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!
