Gran Festa de la Calçotada

The other day I talked how bad RENFE’s website is when I was trying to find a train to Valls, near Tarragona.

My reason for going was as close to a pilgrimage as I think I’ll ever get; the annual calçotada, which this year was on Sunday 28th January. A calçotada is simply a feast of specially grown spring onion called calçots, which are cooked over vines and then devoured with a sauce. Usually grilled meats accompany the calçots too.

I first came across calçots maybe 20 years ago in Meson del Conde in l’Escala on the Costa Brava. It was a cold February and many of the locals were served with a red brick roof tile containing some very charred looking vegetation of some kind. As I wanted to find out what it was they had I also ordered what turned out to be called “calçots”. I loved them and the presentation and that day marks the beginning of my obsession with calçots.

As we coundn’t find a train to Valls I decided to drive instead, and it turned out to be a good choice as Valls is around 75 minutes from Barcelona. Of course parking was a little more difficult, but once we were on foot we found that although Valls isn’t particularly pretty is is small. Armed with a map of the town provided by the organisers, complete with a timetable of events, we made our way to one square where they were demonstrating how to make the sauce. Since they were also giving away the sauce on pieces of bread there was a major scrum too, but I did managed to get two pieces for us.

After that we found the square where they were burning the fires to cook the calçots, and they even had a section available so that you could take along your own meat and cook it yourself and even though it was Sunday, all the butcher shops were open – next time we go I’ll take along some meat too I think. After watching the calçots being cooked we found a queue where we could buy a ticket to get the real purpose of our visit – to eat calçots.

Once we had our tickets we went back to the square where they were cooking the calçots and joined another queue, but after a few minutes I had in my hand what the pilgrimage was about – a bag containing 12 calçots, a half bottle of wine, a slice of bread, a pot of sauce and an official calçotada bib (I didn’t say how messy calçots are, did I?), all for just €6!

Anyway, there were a number of squares with benches set out for you to devour your feast and so once we had found our spot we laid out our food and drink and tucked in.

 

Categorised in: food, life

This post was written by David