Leeks / Spring Onions / Calçots with Catalan Romesco Sauce

A messy Catalan tradition given the Capsule Pantry treatment

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Spain is incredibly good at using food to bring people together. And if you’re in Catalunya during the winter, the most convivial dish of all is calçots, blackened on a charcoal grill and eaten with Romesco sauce. Which is exactly what I ate whilst in Barcelona this weekend.

Calçots are intensely Catalan. They’re an allium and look like a cross between a spring onion (scallion) and a leek. The time to eat them is during Autumn and Winter when people hold Calçotadas - essentially a calçot party - in homes throughout the Catalan countryside.

Someone fires up a charcoal grill and bangs the calçots onto flames until they’re black on the outside. They’re then wrapped in newspaper and placed between two roof tiles to allow their residual heat to cook themselves through.

To eat, you peel off the charred outside and dip the soft, sweet, calçots into Romesco sauce, an impossibly delicious concoction of roasted red bell peppers or tomatoes, bread, almonds, olive oil, and vinegar.

Peel and dip

You then proceed to shove the whole thing in your mouth:

Everyone sits around long outside tables, the wine flows and the calçots are eaten over and over and over.

Alas, my Catalan friend - who has promised me a Calçotada with his friends - was not around whilst I was in Barcelona this weekend, so we headed to a restaurant he recommended instead. We weren’t disappointed.

I’ve made romesco sauce more times than I care to count. It’s amazing with calçots - or leeks or spring onions but works in myriad other ways too. As always, there are plenty of ways you can make this recipe your own and adapt it to what you have in your storecupboard.

The original recipe (serves 4)

Calçots, spring onions or very thin leeks, trimmed - around 6 per person.

Romesco sauce