Catalonia · Starter
Calçots a la Brasa
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with char used as punctuation.
Ingredients
- 24 calçots, or 24 slim spring onions with at least 3 cm of white bulb
- vine cuttings or dry hardwood for the fire
- flaky sea salt
- 1 quantity salvitxada, to serve
- newspaper or clean brown paper, for wrapping
The skills inside
Grilling over live coalsSteaming: basket, leaf and lid
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Burn the wood down to leaping flame over glowing cuttings. You want live fire here, not the settled embers you would bank down for a slow roast.
- Trim the roots and cut the green tops back to a hand's length, then lay the calçots straight across the grate, touching each other.
- Char hard, turning once, until the outer two layers are black the whole way round and the point of a knife slides into the bulb with no resistance.
- Stack them hot into newspaper, fold the parcel shut and leave it 20 minutes. The trapped steam lifts the burnt sheaths off the sweet core. 20 min
- To eat, hold the green top in one hand, pinch the black sheath at the base with the other and pull down. Salt the pale stem, drag it through salvitxada and lower it in from above.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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