It’s calçot time again!  This means I really have been here more than a year as I am able to enjoy great catalan traditions for the second time around. This time with a bit more knowledge about what to expect. Click here for some more information on calçots or here for last years experience.
The first ones we ate this weekend were at the house of a friend who lives in Montseny.
Cooked on a little bonfire in the garden, eaten in the mountain sunshine. Wonderful!
They arrived at the table wrapped in newspaper, just like the best fish and chips used to before EEC regulations banned that pleasure.

You peel off the outer blackened layer, dip the edible part in the sauce and tipping your head back, slowly take it into your wide open mouth. It is impossible to keep your hands clean and, for me at least, very difficult to look elegant in the process of eating. But the tang of the onions, the nutty flavour of the sauce, combined with the slitheriness of the flesh make it hard to stop once you have started.     And today we were offered them again, this time in a restaurant in Santa Eulalia where we had gone to see the procession of Tres Tombs. Of course we couldn’t resist.

I like outdoors food – getting your hands dirty, eating without a fork and knife, something simple that tastes extra delicious because it is fresh and cooked on an open fire.
Calçots fit the bill exactly!
For my main course I had grilled vegetables with some more of the lovely Romesco sauce

PS I have only just noticed Duna’s wild eyed face under the table on the first photo.  The mountain air always brings out the wolf in her.