Catalonia Archives - Neil Sowerby

Christmas morning and my main present is an electric meat grinder with sausage-making attachments. It has me salivating, but there’s a bronze turkey to be roasted, Gran Reserva Rioja to be uncorked and, among other parlour games, The King’s Speech to be avoided, so road-testing my gadget just has to wait.

Not for long, mind. Before 2026 with its many scary portents clocks in I will have produced some exemplary Merguez sausages using natural casings and lamb shoulder bought locally and the finest Tunisian harissa to be sourced in the UK.

A surprising triumph, but now I’ve now assembled the ingredients to tackle making a more divisive banger. Will I have the nerve to recreate a Catalan speciality I first tasted in Girona? The Botifarra Dolça is a sausage but not as we know it. First up, it is disconcertingly sweet. Down to the presence of sugar and cinnamon in the pork filling. Fittingly, it is offered to me with a slice of caramelised apple from a stall in the city’s El Mercat del Lleó.

I had been expecting to sample the other, savoury, versions of this Catalan rival to Spain’s ubiquitous chorizo, differing primarily through the absence of pimenton. The basic Botifarra Blanca is a coarse textured, white sausage, seasoned with salt and pepper, sometimes enriched with egg, the Negra a blood sausage and the Botifarra de Perol contains offal. But I get the Dolça. It tastes like a combination of mince pie and pork pie. A Marmite moment? Maybe.

My sugar rush along the streets of Girona

As it turns out, it is the sweetest local speciality I encounter during a morning’s sugar rush courtesy of my Girona Food Tour. It started with my introduction to the Xiuxo. It’s the Catalan cousin of the churro but more luscious – a deep-fried, sugar-coated, viennoiserie cylinder filled with crema catalana (custard). It dates back to the 1920s and the Casamoner bakery chain is a good place to sample it.

Across the Carrer de Santa Clara there’s further sweet temptation from the Rocambolesc Gelateria. Think an ice cream-led spin-off of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, harvesting the creativity of a three Michelin star pastry chef.

Hugely popular, it launched over a decade ago at the time when founder Joan Roca and his elder brothers Jordi and Josep saw their En Celler San Roca twice named World’s Best Restaurant. Quite a contrast Rocambolesc’s cartoonish backdrop for a riotous assembly of toppings for their soft-serve ices. Despite the day-glo all ingredients are natural. The fun element ramps up with the popsicles, where 3D moulds are used to make fantastical creations. Who fancies a polo (popsicle), made from strawberries and rosewater and shaped like Jordi Roca’s nose?

Origins of the Botifarra Dolça and what to do with it?

20th century Catalan writer Josep Pla ascribed the Botifarra Dolça’s origins to the medieval monasteries, which makes more sense than linking such a pork-based product to flavours associated with the Muslim Conquest (Girona is home to beautifully preserved Arab Baths).

What we can be sure is there few cultures more inventive in their sausage production. In his magisterial Catalan Cuisine: Europe’s Last Great Culinary Secret (Grub Street, 1997) Colman Andrews identifies 17 officially recognised varieties.

Traditionally they were made in farmhouses in the pig-slaughtering season before winter, now the commercial varieties are available all year round.

The straight Bottifara is the one you find grilled with white beans or wild mushrooms, useful too as a stuffing. The sweet version offers more of a challenge, usually being served off-puttingly as dessert. When raw it is bright pink; when left to dry it is a pinkish grey. Grill them, fry them, combine with apple.

The Empordà wine region, north of Girona and inland from the Costa Brava, is particularly proud of its food specialities, awarding them the Productes de Empordà seal of approval. There alongside Palamos prawns, Pals rice, and the ricotta

cheese from Fonteta sits the sweet Botifarra.

Will my Yorkshire Botifarra Dolça live up to such billing? Will I really get the taste? Will my dinner party guests, surprised by their sausage surprise dessert?

The recipe I’ve lifted from the ‘Provincial Guild of Charcuteros and Butchers of Girona’ uses 2.5ks of pork, 2kg (yes, 2kg) of white sugar, the rind of 2.5 l3mons, 25g of salt and and and 3g of cinnamon.

What is worrying me is this instruction: “This mixture must rest between seven and 15 days. If it were directly placed in the gut at the end it would explode due to the volume increase that occurs when the meat releases water and absorbs the sugar.”

