became a customer for the milk, and Jordi Roca got Mas Marcé to start making yogurt for their Michelin three-star Celler de Can Roca.

The difficulty of getting to those places for my everyday cheese has had me thinking about raising a couple of ewes.

Meantime, there’s this: if you can get your hands on good buttermilk and whole milk, turning them into a decent homemade version of recuit is only slightly more taxing than boiling water.

Manel and Natalia would not approve, but even they would have to admit that this stuff, made with organic cow’s milk and no gums or fillers to give it listless water-weight gain, is a hundred times better than store-bought ricotta.

Recuit

Makes about one quart

1/2 gallon (8 cups) whole milk
1 pint (2 cups) buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
cheesecloth and kitchen twine or a rubber band

Warm the milk, buttermilk, and salt in pot––an enameled one, pale and weighty, is perfect: it seems never to scorch. Slowly heat the mixture, stirring now and then to be sure it isn’t sticking on the bottom of the pot.

If you’re a Catalan countrywoman you probably know by looking just when to turn off the fire. It’s not too far south of the boiling point, when the milk is wiggly and threatening to simmer, that you’ll see the milk seem to separate a bit, and a few curds begin to form. I use a candy thermometer and this all happens between 170 and 180 degrees F.

As soon as you get the beginnings of curd formation, turn off the heat and stop stirring. It won’t look like much at first, but if you keep cooking, the cheese loses its delicate flavor and texture. The recuit will continue to develop as it stands. Let it stand for five minutes.

Line a strainer or colander with four layers of cheesecloth. Be sure you use squares of cloth big enough to allow you to wrap around a quart-sized blob of cheese. Using a skimmer or slotted spoon, scoop the curds into the cheesecloth-lined colander. Keep scooping until all that’s left in the pot is the whey and the itty bitty squigles that are hard to catch with your slotted spoon.

(Why not just pour the whole mess through? You can. But then your cheese is wetter and takes longer to drain. Instead, use a separate piece of cheesecloth to strain the last bits of curd out of the whey, chill it, and drink it later on. I sense a healthy bottled whey drink craze coming on.)

Now gather up the corners of your cheesecloth and tie it with a piece of kitchen twine or a rubber band. Tie the bundle to your faucet and let it drip into your sink for 20 minutes. Don’t let it go much longer or it gets too dry.

This is so good just unwrapped and drizzled with honey while it’s still at warm room temperature. But you can leave it wrapped and store it in a shallow bowl for a few days in the fridge, and use it as you would ricotta.

It has always seemed to me that cooking over a wood fire requires a certain restlessness. Cookouts with my Catalan friend Jaume prove this is true even on Mediterranean shores. The mood around his fire might be mellowed by fall sunshine and hits of wine from a porrón, but still, there are mushrooms to move from one side of the grill to the other, arguments to be fanned regarding the best way to grill a coca (pizza’s Catalan cousin), and embers to be jabbed.

That’s why it struck me as a little odd that Assumpta, who was, after all, in charge of dessert at this particular October cookout, was making herself so comfortable. “I’m doing pomes a la pedra,” she said from her hammock: apples on a rock.

And there they were, teed up at the front edge of the fire: four flat rocks, each with an apple on top. At home, she had sliced off the top of each apple, pared out cores and seeds, and filled their centers with chopped toasted walnuts and honey. The tops went back on, leaving the apples looking whole again, with only a fine line around their tops giving away the fact that they’d had some work done.

“I make these at home, too,” said Assumpta, “on cool fall nights when we have a fire.” She keeps a few flat rocks on the hearth just for this purpose. She puts an apple on each rock and sets them next to the fire to slow roast through dinnertime and on into the evening. She has perfected a technique for turning the apples: “I nudge the rocks around with my toe every so often while we’re sitting around the fire.” Dessert is ready when the apples begin to blister and their sugary juices bubble out onto the rocks.

They’re not bad oven-roasted in an ordinary baking dish. If you add a few drops of good Spanish brandy to the filling, and eat them next to a warm wood stove, they might even taste a little like the smoky ones from Assumpta’s hearth.

Slow-Roasted Apples

I like a smallish apple for this dessert, unless you’re sharing. Honeycrisps, which are descended from Macouns and goldens turn a very pretty pink color when roasted.

For each apple:

1 tablespoon toasted walnuts, chopped (or one prune, chopped, or a combination)
a pinch of cinnamon
2 teaspoons good brandy
2 teaspoons honey
a pat of butter (about one teaspoon)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Pour a tiny bit of water, a scant 1/4 inch, in the bottom of your roasting pan (apple cider or orange juice work nicely if you happen to have those). Cut off the top 1/2 inch of each apple, on the stem end, and reserve the tops. Carefully cut out the stem, seeds, and cores, but don’t go all the way through to the bottom of the apple––the apple to will hold its filling and juices better that way.

