Catalan cuisine

Away from the restaurants serving all day English breakfasts and the fast food, visitors to Barcelona have a good opportunity to find out about Catalan cuisine.

The key to Catalan cuisine is fresh ingredients cooked simply, and specialities like botifarra amb mongetes (Catalan sausage with beans) can be found in many restaurants for just a few Euros.

Other typical dishes worth trying are lamb cooked with 12 heads of garlic and suquet (a rich fish stew).

North of the border in French Catalunya the food is very similar. The difference is that basic Catalan cuisine is cooked with a French twist, resulting in the excellent combination of well cooked fresh food with a subtle mixture of flavours. This influence has made itself known in Spain too - an excellent restaurant in Boadella d'Empordà in the province of Girona is El Trull d'en Francesc.

The calçotada

Catalan cuisine also has some quite unusual examples of basic ingredients turned into an art-form. Among these is the calçotada, a true wintertime feast consisting of calçots served with a special sauce containing tomato, almonds, garlic and chilli, followed by a selection of meats cooked on an open fire.

Calçots are simply spring onions that have been grown in a way that results in a large spring onion that is milder and sweeter that normal and with many growths from a single bulb.

Planted in September or October, they are transplanted when the shoots break the soil. In the late spring they are dug up and stored in the dry until August or September, when they are replanted with earth packed around the new growth.

Cooked over an open fire, calçots are usually served in red brick roof-tiles and eaten by hand, with many restaurants providing clients with a bib.

Although calçots are available as early as October in some areas of Catalunya, they are difficult to find in Barcelona. The most traditional calçotada is held in Valls, near Tarragona, on the last weekend in January, when thousands of calçot aficionados congregate to eat this delicacy of Catalan cuisine.

Colman Andrews' book on Catalan Cuisine is packed full of recipes gleaned from many of the top chefs in Catalunya. Easy to follow, ingredients for many of the recipes are readily available in your own supermarket. Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com