Calçotada - Spring onion grilled - Catalan tradition

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That name refers to a popular celebration about a special white onion, spring onion “the calçot”.

Last week was the family calçot celebration and my house was full of people. Because the first ingredient of this Catalan tradition is people, a lot of people, family or friends this detail is not important, whenever they were many people talking on the top of their voices.

My family always celebrate great “calçotadas” (calçot’s meals). My husband’s family comes from Tarragona, the “calçot’s homeland”

Exceptionally this year the Tarragona’s family has come to Barcelona, with them also came the wine from Sarral and the “calçots” from Valls, off course.

Starting from the premise “We, Catalan people are rare” (you must bear in mind that on Christmas we eat soup, and we place a defecating man on our Christmas scenes, as a sample) nobody must be surprised if I said you that Catalan people feel this onion kind as a national identity sign.
The Calçot’s paternity is claimed to “Xat Benaiges” a peasant from Valls in the middle 19th Century.Some historians also attributed him the onion’s sauce paternity, but I cannot imagine a peasant, in that time, cooking a sauce. In any case later we will talk about sauce.

Obviously I am not a peasant, but I’ll try to explain you the “strange” onion’s growing process.

First of all, the Calçot is a white onion with a very difficult life.

When onion start growing it was pulled up with the only aim to plant it again.

When onion begin to show the “head” on the land, the peasant pulls up it again. (It’s impossible to live like this!)

Then the peasant left the onions relaxing for some weeks, but when the onions begin thinking that they will die forgotten in the shed, the peasant takes the onion and planted it again. But now he doesn’t cover whole onion, the white part rests always uncovered.

Time by time while the onion is growing the peasant surround it with land, but he never covers it at all. On Catalan language this process is named “calçar” and it is the origin of the word “calçot”

The calçots are picked from November to April.

As a result of this long and hard process are the 900 Calçots last week my family eaten at home.