Set the apples, cored end up, in the roasting pan. Stuff them with the chopped nuts and/or prunes. Add a pinch of cinnamon to each. Spoon in the brandy and honey. Poke in the pat of butter. Place the top of each apple back in its place, covering the filling.

Roast for about 45 minutes, or until the apples are tender. Spoon any pan juices over the apples before serving them.

That’s easy for her to say. She lives in l’Empordà––a kitchen-garden-rich corner of Catalonia with a ridiculously long tomato-growing season. No one on my cold New England sandbar would dare to speak so casually of that kind of success with tomatoes, for fear of being struck down by blossom end rot.

But this year we did have tomatoes. And once the thrill of tomato sandwiches (thick slices, white bread, mayo, salt) eased up, the season kept on long enough to allow us to act like Catalans. That is, pa amb tomàquet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Until I remembered the tomato jam with locally made fresh cheese at Georgina’s little confiture workshop in the village of Torrent.

When I called, she didn’t really want to talk about tomatoes. She was gearing up for her autumn classes. “The madrones are so beautiful right now. They say if you eat them in full sunshine, they’ll get you drunk. Plus, they’re loaded with pectin.”

“Wait a minute, is madrone jam traditional in Catalunya?” I’ve seen madrone trees there and in California, but I never knew those little orange fruits were edible.

“Probably not,” she says. “Catalans are not really a serious jam-eating people. But I’m into the recovery of the art of preserving. I’m not interested in limiting myself to traditional Catalan jams.” Georgina started her museum after an English visitor turned her on to lemon marmalade as a way to use the fruit that was littering her dooryard. “This project is more about nature’s treasures than it is about national ones.”

I think maybe Georgina is herself a Catalan national treasure. She is 79 years old and started this project just seven years ago. She does have a business partner, Teresa Millàs. “I had to cut her in,” she says, “Because I’d go to the bank for a loan on kitchen equipment and they would say I needed someone who was going to be around a while to back it up.”

“But really,” she goes on, “the only part of this I’m too old for is Facebook. I’ve lived my whole life without it just fine.” (Nonetheless, you can “like” the museum here.)

Teresa and the rest of the museum’s small staff all share Georgina’s passion for preserving and teaching. And in spite of their prize-winning forays into foreign jams (they won a gold medal for their kumquat marmalade at the Dalemain Marmalade Festival last year, which landed their jars on the shelves of Fortnum & Mason in London), they do teach classics from her region, including tomato jam.

Georgina approves of my totally simple recipe, though she would add an apple to the pot. Its pectin will make the jam set faster, which she says translates into fresher flavor. She also recommends another combination locals are fond of: tomato-watermelon jam. Both are traditionally eaten alongside fresh cheeses for breakfast or for a mid-afternoon snack. A smidge on a cracker loaded with goat cheese makes a nice American style hors d’oeuvre. I predict we’ll soon see see tomato jam as part of a fancypants restaurant dessert in New York or Barcelona. I imagine it alongside, say, basil ice cream, with a drizzle of arrop.

“After the war, when nobody could afford sugar, preserves were made with arrop––grape juice, boiled into a thick, slightly caramelized syrup,” Georgina says. “But yes, I hear arrop is in fashion again.”

Melmelada de Tomàquet — Tomato Jam
makes about 4 half pints

3 1/2 lbs perfectly ripe plum tomatoes
1 1/2 lbs sugar
1 oz (two tablespoons) freshly squeezed lemon juice
a big pinch of salt
a sprig of fresh thyme

Blanch the tomatoes for half a minute in boiling water. Then peel and core them and drop them into a large, heavy jam-making pot. Add the sugar, lemon juice, salt, and branch of thyme. Bring to a simmer, then a steady boil, stirring every few minutes. Watch the jam closely as the water cooks off and the juices become syrupy: you’ll need to stir it steadily to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Squash any big chunks of tomato while you’re at it. Skim off any sticky foam that forms on the surface, too, since those dense little bubbles will cloud the jam’s sparkle later. The jam will begin to set up in about 25 to 35 minutes. When it’s softly set, remove the thyme and ladle the jam into clean hot jars and seal.

If you need instructions on testing jam for doneness or on preparing, sealing, and processing your jars properly, the people at Ball jars are more than happy to tell you what to do.

El Museu de la Confitura is on the Plaça Major in the village of Torrent, Tel: +34-972-30-47-44. Summer classes are for kids, but during the rest of the year, the museum offers classes for adults, about once a month. A typical Saturday class covers techniques, hands-on preserving, and a light tasting menu that can stand in for lunch. Don’t be afraid to join a class just because your Catalan is rusty: Georgina speaks Spanish, French, and English and, besides, when people are cooking, they nearly always understand one another. Coming up, Saturday, October 4: madrone jam and picapoll grape jelly. Winter classes move on to preserved pumpkin, and for the holidays, there’s Cava jelly, and citrus marmalades.

