For a few years now, ramen (Japanese noodle soup) has taken over Barcelona (Catalonia's capital city). It's a very good soup, I have liked it ever since I first tried it, precisely because it reminded me of our escudella (Catalan noodle soup that can go with different kinds of meat, vegetables, and chickpeas).
Now, the chef Jordi Vilà has created the first escudella to take away, a "street escudella". The chef says he will still cook it the traditional way that our mothers and grandmothers have always done, but with a modern take-away format, served in a biodegradable pot. It's sold in his shop Va de Cuina (carrer Comte Borrell, 54, Barcelona).
The broth brews for more than 15 hours, with chicken, pork, lard (all meat used is ecological), cabbage, chickpeas, turnip, parsnip, carrot, potato, onion, and —of course!— pilota (a delicious kind of meatball made of mixed minced meat and parsley). An individual ration (400 ml) costs 7.73€, and a big pot of 700 ml costs 12.80€, not bad at all for Barcelona prices.
Take away is still very new in our country outside of pizza and roasted chicken, I don't know how it will go with soup, but I hope it works because I am a huge fan of escudella and it will be very comfortable to be able to buy it already cooked every so often 😁
Mushroom, Lentil, and Potato Pie Recipe This comforting savory pie combines mushrooms, lentils, potatoes, onions and thyme in a creamy gravy topped with a flaky, tender pastry. 🤤🤤🤤
Winter evenings and roasted groundnuts are a perfect combination!
Jiju (bil) took Subhy ( my nephew) and me to see nearby celebrations. We bought some gazak and roasted groundnuts on our way back. Nothing beats the roasted groundnuts on a cold winter evening!
So I went to the field, to see if I could possibly locate the jerusalem artichoke; I'm craving it, but locating it is a little tricky. I know it's there, because I've seen the plant lady dig it out a few years ago, and the plant is invasive and aggressive and impossible to get rid of. I know during the summer, it looks like some sort of sunflower, it's related to sunflowers. I haven't exactly seen anything similar to sunflowers in the summer, but I was sick and not checking for the most of the time, so I wasn't sure if it flowered or not. There was one time the plant lady found it, and pointed at it and said 'Here, this is where you can dig for the jerusalem artichoke in the winter' and I still didn't see the sunflower-like plant, she was pointing at some grass. I tried really hard to remember the location, but there's very little to get oriented with in the field, and I only remembered that it was on the left side of it.
So. I'm standing in the big field with 10% hope that maybe I will find it. I tried to research 'how does the jerusalem artichoke look in the winter' and got absolutely nothing, only pictures of yellow flowers. I figured, maybe I'll see a stalk with a big dried flower, and that will be it. No such luck!
I'm checking the left side of the field. The only stalks I could see were those of the goldenrod, and that was easily recognizable. There were dry stalks of some other flowers as well, but always very tiny ones. I was looking for big flowers. There was blackberry, and tall grass. And some black, leafy stalks that looked a lot like goldenrod, but without the flowers on them.
I was suspicious about those, and I broke one off, to see if they were like goldenrod from the inside. They were different, more mushy. I decided to go and dig under that plant, based only on the premise that it was, on the left side on the field, and different to every other dried plant I could recognize.
And to my big surprise, it was the jerusalem artichoke! When I pulled a few of the stalks up, I was met with these big tubers, muddy and looking almost like ginger, which is how the artichoke looks like! I started laughing and wooing, because there was so little hope that I would be coming back home with food that day, and the stalks give nothing away, it literally looked like this:
To just randomly find delicious food digging under this? Feels like witchcraft.
I dug out just a few, and immediately had my hands filled with tubers. I didn't take pictures while digging because it was very cold, and I was extremely muddy and wet handling these, but I took a picture once I got home and cleaned them up. Here they are!
And this is just a bit, there's plenty more to dig out! They're both healthy and sating, their taste is exactly in the middle between a potato and an apple. My favourite way to eat them is pan fried, like you would do potatoes!
Now that I have these, I'll probably have jerusalem artichoke forever. Since the plant is so aggressive and asks for no upkeep, I can just plant this wherever I happen to live in the future, and they'll grow me new plants that need no looking after. I could plant these in the wild and they would still bring me winter food. Some things are just so cool like that.