Catalan cuisine

The table of Roussillon belongs to the Catalan culinary world, without being uniform: the departmental tourist board distinguishes between mountain cuisine, plain cuisine and seaside cuisine, all based on local produce and changing with the season. Its simplest form is the grill: charcuterie, chops and sausage cooked over embers of vine cuttings, served with bread and allioli, crushed garlic emulsified with olive oil, or with pa amb tomàquet, lightly toasted bread rubbed with garlic and tomato, then drizzled with oil.

The cargolada, Frenchified as cargolade, is its most communal version. Petits-gris snails, packed tightly on a grill, cook over bright embers of vine cuttings and old vine stocks; each one receives a drop of melted lard, and they are eaten on thick slices of bread spread with aïoli. The meal is prepared outdoors, for a large party at the table, in spring and summer. Easter Monday is the traditional occasion: people gather around the hermitages to dance the sardana, amid the smell of the cargolade and of the Easter omelette.

Winter belongs to slow-simmered dishes. The ollada, a country soup of Northern Catalonia, combines pork, cabbage and, depending on the recipe, barley, and is often lifted with a little sagí, pork fat. The boles de picolat, minced-meat balls served with white beans in a tomato sauce, include, depending on the household, green olives and a hint of cinnamon: this taste for spices and unexpected pairings, rabbit and snails or chicken and prawns, marks Catalan cuisine.

Desserts also follow the calendar. Catalan cream, flavoured with lemon and cinnamon, topped with a thin crust of caramelised sugar and served in an earthenware dish, is in Catalonia the crema de Sant Josep, that of 19 March. The bunyetes, very thin, crisp round fritters flavoured with orange blossom, are made at Easter in the plain of Roussillon, the Vallespir and the Conflent; the panellets, small almond pastries covered with pine nuts, accompany All Saints’ Day.