What does it matter when the fact is, the kind of tuna salad I grew up on now tastes distinctly like a bowlful of fish oil soaked spit wads?

Now it’s Ortiz or bust. The ventresca is ultra-luxurious, even though it comes in a can. One that looks just like the same ring-topped oval that my dad would pop open for his Saturday post-golf ration of cottonseed oil-laced sardines. This is so much better. Scroll back the lid and you’re face to face with a few perfectly delicate long strips of tuna belly.

The larger, firmer, but still luscious slabs of loin that come in a jar are great in a puttanesca or a salad.

Whether ventresca or not, it’s bonito del norte you want: Thunnus alalunga, which is known as “albacore” in the American market. (For the species conscious, albacore is not to be confused with thunnus albacares, which we Americans call yellowfin tuna but the French, naturally, call albacore.)

Maybe the best use of a stash of this stuff: Toast a diagonal slice of baguette; drape on a forkload of tuna; give it a pinch of crunchy sea salt (because this tuna is not overly salted, the way the American tunas are) and a twist of black pepper, and away you go.

Maybe too, just a few slices of tart pickle or sweet onion on top. Definitely a piece of pimiento de piquillo, if there’s an open jar in the fridge.

And for a summer lunch, here’s a whole ‘nother tuna salad. I won’t give it a Spanish name, but it does have a Spanish accent.

Summer Rice Salad with Spanish Tuna

Serves 2

3 ounces Ortiz bonito del norte (part of a jar, or for the profligate, one tin of ventresca)
2 cups leftover white rice, cold
2 heaping tablespoons pesto (preferably a supply that hasn’t had any cheese added yet)
about a dozen cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1/4 small sweet or red onion, sliced thin
one small unwaxed garden cuke, diced small
sea salt and fresh black pepper

Put the rice and vegetables in a bowl and stir in the pesto to dress it all. Taste and season with salt and pepper if need be. Gently toss in the tuna, so it doesn’t get too busted up.

I hear that in France people settle for just one day to celebrate fat: Mardi Gras, that happy Tuesday before Lent and all its pious negation begin. In Catalonia, the fat-eating starts almost a week ahead of time, on Fat Thursday. First thing in the morning on Dijous Gras, they reach for a slice of coca de greixons to get the ball rolling.

“Ooh-la-la,” say the French, when you tell them the other name for this barely sweet, mysteriously savory breakfast flatbread,coca de llardons. Yes, those little bits in the dough are, well, they are not exactly lard. They’re bacon.

Coca de greixons is a simple one-rise brioche dough. The butter and eggs are dialed back a notch to compensate for the other gras, which you’ve slowly crisped so that it practically amounts to lean cuisine anyway. Roll it out into the traditional oblong coca shape, paint it with olive oil, and give it a scattering of sugar and pine nuts for crunch, and voila! Or, as I believe I said at my first confession: Je regrette rien.

Coca de Greixons

This is one of those rare breads for which a sturdy stand mixer comes in really handy. If you have one, you let the dough go for a good five minutes while you clean up the kitchen or make a phone call. If you don’t have one, be ready to spend about 10 minutes kneading a very sticky dough.

3/4 cup milk (whole or reduced fat, just not skim)
1 package active dry yeast (about 2 teaspoons)
3 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar, plus 2 Tbsp more for sprinkling on top
1 tsp salt
1 tsp anise seeds
1/4 cup cold sweet butter (1/2 stick), cut into chunks
1 large egg
1 Tbsp anís (optional; Spanish anisette liqueur; Pernod or pastis will do)
1/2 cup chopped greixons*
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts

Warm the milk. Make sure it is not too hot (about 110F is just right. At 120F or more, you’ll kill the yeast––if you don’t have an instant-read thermometer, stick your finger into the milk and aim for hot-but-tolerable; later, go and spend the $7 on a thermometer), then sprinkle the yeast over the milk and let it begin to dissolve and activate while you start the dough.

Put the flour, sugar, salt, and anise seeds into a mixing bowl, and give it a whirl using the mixer’s paddle attachment. Drop in the butter and beat the mixture for a few minutes, until the butter is well distributed and things have a sandy texture.

Change out the paddle attachment for the dough hook. Beat in the milk and yeast slurry on low speed, then add the egg and the anís liqueur, if you’re using it, and beat them in, too. Bring the speed up to medium and let the mixer go for a good five or six minutes.

Add the chopped greixons* and mix or knead them in well, for a minute or two.

