Salvitxada, the real calçotada sauce

The sausage, the real one

It is typical that in every family there is always a rivalry between the tastiest recipes. Who hasn't been to a calçotada and been drenched in your aunt's or godmother's sauce... Sausage recipes are passed down from generation to generation and are typical of the Alt Camp. As we saidthe origin of the sausage is attributed to the same farmer who discovered the calçot at the end of the 19th century, in Valls. Among its ingredients we can find toasted almonds, roasted red tomato, pepper - the most used is nyora -, roasted garlic, olive oil, vinegar and salt. Spicy will never be added to the sausage, nor will fried, dry bread or biscuits be added to thicken it.

RECIPES

Ingredients for four people

100 g of toasted almonds
30 or 40 g of hazelnuts
5 roasted tomatoes
A small head of roasted garlic
One or two boiled nyoris (dried pepper).
Oli, salt and vinegar
Optionally, a pinch of pepper

Place the scalded tomatoes without skins or seeds, the peeled garlic, the scalded peppers and the almonds in a mortar or blender. While we are integrating the ingredients, we gradually add the oil and vinegar and salt and pepper to taste.

The typical chato of the Penedès

This is perhaps the most unknown and is always associated with an endive salad, with anchovies, tuna and cod. Xató is typical of the Penedès region, and as with the rest of the sauces, each family has its own particularity when preparing the recipe. Tand yet, we can say that the traditional recipe necessarily includes the following ingredients: toasted almonds and hazelnuts, pepper, toasted bread - to thicken it -, garlic, vinegar, olive oil and salt. What differentiates it from the sausage, then, is that it has hazelnuts and bread.

Romesco, the mother of sauces

Although it is known internationally as a sauce, its origin is a seafood dish. This dish is said to come from the Serrallo fishing district, in Tarragona, where the fishermen created a recipe with the ingredients they had most readily available. The fish romesquet is a seafood stew with this sauce and it is delicious.

The base for this sauce is toasted hazelnuts and almonds, roasted tomato and garlic, pepper - or bell pepper -, olive oil, vinegar and salt. This would be the original sauce from which the rest would derive. It is internationally recognized and the recipe appears in many recipe books. The romesco is indisputably of Tarragona origin and it is said that there were two variants, that of the farmers and that of the fishermen, each with the ingredients most readily available to each guild. It's a hard pair soaked with tomatoes from the fishermen and almonds from the farmers.