Calçotada - about onions, tradition & smart ideas

When you hear the word ‘Spain’, I’m almost sure that if you don’t imagine a woman dancing flamenco, you will definitely think of the sun and the beach.
It’s somehow frustrating that such a versatile, multifaceted country is basically known for a stripe of the Mediterranean coast.
Get away from the seaside deeper inside the peninsula and you’ll be amazed by the variety of traditions, landscapes, lifestyles, accents and, naturally, typical dishes!
However, you don’t have to go too far from the coast to get a richer taste of true Catalonia, famous for its unique culture. In the list of Catalonian traditions, “calçotada” should undoubtedly be awarded first prize! This simple, originally peasant feast is a true hymn to Catalan ingenuity.

What is all the fuss about, you’d ask. Well, in fact it’s all about onions. Calçots is a variety of a mild green onion, which were originally cultivated in Valls, in the province of Tarragona. The first time I was invited to eat calçots, I was as puzzled. After looking at the way they look like, I was totally bewildered: a dirty dish of leeks black with ash was quite the opposite of mouthwatering!

However, this gastronomical event got so popular over the last decades, that now one can even try some calçots directly in Barcelona in late winter & early spring. Still, if you have a chance to take part in the real open-air calçotada in the countryside, the experience is promised to be unforgettable.
What can unite people better that good food, indeed? Calçots are grown especially for this purpose, they are roasted directly in the open fire, leaving the core part soft and creamy, and eaten with your hands, and yes, you can get as dirty as you wish! If not, you are always provided with a huge bib! Meanwhile, the coals are used for roasting meat, sausages or artichokes for the main course.

Calçots served on a roof tile with romesco sauce in wine served in a porrón

Delightful smoky smell spreads all around the place and calçots are finally served on a clay roof tile, accompanied by excellent local wines or Catalan cava. Another indispensable uniting element is the typical drinking vessel for wine, called ‘porrón’: it has a long nose, which allows everyone to drink from the same one just by pouring wine in a thin stream right into your mouth.
Last but not the least, the credit should be given to the romesco sauce, in which roasted calçots are dipped, delicious mixture of grated nuts, peppers, tomatoes & olive oil, no calçotada would be good without!

Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 3 (Chiang Mai)

We didn’t expect it that we wouldn’t want to leave Bangkok’s hustle & bustle. However, before afternoon we were already heading for Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. Chiang Mai didn’t impress us much at fist sight. Not even at the second, actually.  However, if you imagine the concentration of Catholic cathedrals and churches in Rome, it’ll be easy for you to imagine the amount of  Buddhist temples in a quite smaller Chiang Mai.

Trying to calm the hunger after the trip and temple-watching, we set out for some culinary tourism. I was glad to prove it for myself that Thai food is delicious even in the streets. (Although I wouldn’t venture trying stuff from some of the food stalls!) Rice, which is delicious by itself, comes in all imaginable combinations, with pork, chicken, shrimps, veggies, cashew nuts, egg or soy sprouts.  These are just a few examples. The same goes for noodles!

There are several types of curries which are added to practically everything in variable quantities (from a lot to a whole freaking lot!). So, those are red (the spiciest one only for those with a very strong stomach!), green – (not spicy at all) and medium spicy yellow and panang curries (prepared by adding some coconut milk). Finally, when in Thailand, you are sure you to taste at least some of the innumerable stir fries with tamarind or oyster sauce (more commonly, the latter is substituted with fish-guts sauce. Good thing I didn’t know it when I was trying this stuff! But that’s a story for another post…)

I finally got myself the famous ‘som tam’, papaya salad. Desperately trying to figure out which of the mix was in fact papaya, I realized those were light green acid stripes instead of juicy orange pieces I was used to. Acid and really spicy it still tasted great!

Panang curry chicken & green papaya salad

After the meal, I decided to give a try to a typical Thai dessert ‘khao niao mamuang’, or plainly, sweet sticky rice (cooked in…surprise! coconut milk) with mango.

Banana samosa or banana fritters immediately became our favorites available anywhere, from the shabbiest street or to the fanciest restaurant. However, the most curious dessert I saw in Thailand was pyramid- or block-shaped banana leaf wrapped treats. Those are a kind of dumplings prepared by wrapping glutinous rice, usually cooked in coconut milk with palm sugar, in banana leaves and tied with a string. They say, the wrapping adds a special fresh flavor to the rice. I won’t judge the taste but just limit myself to saying that to a European palate, it tasted pretty bland and I’m not a huge jelly fan. Worth trying for an experience though.

Sticky rice with mango

Goog good good!                                                                                                                                                                                 (taking a closer a look at the poster... does the happy child really look like some kind of a little pigtailed 'ladyboy'???)

One of Thailand's best - ripe dragon fruit!

Trying to find the famous night market, we bumped into an old guy from Tasmania, who amazed us by saying he’d been leaving in Chiang Mai for 7 months already (I couldn’t take my eyes off his dirty feet in worn-out shoes with flapping soles, which seemed like he didn’t take off throughout all those months).

I later saw him again on the grass leaning peacefully against the town wall and couldn´t stop asking myself, can this really be better than Tasmania??

Anyway, following his indications we found the Night market, to get in some local feel and finding it difficult to push our way through the endless lines of merchant booths to the point that we almost got late to the night performance at Khum Kaew Kanthoke Palace.

Besides, magical Loi Kratong holiday celebrated at the beginning of December (I still feel sooooo bad we couldn’t get to see it!), Kanthoke Dinner & Dance is one of the famous Chiang Mai experiences.

Its name stems from the name of a low table, ‘kanthoke’ in Thai: during the dinner and performance you’re practically sitting on the floor. In a few words, you get to try some of typical Northern Thai dishes, while seeing a story with traditional Lanna (northern Thai) music and a series of folk dances in traditional costumes of different regions. One cannot but be amazed by the inborn grace of those petite women dancers: only when they passed by I realized that some of them were not older than 13-15 years, which wasn’t so obvious with heavy make up…