The dough will look rather wet, but scrape it out of the bowl onto your lightly floured countertop and you’ll see it holds together in a supple, elastic way. Knead the dough gently, giving it just a few turns and shaping it into a smooth ball. Smear on a little olive oil to coat the dough’s surface, cover it lightly with a clean floursack towel or plastic wrap, and set it aside to rest for a half hour.

Roll the dough into a big oval or circle, aiming to get it a little under an inch thick. Line a baking sheet with a piece of parchment paper and lift the dough onto it. Spruce up the coca’s shape after the move. Brush the top with one tablespoon of olive oil, then sprinkle it with the pine nuts, smoothing over them gently with your hand to be sure they’ll stay put.

Let the coca rise. It needs about one and a half hours at warm room temperature. Heat the oven to 350F. Brush the top of the coca with another tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkle it with the two tablespoons of sugar. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until it is deep golden.

When making this for breakfast, I’ve prepared the dough and just let it rise overnight, no problem. You can also let it rise, then refrigerate it for a day or overnight to hold it until you’re ready to bake it; just get it out of the fridge when you first get up, before you even begin preheating the oven.

* Greixons, llardons, let’s face it, these are bacon bits. Homemade. From good pancetta or very thick cut bacon (uncured, nothing smoked, nor mapled, herbed, peppered…). A half pound cut into cubes or 3/4 inch sticks will yield about the half cup you need for this recipe. (If you make extra, it’ll freeze.) Cook the bacon over low heat, stirring frequently. You want it evenly rendered and caramelized. You’ll end up with at least a half cup of bacon fat as a handy by-product.

Who wouldn’t put it past those Catalan fishermen to take a little extra time at sea to flambé their lunches?

My sea captain friend Joan Santolaria says suquet has always been a gussied up restaurant thing. “Now ranxo, that’s the real deal, pure and simple,” Joan says, handing me hours of evidence to prove his point, fresh from the audio archives of the University of Girona’s Documare Centre for the study of the region’s seafaring history. I’m now working my way through the first-person stories of a whole generation of fishermen-elders who’ve been recounting their lives for Converses de Taverna, the Center’s fireside chat oral history project. So far, their subjects are two: storms and lunch.

Lunch is, or was, anyway, ranxo. Quick, simple, and perfect for summertime.

But right now the slush is speaking. “Flambé something,” it says. Plus, at least on my American coast, those sweet little Maine shrimp are in season. So, suquet. It will take you an hour or so of tending, but it will give you back an evening of lusciousness. Saving a drop of the brandy for later is a proven way to melt any remaining ice off your heart.

Suquet––Catalan Fish Stew for Winter

Serves 4

1 pinch saffron threads
1/2 cup olive oil + 2 tablespoons
10 raw almonds
3 garlic cloves, two sliced, one minced
1 handful parsley, rinsed and very well dried
2 slices country bread (or four slices baguette)
about 1/2 cup flour for dredging fish
3/4 lb Pacific halibut, wild seabass or other firm white fish
3/4 lb true cod, haddock or other tender white fish
1 dozen head-on Maine shrimp
1/2 cup brandy (measure it out, do not pour it from the bottle into the hot pan)
1 sweet onion (2 cups chopped fine)
1 sweet red pepper (2 cups chopped fine)
2 bay leaves
2 star anise
1 big pinch red pepper flakes
6-8 whole peeled tomatoes, from a can (1 cup, chopped)
2 quarts fumet (fish stock, that is)
4 yukon gold potatoes (1 and 1/2 lbs), peeled and sliced into thick rounds (about 1/3 inch thick)
1 dozen littleneck clams
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Start with the picada, the flavor and texture hit you’ll blend up (or, grind in a mortar and pestle) for finishing the soup:

1. Heat a dutch oven or soup pot and drop in the saffron, letting it toast lightly for just a minute, then remove it to a blender (a food processor also works, and, of course, so does a mortar and pestle, especially if you have a grandma on hand, willing to patiently pound your picada mixture).

2. Heat the half cup of olive oil in the same pot and gently fry the garlic slices in it. When they’re golden (but not brown), remove them to a small bowl and set them aside. Keep the oil from getting smoking hot as you continue frying: first tumble the almonds for a minute or two to lightly roast them; drop the fried almonds into the blender with the saffron. Fry the handful of parsley into the oil––make sure it is really dry before you drop it in or it will crackle and pop and throw hot oil all over the place. Toss the parsley until it is a shade darker and remove it to the blender. Fry the bread slices until they’re golden brown on both sides and add them to the blender too. Turn the heat off while you whirl the picada. You want it chopped into a fine, crumbly condiment, not a paste. Set the picada aside––you’ll use it to finish the stew.

