Calçots

First of all, thank you everyone for the hearts and stars for yesterday's photo: the most hearts I've ever had! I was really pleased with the photo myself -- I know some people like to spend a lot of time on post-processing, but I'm happy when a photo comes out of the camera just the way I wanted it, and I'm glad other people liked it too.

Which is not what happened today. We went to Palafrugell market in the morning, and I took lots of terrible photos. It's difficult photographing a crowded market in a mixture of bright sunshine and dark shadow. After lunch, we decided to explore some more local beaches. Although today was a glorious sunny day, yesterday was windy, and the after-effects of this meant that waves were crashing onto the beach and against the rocks at Illas Rojas. I took lots of rubbish photos of those too.

At home, we lit a fire and grilled the calçots we'd bought at the market. Calçots are rather like Welsh onions. They are traditionally eaten in Catalunya at this time of year. Classically, they are served on a roof tile, which keeps them warm. We didn't have any roof tiles handy, so we did without. You also normally wear a bib to eat them, because it's a messy business: you pick them up by the green end, pull off the charred outer layers, dip them in sauce, and then basically slurp them up, throwing aside the stringy bits. Since we were at home on our own, we didn't bother with those either.

The sauce: it's salvitxada, basically a Romesco sauce with added tomatoes. I made plain Romesco, using the absurdly simple method shown in this video. I was really pleased with the result; the sauce was delicious, and it will be putting in an appearance on my neglected blog soon.

So I present the four stages of calçots, in my first-ever collage: raw, grilling over the fire, with the salsa Romesco, and the remnants of the feast.