Warming up

When wait­ing in Lon­don's Gatwick air­port for the plane home, I never know what to bring back with me, see­ing as how all Eng­lish prod­ucts can now be found in Cat­alo­nia (ex­cept fudge). I usu­ally end up buy­ing cook­ery mag­a­zines, of which there is a huge range in the UK. But once I've made it past the tasty look­ing cov­ers, I end up find­ing the recipes un­bear­ably twee. Take this tip from 'De­li­cious' mag­a­zine, for ex­am­ple: 'This dish screams out for a glass of dry cider'. Or: 'For the puds, make a truly di­vine match with a small glass of nutty tawny port.' Or this, from 'Taste Italia': 'Bu­ca­tini pasta...is often used with hearty meat sauces'. All that's miss­ing – in this orgy of pa­thetic fal­lacy – is for the scream­ing dish and the nutty port to go out on a blind date with the hearty sauces. Even the in­gre­di­ent de­scrip­tions can cause the odd wince: 'driz­zle olive oil' ('driz­zle' being used here as an ad­jec­tive); 'runny honey'; 'bis­cuits, coarsely chopped', 'lemon, zested' (?). Any­way, this being the time of year it is, here is a hope­fully non-twee recipe for he tra­di­tional Cata­lan Christ­mas lunch dish: es­cud­ella i carn d'olla. Go to the meat counter at any mar­ket and buy a chunk of bacon, a pig's ear, half a kilo of veal, half a chicken, black sausage, pig and calf bones, and one ready-made pi­lota de carn d'olla, which is an over­sized meat­ball made of minced pork, egg, gar­lic, pars­ley and bread­crumbs. Then move to the veg­etable stand and buy chick­peas, car­rots, cab­bage, pota­toes and turnips, all in mod­er­ate quan­ti­ties. Go home. Put six litres of water on to boil and add the veal, chicken, bacon, ear and bones. Sim­mer for an hour and a half, then add the cab­bage, the black sausage, the over­sized meat­ball, the chick­peas, and the veg­eta­bles. Once every­thing is cooked through, sep­a­rate the solid in­gre­di­ents from the broth by pour­ing it all through a colan­der. Put the broth back on to boil and add a few galets (which are large, snail-shaped pieces of pasta avail­able at all su­per­mar­kets in De­cem­ber). Cook the pasta. Serve the broth. Place the meat and veg­eta­bles to­gether on a large plate and - once you've fin­ished the soup - serve them in their turn. Bear in mind that next Christ­mas you could be eat­ing all this in a free coun­try. Which might im­prove the taste even more.