Now to the stew:

3. Cut each of the fish fillets into 4 equal portions, salt and pepper them generously, and dredge them lightly in flour. Fire up the garlicky oil again, and fry the fillets about 4-5 minutes, until they’re deep golden on just one side. Remove the fish to a plate, turning the pieces as you go so that they rest browned side up. Set the fish aside.

4. You need only a few tablespoons of olive oil at this point, so pour off the excess into the bowl with the browned garlic slices. You will dip into this when you garnish the stew. Wipe the edges of the pan: you’re about start a little fire, so you want to be tidy with your oil.

5. Salt and pepper the shrimp and sauté it in the soup pot for just a minute or two, until it takes on a little color. Put the fish pieces back in the pan with the shrimp and pour on the brandy. Give the pan a shake to distribute the sauce––you don’t want to bust up the delicate fillets by stirring.

Build layers of flavor:

6. Flambé the fish,* then after the flames have died out, gently pour fish, sauce and all, into a deep plate or shallow bowl. Set it aside and keep it warm.

7. Add a couple of tablespoons of clean olive oil to the pan and sauté the minced garlic, onion, and sweet red pepper along with the pinch of red pepper flakes, the bay leaves, and the star anise. Give the sofregit (that’s what the Catalan call this caramelized aromatic base for sauces) a good ten minutes: it wants some attention and stirring so it takes on color but doesn’t burn. Add the tomatoes and give the sofregit another ten minutes: you want the sofregit to be very soft and a little caramelized.

8. Add the fumet to the pan with the sofregit and simmer it all for 10 minutes. Pour the mixture through a strainer, collecting the broth into a bowl. Mash your spoon against the vegetables to squeeze out more flavor before you pour the broth back into pan. Discard the solids.

9. Add the potato slices to the soup and bring it to a low boil. Simmer the potatoes for about five minutes, until they just begin to get tender. Slip in the clams and continue simmering until they begin to open. Gently pour the fish, shrimp, and their brandy-rich juices back into the pot and give the stew a gentle shake and simmer, just to combine the flavors well.

10.  Sprinkle the picada into the stew, incorporating it with a shake of the pot. You’ll notice how it enriches and thickens the stew just a little. Taste the stew and correct the salt––it may not need any, usually the clams release just enough.

10. Divvy up the fish, shellfish and potatoes into big shallow soup bowls, add the saucy soup, and finish each bowl with a drizzle of the reserved olive oil and scattering of the slices of golden garlic you set aside early on.

* More about the flambéing: If you’re using a wooden spoon and a gas stove dip your spoon into the sauce, then dip the spoon into the flame; it will become a little torch. Then just touch it to the stew and you’ll have a little blue fire in your pot. Shake the pan gently to stir until the flames die out––the thrills go on for about 30 seconds. If you’re cooking on an electric stove, you can light the surface of the stew with a match.

“La Crisis” cut so deep this year in Spain that my friends will first have to gather their lottery winnings before they can mail my year-end turrón supply. That said, I am not terribly worried about suffering a turrón-free 2011 because the chances of my nougat suppliers winning at least a little something in the Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad, to be drawn in Madrid tomorrow, is around 15 percent. In lottery terms, if you buy a billete it’s a cakewalk to win a piece of El Gordo, the big one: 0.0012 percent (one in 83,333).

Virtually everyone in Spain plays the Christmas lottery. It’s the biggest in the world in terms of total prize payout (a couple of billion Euros) and surely the most democratic. What happens is this: the 85,000 lottery numbers each potentially represent such a big chunk of this rich pot that fractions (a series of 195 billetes or tickets for each number) and fractions of fractions (décimos or tenths) are sold and even smaller bits of those (participaciones) are divvied up amongst friends and co-workers. Which boils down to the fact that the winning number ends up being held by lots of people. Besides the usual holiday-spirit-inflected things losers say, like, “Well, at least we have our health,” people also like to note, “The prize certainly was bien repartido.” Life is good when the winnings are well distributed.

Even anti-lottery types like me get a thrill when the chant of the winning numbers begins on TV. The children of the Colegio de San Idelfonso, which began as a school for orphans of civil servants, do this job. It starts out sweetly and three hours later sets teeth on edge.

One thing I truly love about the whole thing is how people don’t say “Oh, if we win we’ll just go on with our lives like always.” I worked at a machinery manufacturing firm in Barcelona, a big, successful business that went back generations. While the machines his company built were admired at trade shows all over the world, Sr. Mateu, the owner’s elderly father, still roamed around the factory floor. The company bought a whole number and gave us all shares. “What will we do if we win?” I asked, counting on some kind of savvy Catalan businessman-type investment-oriented response. But no: “We’ll shut this place down!” he said, eyes cheerier than I’d ever seen them. That honest, practical brand of seasonal hope warms my heart.

