Cooking The Books

Butifarra

One of the defining factors of a British banger is the filler.  With few exceptions (the Cumberland being one) our sausage recipes incorporate some rusk which soaks up the fat and produces the lovely, softer bite of a decent local sausage.  Sure it was taken to extremes in days of want (the war springs to mind) and still is by peddlers of the low grade pink paste tubes but a reasonable quantity is a must in most recipes.

The same can't be said abroad were the pure meat sausage rules the roost.  This leads to a much firmer sausage which isn't better, just different.  With no rusk to soak up the fat these sausages are frequently pricked to stop them exploding whilst being cooked but I hate to see good fat go down the drain and I think with careful control of heat, and a bit of luck, you can get away without doing this.

Recently in Catalunya I had many a butifarra, the local snag (which in most cases the driving force in the flavour is black pepper), but whilst they came with chips or simply on the side of a rotisserie chicken I couldn't find the dish of Butifarra amb Mongetes (with white beans) and so I vowed to make it at home.  As butifarra are near as damn it impossible to buy over here this meant finding a recipe and dusting off the sausage stuffer.  I'm glad I did as I'd forgot how good fun sausage making is, not to mention the pleasure of the results.

 

As mentioned these butifarra have a predominant black pepper taste but there is also a hint of sweetness from the cinnamon and clove.  They're a nice simple sausage to make, so perfect for the beginner, and go well in a crusty baguette, with chips and a salad or with those white beans, something which will follow on the blog soon after I make it tonight.

With sausage making it's imperative that everything is very cold, this means meat and equipment.  As soon as things start heating up the fat melts and smears and the texture of the finished product goes down hill rapidly.  With this in mind meat, bowls, stuffer and mincer all spend some time in the fridge prior to starting out.

It is also imperative that there is enough fat on your meat, I've said 25% but I think that's a minimum, some people go higher.  For this rusk-free sausage (so nothing to soak the fat up) I think 25% is good though.  Some folk use belly for sausage making, and I have myself in the past, as the quantities of fat and lean can be good.  I think shoulder is a better texture though if you can find it fatty enough (you can always add back fat from loin chops) but belly would still turn out a decent butifarra.

Butifarra

Makes 8-10

900gr pork shoulder (25% fat) in 4cm cubes

15gr salt

3-4gr black peppercorns (1 - 1.5 ts)

Scant 1/4 ts ground cinnamon

1 clove

3 TB ice water

Natural hog casings

Method

The butifarra is a coarse ground sausage (aren't all the good ones?) so choose your biggest mincer attachment and give the well chilled meat a single grind into a chilled bowl.

Grind the black pepper, clove and cinnamon with a pestle and mortar, I find the addition of a bit of the salt helps, and once fine combine with the remaining salt and spread over the mince.  Add the 3 TB of ice water and mix to combine, I use a fork to save warming the mix up with my hands.  Once well mixed run the mince through the mincer a second time.

If you've never used natural skins before you need to soak them for a couple of hours to remove salt, you also want to run water through the inside a couple of times to clean.  Once prepared thread onto your sausage maker spout and stuff your sausages.

The butifarra I ate in Catalunya are larger than a British banger, more like 12cm (c. 110gr), so twist off bigger links.

Chill in the fridge for a day to dry, turning occasionally if - like me - there's nowhere near enough room in the fridge to hang them.

Cerveceria Catalana, Barcelona

A quick glitch in the space time continuum here as I jump back to Barcelona for the last time.  Someone had recommended Txapela to me and I also wanted to try Cerveceria Catalana after reading about it on trip advisor. There was only one meal left though so the names went in hands behind my back (have to choose somehow) and the gf chose right, which turned out to be Txapela.  We were borderline busy time, at around 8.30pm, so rushed from the Metro to Txapela and luckily grabbed a table for 2.  The waitress acknowledged us then proceeded to ignore us for ten minutes so we got up and left.

Unluckily for us the walk to Txapela and back, along with 10 minutes of invisibility, had left Ceveceria Catalana absolutely heaving so our names were put on the list with a suggested wait of 30-40 minutes.  About 5 minutes later I went to ask the hostess if we could buy a glass of sangria and got the reply 'Come, I think I can squeeze you on a table now' and we were promptly whisked away to a lovely table for 2, completely jumping the queue.  Score!

Compared to Tapas24 this place is huge, with bars down each side as you walk in were folk noisily order the tapas from glass displays in front of them, the staff pouring cerveza after cerveza and handing them over diners to slake the thirsts of the masses waiting in the queue I just jumped.  The menu was more ordinary, which isn't a bad thing, covering all your standard tapas along with lots of grilled seafood and a large section of filled flautas, the thin baguettes that I had breakfasted on that morning in Matamala.

We ordered our first jar of sangria (a very reasonable €11 euro for a litre) and settled down to order and eat.  Grilled sepia were fantastic, a favourite of mine when in Spain and these were fine examples - charred and smoky whilst remaining juicy and tender.  The truita (tortilla in Spanish) was filled with melt in the mouth oily potato and onion and the middle was still runny.  Padron peppers, a huge portion compared to Tapas24, were good but didn't throw up any hotties.  Manchego was, for want of a better description, manchego like. Our first flauta was butifarra blanc, which was a shame as I'd ordered butifarra negra.  On the plus side I've never had the blanc before and it was tasty enough, in a haslet sort of way.  