Watch this space!

It’s that time of year again and as I prepare to barbecue a big bundle of calçots in my rather blustery backyard the whole celebration is tinged with sadness. Because these long thin Catalan onions that resemble a leek (but aren’t related) will forever be associated with Lunya in the Barton Arcade and Iberica in Spinningfields. Both these now departed Hispanic standard bearers in Manchester hosted jolly, messy events around that quirky veg’s brief season. Bibs were essential as the charred objects of our desire, fresh from the coals, were dipped in a pungent Romesco-style sauce and accompanying wine was poured from a great height from needle-nosed porróns.

Calçots’ journey from plot to plate is far more epic than your supermarket spring onion’s. The Catalans plant them in early autumn, traditionally as the moon is waning, then a few weeks later, when the shoots have pushed up, transplanting them. The following summer they are harvested and stored in a dry place to germinate again, then in August/September they are trimmed and replanted in trenches.

Now the fun starts. Let Colman Andrews, author of the still definitive Catalan Cuisine (1997) take up the story:

“As they begin to sprout once more earth is packed around the new growth to blanch it (as done with chicory and celery) – and this is how calçots got their name, from the verb C, to put on boots or shoes. (The Catalan word for shoe, in fact, is the almost identical calçat. Compare the Italian word calzone, ‘big stocking’, meaning a stocking-shaped turnover pizza).

“By the time the calçots – as many as 12 or 13 of them from each large onion, seven or eight from each smaller one – are harvested in January and the ensuing few months, they have become not only much larger but much milder and sweeter. And because of their ‘shoes’ of soil, at least half their length is white.”

What was once a seaside speciality around Tarragona province, is now commonplace across Spain, as ubiquitous as paella or churros. A colleague noticed Manchester’s acclaimed 10 Tib Lane is currently serving leeks with romesco, saving on the air miles for the real thing.

*Peter an Elaine Kinsella at the Manchester Luna*

In truth the annual La Calçotada wasn’t remotely on mind until a visit to Liverpool this week for the opening of Daniel Heffy’s impressive new restaurant NORD. En route I happened upon the original Lunya restaurant/bar/deli, where founders Peter and Elaine Kinsella retrenched after their Manc exit. And there for sale was a stack of calçots, in all their earthy prime, which I snapped up on impulse, The Kinsellas will be hosting their own Calçotada this Sunday afternoon (March 26) at Lunyalita at Albert Dock, with not just calçots smoking on the grill but also a selection of grilled meatsand yes, the cava will flow. For afters, crema catalana, naturally. My more modest party at the same time may feature fino sherry en rama, my preferred tipple, decidedly un-Catalan. but hey I will, of course, have make my own take on Romesco (recipe below).

I’ll endeavour to char the calçots almost black, wrap them in newspaper as tradition demands.To be topical, I used Times columnist Matthew Parris’ caustic consignment of Boris Johnson to history’s scrap heap. Leave them to steam for 20 minutes, then gingerly peel open the sweet insides from their feathery casing. Serve them simply with lashings of romesco and garlicky tomato bread. The Catalans serve them in long terracotta roofing tiles to keep them warm, but it’s not my priority, obviously.

ROMESCO SAUCE

Ingredients

200g piquillo peppers

6 garlic cloves, unskinned, raosted for 20 minutes

6 plum tomatoes, roasted

100ml sherry vinegar

250ml olive oil

1tsp smoked paprika

50g breadcrumbs

150g blanched almonds

juice of ½ lemon

Method

Toast the almonds in a dry frying pan for 3-4 mins until starting to turn golden and smelling toasted. Shake the pan often to turn them. Tip out and leave to cool, then grind. Roast the tomatoes in the oven until soft and sticky
Drain the red peppers and tip into a food processor with the almonds, breadcrumbs, tomato, lemon, garlic, vinegar and smoked paprika, then blitz to a chunky mixture.
With the motor still on, slowly drizzle in the olive oil to make a coarse sauce. Season well.

Tag Archive for: Catalonia

A slice of my sweet, sweet sausage? You’ll be tasting a very Catalan dish

My sugar rush along the streets of Girona

Origins of the Botifarra Dolça and what to do with it?

Calçots charring on the grill – it’s my Catalan party and I’ll cry if I want to

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