All this is to say that when, in my quest to figure out a homemade version of Alicante’s famed almond and honey nougat, I came up with this smashing toasted almond praline semifreddo, I decided not worry about its ephemerality. Turrones will be mailed in due time. This can be whipped together now, stashed in the freezer, and pulled out looking swanky for after Christmas or New Year’s Eve dinner. And more so if you add a little cherry-port sauce on the side.

Semifreddo de Turrón––Frozen Almond Praline Nougat

Serves 8

1 cup raw almonds (5 oz.), skin on
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 large eggs
1 tsp. grated lemon zest
1 1/2 cups chilled heavy cream
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract or a few drops of pure almond extract
a few drops of grapeseed oil for the pans

Heat the oven to 350F, spread the almonds on a baking sheet, and toast them for 5-10 minutes. Check and stir the almonds; you want them to smell toasty and look a shade darker. Set the toasted nuts aside, and when the baking sheet is cool, rub it with a little oil for the next step, the praline.

Meanwhile, line a standard loaf pan (about 8 x 5 inches) with plastic wrap, leaving several inches hanging over the sides––you’ll wrap that over the semifreddo later. The plastic clings neatly to the pan if you rub a few drops of oil into the pan before you line it.

Melt 1/2 cup of the sugar (save the other 1/4 cup for the nougat) in a small, heavy saucepan, on medium heat. Don’t bother to stir the sugar syrup––it will just clump up on your spoon––but give it a swirl now and then as it bubbles, until it takes on a deep caramel color. Quickly stir in toasted almonds and turn the mixture onto the oiled baking sheet to cool. Break the praline into a food processor and whirl until it is finely ground but not reduced to a paste: you want the finished dessert to have some crunch.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl until frothy (use a standing mixer if you have one; there’s a lot of beating ahead). In a saucepan, bring the honey to a boil; let it foam up as some of the water in it evaporates for a minute or so. Whisk the remaining 1/4 cup sugar into the hot honey. Whisk and simmer the honey syrup another minute to make sure the sugar is completely dissolved, take it off the heat and, with the mixer running, pour it slowly into the frothed eggs. Beat this nougat at high speed until it is fluffy and cool, about 5 minutes. Beat in the extract and the zest.

In another bowl, whip the cream until it holds stiff peaks. Fold about one third of the whipped cream into the nougat mixture, then continue folding in the remaining cream. Gently fold in the praline. Spoon the mixture into the lined loaf pan and cover it with the extra plastic wrap. Freeze until firm, at least four hours and up to 10 days.

Uncover and unmold the semifreddo onto a cutting board or platter. You’ll either need to let it sit for a few minutes to thaw enough to loosen or dip the bottom of the pan in a sink full of hot water for just a second, then dry the pan and turn out the dessert. Slice to serve. Sift a little good quality cocoa onto each plate. Or drizzle on some chocolate sauce. Dried cherries plumped up in a little port-sugar syrup are perfection with the almond flavor here.

Back in New York this week, but comforted by quinces at the Union Square Greenmarket.

I felt a little sorry for them, bitter, lumpy things, and took some home with me. Well, they rolled out of that bag in a cloud of their own perfume, asking who was feeling sorry for whom. They smelled like lemon. Or over-ripe pear. Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit in the flesh. My plan had been to cook them down into codonyat, the Catalan quince gelée that is so perfect with cheese. But now all I wanted was to have them near me. Sniff them. Run my hands over their fuzzy backs.

I turned to the Internet for help. I learned that having these feelings towards quinces is nothing to be ashamed of. They are practically the original forbidden fruit––or at least the one Paris pitched to Aphrodite. They’re the golden apples of the Song of Songs. Ancient Romans scented rooms with them for lovers’ visits. Modern Madrileños stow them in their closets, where they go toe to toe against smelly shoes. Jeff Koehler wrote about all of this in the literary magazine Tin House. His recipe for a spoonable codonyat snapped me out of my love-struck stupor: quinces should be eaten, after all.

But I like the firm, sliceable kind, so I searched on. The rules for getting quinces, sugar, and a little lemon to turn into codonyat are contradictory: The fruit should be peeled, or not. The seeds give the gelée its burnished color, or they don’t. Just the lemon rind or the whole lemon. Blender or Thermomix. And if you’re Spanish, you might throw in a little piece of cinnamon stick and call it membrillo. In the end, I put my trust in the ladies who run El Museu de la Confitura in Torrent d’Empordà. After all, so many beautiful jams come out of their little workshop.

Like most of the recipes I read, theirs follows a two step juice-then-paste process. The upside they offered, which I didn’t find anywhere else, was that the effort would yield two finished products: a jelly, made with the strained quince juices, and a gelée or paste made by cooking down the remaining pulp.

