#menjar

Today in Catalonia we celebrate the holiday of Sant Esteve (Saint Stephen's Day), in some areas also called Second Christmas.

On Christmas (25th December), we meet with half the family (for example, maternal side) to have a large lunch together and getting presents from the Christmas Log (Tió de Nadal). On the next day, we celebrate Saint Stephen's Day with the other half of the family (like the paternal side, or viceversa).

Both Christmas and Saint Stephen's Day meals start with a bunch of little starters on the table as shared little dishes that everyone can pick from (pica-pica), the most common ones being crisps, olives, almonds, mussels, cockles, shrimp, Iberian ham...

Then, the first course is, again for both days, the delicious escudella i carn d'olla: broth soup with galets pasta, and on the table we place different kinds of vegetables and meat that each person can add as they like to their soup dish. The most characteristic meat is pilota, a kind of meatball made of minced meat with parsley and garlic. In some seaside areas of Catalonia, on one of the two holidays they might eat fish and seafood soup instead.

For second course, the two holidays start to diverge. Christmas can have any of the most festive dishes of Catalan cuisine, typically either roasted chicken cooked with prunes and pine nuts, or tall rodó (thin slices of beef) cooked in a rich sauce with prunes and pine nuts and sometimes dried apricot. However, for Saint Stephen, the most common dish —and the true icon of this holiday— is cannelloni with bechamel and melted au gratin cheese on top. Traditionally, the cannelloni are made with the leftover food from Christmas day (the meat on the side of the escudella or the roasted chicken). However, some families might cook both cannelloni and another of the two dishes and eat a bit of both or give each family member the choice between them.

And for dessert, again same as for Christmas, the iconic Christmas desserts: neules (thin and crunchy rolled waffles, as you can see in the last photo) to dip in cava (Catalan champagne) and torrons (different kinds of nougats, second-to-last photo). In some areas, they also have special local Christmas desserts on top of this, for example borraines amb mel in Terres de l'Ebre, sweet pastries stuffed with sweet potato in the Valencian Country, potato cake and coca de torró in the Balearic Islands, and more.

After the meal, it's traditional for the kids of the family to stand on their chair and recite a Christmas-themed poem, and receive some money from their relatives in exchange.

As always with holidays, the sobretaula (the long conversations while sitting at the table after a meal) can last for hours, until we say goodbye until we'll see each other again on Three Wise Men Day (6th of January) to exchange presents.

Have a happy Sant Esteve!

2019 IN AESTHETICS:

Menjar

In the year 1700, an artisan called Isidre Sanmartí started his pasta shop in the town of Caldes de Montbui (Barcelona Metropolitan Ambit, Catalonia). He made pasta as was habitual at the time: he had a mill that he used to turn wheat into semolina, and he added the local water (Caldes town is known since Roman times for its termal waters) to make it into pasta. Isidre also invented some wooden tools to make spaghetti more easily. Since then, his descendants have never abandoned the shop.

Fideus Sanmartí still has their shop in the town, and they still use the same recipe as they did more than 300 years ago: only wheat and Caldes's springwater (unlike most pasta producers nowadays, who use egg and flour). The result is a pasta that makes the soups and stews thicken thanks to the starch that the pasta releases when it's being cooked, and it also makes the pasta last for hours without getting too soft after cooking.

In the 1900s, the shop added the new machinery. They bought a machine that cuts the pasta, which still works perfectly now more than 100 years later and is still the one they use. Other machines, such as the kneading tool, were bought in the 1940s.

The drying process is still done in the traditional way, leaving the pasta hanging for 48 hours (compared to the big pasta companies, which leave their pasta less than 10 hours to dry).

Every day, they produce 1,000 kg of pasta, comprising 52 different types of pasta, though most of it is noodles (like Isidre did back in the 1700s). Most of their pasta is sold in Catalonia, but nowadays almost 15% of their produce is exported to 16 other countries, where it is mostly used in gourmet restaurants who value the high quality of this pasta.

Pasta soups and other noodle dishes are very common in Catalan cuisine, having been among the most common foods in Catalonia for centuries. However, nowadays there are not many artisans left who make pasta, since most of it comes from factories.

Encenalls de Sant Josep. Photos from the bakery El Forn de'n Pep (Manresa).

March 19th is Saint Joseph's Day. In many parts of Catalonia, today it's traditional to eat these delicious pastries called encenalls. They're a kind of cookie with vanilla and almonds, coated in chocolate. They can be found in bakeries in the days around this holiday.

"The word encenall means "wood shaving", the thin curly "The word encenall means "wood shaving", the thin curly "ribbons" made of wood that come off when a carpenter is working a piece of wood. According to religion, Saint Joseph was a carpenter, for this reason this pastry is typically eaten for his holiday.