Seasonal Eating

The Spanish, like the Chinese, appear to shop for produce every day or two.  Perhaps it is because we live in a city with grocery stores on every corner and apartments often lacking elevators, but I am always the only one in the market with an overflowing cart full of food.   Most people place only a few items on the conveyor belt at a time.  I know it is better that food doesn't sit around in the refrigerator forever growing bacteria and losing nutrients and flavor.  I haven't seen a single Costco-style buy-in-bulk store here.  I believe in harvesting when ripe, keeping transportation to a minimum, and eating what is in season (although I absolutely need to have tomatoes available year-round).  I like that in the grocery store I go to there are signs indicating the origin of each item, and the majority of the produce is from Catalunya.  True, there are bananas from The Canary Islands, and mangos, pineapples, and avocados from Latin America, but by and large, the food is local.  This is possible because like California,  Catalunya is blessed with a climate which supports a wide variety of agriculture.  Outside of Catalunya, the produce I've encountered is not as fresh nor as local.  Here are some recollections of various seasonal foods we enjoyed in our first year here.

October brought chestnuts, or castañas.  Instead of Halloween, the Catalans celebrate La Castanyada on All Saint's Day.  On this night, families get together and eat panallets (cookies made of almond flour with pine nuts on top), roasted chestnuts, and roasted sweet potatoes (moniato).  The sweet potatoes and chestnuts are often roasted and sold by street vendors, and their warm, hearty sweetness is wonderful on a chilly fall evening.

We went into the mountains to look for chestnuts, which grow on tall deciduous trees, and are encased in a deadly spiny coat.  When they fall from a tree they can do serious damage, as we witnessed when a friend climbed one and then shook the tree to make the nuts fall.  He warned those below, but his son did not heed the warning and was hit squarely on the back by falling chestnuts.  When he took off his shirt we could see that the spines had penetrated his shirt and were stuck in his skin, and he had red welts around them.  These things were so pokey that we could not safely gather them with bare hands. The safest way to open them is by stepping on them with a very thick-soled shoe.  In Spanish, a castañazo is a hard blow, and now we know where that word derives from.

I looks like a sea urchin, and is just as dangerous!

November was mushroom season-- bright yellow-orange chanterelles (rossinyols in Catalan), orangey-brown rovellones, black trumpets, and many others I didn't learn the names of.  I had always wanted to go mushroom hunting, but knowing that it can be a dangerous avocation, I had never had the chance to do it.   Catalans are so into mushroom hunting, that there is a hit TV show about it. Mushrooms need to be hunted for a few days after rain, when the temperature is not too cold nor too warm.  Some local friends took us into the woods and for the first hour we found absolutely nothing.  In fact I got trapped in a viscous bramble and barely escaped with my life.  I figured we weren't going to find anything. But THEN...

We figured out how to find them hiding in the tall dried grass, and we gathered a large basketful!  It was awesome.  Even Trevor, who won't touch a mushroom to his lips, had fun finding them.  I think it tapped into our prehistoric gatherer instincts.  

December through March is citrus season, and those famous Valencia oranges are everywhere.  There are countless varieties of tangerines as well, and each variety is labeled.  Some are larger, some seedless, some sweeter, some more juicy, others more tart.  We enjoyed fresh squeezed orange juice daily.  Here is a recipe for a simple but fantastic salad containing oranges, red onions, olives, and mint (sounds weird but it's to die for)!

4 large oranges, peeled and sliced

1 small red onion into thin rings

4 tablespoons olive oil

1-2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon finely chopped mint

50 g of olives

salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Arrange orange slices and onion rings in a large platter with olives on top.

2. Mix in a jar or blender oil, vinegar, honey and chopped mint. Season to taste. Pour over the oranges and let stand 1 hour in the refrigerator.  

January-March is the season of calçots, a type of mild bulb-less onion which is grown like a leek with earth mounded up as it grows so that the bottom portion is kept pale and tender.  During this time of year, the weather is warming and people throw big barbecues called calçotadas where these wonderful onions are consumed in large quantities.  Grapevines cuttings which are byproducts of winter pruning are used to build a roaring open fire.  The calçots are then roasted, unwashed,  in the fire until they turn black on the outside and are soft on the inside.  They are wrapped in newspaper to keep them warm until served.  

 

Each family has their closely guarded recipe for the dipping sauce, known as romesco, which is made from olive oil, ground almonds, garlic, tomato, vinegar, and red peppers.  You grasp the calçot on the green top with one hand, and pull down with the other hand so that the burnt outer layer sloughs off, and you throw it away.  What you have left looks vaguely like a dangling, limp, banana slug.  Dip your roasted slug into the sauce and then eat it.  It's sweet and kind of slides down your throat.  Delicious!  Half the fun is how black your hands get.  

February-April is strawberry season.  I didn't know that Spain is the world's largest strawberry exporter, and that Huelva (down south) is the epicenter of production.  The strawberries here are sweet and not too acidic.  Our favorite way to eat them is dipped in dark chocolate, but they are also fantastic with lemon yogurt.  

March - May is artichoke and asparagus season.  The artichokes here are gigantic, plentiful, and cheap, and Spain is the number 3 producer in Europe.  Catalans like them sprinkled liberally with salt and olive oil, and roasted in the ashes of the fire (or in the oven) until they are quite shriveled looking.  Because they are rather woody, it does take about an hour to cook them through.  One can also find wild asparagus growing in the woods, and it has a spicier flavor.  

June-September is stone fruit time:  first cherries (June-July), then apricots, plums, nectarines, and peaches.  What can I say... tree-ripened stone fruit is amazing.  

July - September brings delicious melons!  There is nothing better on a hot summer day than the crisp, juicy sweetness of watermelon.  They are rarely powdery and 95% of the time sweet and crunchy.  My personal favorite are these pictured below, which have light yellow flesh and are similar to a honeydew, but sweeter and melt-in-your-mouth heaven.  They look ugly on the outside-- dark green and rough with lots of crackled scars, and a very hard, tough rind.  I have never been a melon person, as sometimes they make my mouth itch if I eat too much, but I have fallen in love with these melons.

Looking forward to discovering new foods during our second year!  I know there is a season for snails, and yet I don't think I can do it...