I’m a jam-eater, but it’s nice to have a clear jelly on hand for painting a shiny glaze on apple tarts. I ladled up one jar-full for that purpose. Trying to channel confiture queen Christine Ferber, I stirred some chopped candied ginger into the pot to spike the other two jars of jelly. Of course, three half pints of sparkling pink grapefruit-colored quince jelly, straight up, might not be such a bad thing.

Gelea de Codony amb Gingebre, i Codonyat––Quince and Ginger Jelly, and Codonyat
Three half-pint jars of jelly and one 8 1/2 x 4 1/2″  loaf pan of gelée

5 lbs quinces
2 lemons
6 cups water
About 7 cups sugar (you may end up adjusting this, depending on how much juice and pulp your quinces yield)
Two pieces of cheesecloth, about 2 feet square, for bundling the quince cores and straining the juices
A few drops of grapeseed oil (or other mild-flavored oil), for oiling the codonyat mold
Optional: 3 oz. candied ginger (about 1/2 C diced small)

Start with the jelly: Scrub the quinces, rubbing off their sticky fuzz. Measure the water into a big heavy pot. Slice the lemons into a few wide rounds and drop them into the water. Trim and quarter the quinces and pare out their cores. Pile the cores and seeds onto a square of cheesecloth as you go. Chop each quince quarter once or twice and drop the chunks into the water with the lemon slices. Wrap up the cores in the cheesecloth, tying the ends into a firm knot, and add the bundle to the pot. Boil the fruit gently for about 30 minutes, until it is very tender.

While the fruit boils, prepare your jelly jars: wash 3 half-pint jars (four if you’re an optimist) and lids, and put the jars on to boil. Put the lids in a small bowl and scoop boiling water over them to cover them.

Line a big strainer with the other square of cheesecloth and set it over a bowl. Pour the quince mixture into the strainer, letting the juices collect in the bowl, but resist the temptation to press on the fruit––you want the juices to be clear, not pulpy. Measure the juices back into the heavy pot. For every four cups of juice, add three cups of sugar. Over medium heat, stir to dissolve the sugar, then bring the mixture to a rolling boil and let it cook and reduce for about 20 minutes. Check the set: the jelly should be syrupy and a drop, dripped on a cold plate, should set up rather than run. If you’re adding the chopped candied ginger, stir it in at the end. Skim, ladle into clean, hot half-pint jars, and seal.

For the codonyat: Wash out the big heavy pot. Lightly oil a loaf pan with grapeseed oil. Remove the lemon slices and the bundle of cores from the pile of cooked quince. Run the fruit through a food mill. (The skins will be left behind.) Puree it back into the bowl to mingle with any leftover juice that has accumulated under the strainer. Measure the puree into the big pot: for every five cups of quince puree, add four cups of sugar. Bring the mixture to a slow boil. Keep a careful eye on the codonyat––it will want to stick and it scorches easily, so stir it often as it thickens. Let it cook down for about 30 to 40 minutes. It will go from looking like applesauce to looking like thick mashed sweet potatoes, like this:

Pour the codonyat into the oiled mold and let it cool a bit. Cover and refrigerate several hours, until completely cold. It will be firmly set; you can unmold it or just cut out thick slabs to slice or cube for serving.

For all that fuel, the pile generated surprisingly little smoke, which Sr. Plà explained is what you want with this oxygen-deprived burning process. He told us he was on the lookout for “clean” smoke, which indicates things are progressing well and the wood converting to charcoal as it should. “Too much air and all this would go up in flames,” he said, “and that would be a disaster.”

“Listen,” he said, sklonking two black logs together. The sound was hollow and glassy. “This is from last year’s Carbonera. You can hear that this is good charcoal. It doesn’t weigh a thing, but it will burn perfectly.” If all goes well, he said, every thousand kilos of wood will yield about 170 kilos of charcoal.

Plà learned the art of charcoal-making as a young man, when every community had a carbonero who knew how to turn aged cork oaks uprooted to make room for crops into cooking fuel. “This is what I did up until 1950 or so, but then they came along with gas.”

“Nowadays,” he said with a shrug, “we do it to entertain ourselves.” And so they do: hundreds of people from towns up and down the coast find their way down a winding dirt road to a clearing in the oak woods around the old Mas Frigola farm in the village of Sant Climent de Peralta. Sawhorses and plywood are strung together into long communal tables and festival lights dangle overhead. Since the Carbonera has to be tended from the time the fire is lit on October 12th until the time the finished charcoal is stacked on the 30th, visitors are welcome to stop in any time, 24 hours a day. A dozen barbecue grills dot the clearing and everyone is expected to bring along plenty of sausages, bread, and wine, at the least.

The Carbonera is about tradition-keeping, too.

“Want to see our barraca?” asked Sr. Plà. We stepped in through an opening on the side of a long oval hut faced with stone. The Homes del Foc (Men of Fire), including the mayor of Forallac, Josep Sala, sleep here, right next to the pile. The mayor wasn’t around last Thursday––perhaps he was napping back at Town Hall. But we did meet one intrepid young Dona, Cristina Colom, who has joined the crew. Her father, Lluís Colom, knows the ropes well. “I’m still learning,” she said with a modest but confident smile.

“Yeah,” said Sr. Plà, with a glance at the sleeping bags lined up on the tamped earth floor of the barraca, “I’m here every day, but my days of sleeping on the ground are over.”

XVIII Edició of La Carbonera de Forallac, 2010, began on October 2 (when the carboneros built the wood pile); the earth layer was added on October 9. Things really got under way October 12, when the ull or “eye” of the fire was lit (a local archaeologist is responsible for rubbing a couple of stones together to supply the spark). Special events so far have included music, children’s activities, and a screening of “El territori al plat”––a documentary about the relationship between our landscape and what we eat) by the journalist and gastronome Salvador Garcia. Click here to see the trailer on Facebook.

Go home with the tomatoes, and also eggplant and red peppers, chop them up and get them simmering in a huge skillet with plenty of onions, a little garlic, and a lot of olive oil, and you’ll forget that time is passing you by for at least a week. A good batch of samfaina starts out as a chunky, saucy counterpoint to a piece of crisp fried fish or roasted chicken. A couple of days later it makes a lusty bed for a poached egg. Slather the rest, if there is any, on bread. Give yourself extra credit for toasted black olive bread.

Martha Rose Shulman wrote about samfaina in last week’s New York Times (One Culture’s Ratatouille Is Another’s Fill-in-the-Blank). She says the Catalan incarnation is one of her favorites. I’m with her there. But I’d say this is no time to skimp on olive oil. That’s what saves samfaina from the slushiness of the French stuff. Catalan cooks discourage the eggplant from hogging up all the oil by adding it late in the game, after the tomatoes have gone in and juiced things up.

I learned that bit about adding the vegetables in the proper order from the Fundació Institut Català de la Cuina, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Catalonia’s culinary heritage. Their Corpus Culinari is a motherlode of traditional recipes, including samfaina.

Shulman’s recipe includes zucchini, which the folks at the Institut might see as an interloper. Ditto the green pepper. Traditionalists probably wouldn’t approve of my use of cherry tomatoes for this either––it’s just that they seem to be the sweetest things on the vine in fall around here and I like to leave some whole to brighten the finished dish with dots of red. Everything else gets a nice small dice.

The Corpus says to simmer the vegetable mixture until it’s “ben confitat.” Their recipes are not for people who use timers. Shulman cooks the vegetables down for four hours. I save that kind of commitment for sofregit––the dark caramelized base of many Catalan sauces. But for samfaina, the whole dice, saute, stir, repeat goes on only somewhere over an hour. The days are too short for anything more.

Samfaina––Tomato and Eggplant Ragout
Serves 6
2 sweet onions (1 lb.), chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 red peppers (1 lb.), chopped
2 pints cherry tomatoes, halve one pint and leave the other whole
2 small eggplants (1 lb.), chopped
3/4 cup olive oil
a pinch of red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. sherry vinegar

Heat a large skillet while you chop the onion. Pour about 1/4 cup of the olive oil into the skillet and keep chopping while it warms. Add the onions to the pan. (It helps to have a big bowl on hand so you can clear the diced vegetables out of your way and keep them moving towards the skillet.) Give the onions a turn now and then; they need about 10 minutes while you mince the garlic. Turn in the garlic. You want the vegetables simmering and going translucent for another 5 minutes or so, but not caramelizing too quickly. Gently stir in another 1/4 cup of the olive oil. Get going on the red peppers and turn them into the mixture. They need another 10 minutes or so of simmering. Next up, the tomatoes––halve one pint, throw the other in whole. Let things cook down, giving them an occasional gentle stir, for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, dice the eggplant (keep the dice fairly small). Stir in the last 1/4 cup of olive oil and turn in the eggplant.

Sprinkle on the red pepper flakes––just a pinch because the idea here is not heat: you want the red pepper to brighten things up without really being detectable. Season with the vinegar, a few grinds of black pepper, and a little salt. Taste and correct the seasonings while the vegetables simmer on for another 20 minutes or so, until the eggplant is tender. I like to keep the samfaina slightly on the bland side, especially if it is being used as a sauce for something a little salty-crunchy like pan-fried salt cod or rabbit or toasted black olive-studded bread.

This dish keeps and improves over a couple of days in the fridge. Reheat it gently to re-incorporate the olive oil.