By this point we were getting full enough but one dish on the menu had caught our eye and had to be ordered, flauta with foie gras and Roquefort (served hot).  When it turned up it wasn't foie gras, just normal pate (lost in translation?) that was warm to the point of nearing separation and topped with lumps of melted Roquefort.  As you can probably imagine it was a tad on the rich and full on side, the Roquefort somewhat overpowering.  As the gf said in a John Torrode accent 'We've got lovely crusty bread, smooth rich pate then - WHAM! - the Roquefort hits you like a train and overpowers them both'.  It was definitely an experience but I couldn't decide if it was a good or bad one.

All told this was another €20-€25 meal and train of Roquefort aside I really enjoyed Ceveceria Catalana and was glad that we had to leave Txapela, which whilst probably serving good food (it comes highly recommended) did feel like we were sat on Leicester Sq eating.  Ceveceria Catalana on the other hand felt more local, even though with so many reviews on trip advisor it must be frequented by lots of tourists too.

Matamala, Barcelona

Matamala was billed to me as having the best ham sandwich in Barcelona so I thought I'd give it a go.  Luckily for me the ham sandwich is one of the few things they serve at breakfast.

Before this trip I'd not seen the thin (we're talking 3cm diameter) baguettes so common in Barcelona but I'm a convert, they give a fine balance between crunchy crust and soft crumb.  Rubbed with sweet, ripe tomato and filled with jamon Iberico it made a very tasty, if not a little expensive at €5.80 (that's the jamon Iberico's fault) sandwich.  Cafe solo was dark, strong and small, as it should be.

A good sandwich indeed but I'm far too lacking in experience to give claim it's the best there.  Still a nice place for breakfast though and open on Sunday mornings too.

Matamala
Rambla de Catalunya, 13
08007 Barcelona

Babia, Barcelona

The Gothic Quarter in Barcelona is a fantastic high-walled maze, whilst the wide main roads make London's aged streets look too narrow for purpose once you step off them the alleys seem from a time forgotten back home.  Dark and identical to the untrained eye one can lose muchos minutos meandering through them.

Post Tapas24 we found ourselves doing just that and stumbled across the kind of place you really wish you'd not eaten half an hour before finding - Babia.  Whilst I'm sure the outer reaches of Barcelona are littered with local haunts that's not the feeling you usually get around Las Ramblas and Plaza Catalunya yet that's exactly how Babia felt.  It was cramped, noisy with Catalan and people smoked while they ate, something I can't remember people doing in England even when it wasn't banned - it was perfect. 

All the tables were gone but we managed to squeeze in at the bar and ordered a couple of cervezas, everyone else seemed to be eating so I scanned the menu for a name I didn't recognise and ordered some lacon, declining the potatoes we were offered with it having just eaten a full meal.  Lacon turned out to be ham, which I should have known already, but it seems to be a different cut than in England, even if the cure is similar.  It was tender and salty, bathed in olive oil with the sprinkling of paprika adding warmth.  Pa amb tomaquet was fresh baguette rather than toast and very good.  I wish I could tell you more but we really couldn't fit anything else in.

Just from our tiny nibble I can't recommend the place enough and it's well worth searching out, good luck finding it though as Google maps doesn't even seem to know the road.

Babia

Carrer Sagristan, 9,

08002 Barcelona

Tapas24, Barcelona

Last week I made my annual trip to Catalunya and decided to spend a couple of days in Barcelona with the gf before meeting up with my family on the coast.  Having no idea about the city's food I turned to twitter for some inspiration and ended up at some really good places, the first of these being Tapas24.

Tapas24 is sister restaurant to Comerc24 and ran by former El Bulli chef Carles Abellan, so one would expect some little twists away from the norm.  It's unassuming from the front, just being a couple of tables on the pavement and a door leading downstairs, and pretty unassuming when you get inside too with a few tables dotted around and an open kitchen and bar surrounded by folk drinking wine and eating tapas.  We decided to join the bar dwellers so we could watch the chefs do there thing.

When we sat down the couple next to us were eating a plate of red slices of something that looked rather good so I directed a customary 'Que es?' to the waiter and failed miserably in understanding his speedy reply.  Luckily for me the lady of the couple must have heard my inquiry as she pushed the plate towards us, now sporting a lone slice, and said 'Try it, it's fish' before telling us at a much more ear-friendly speed that it was called mojama.  After devouring this lone slice - and deciding to order more - we turned to the menu and found the unassuming ex- and interiors belied a rather fantastic menu. 

The classics were there, sure (your patatas bravas and your tortilla), but they sat alongside mini-burgers with foie gras and ham and cheese sandwiches - bikini - with black truffle, not to mention jamon iberico and buffalo mozzarella.  We decided to supplement the mojama with the bikini comerc 24, the McFoie, some Padron peppers, a Russian salad, Braves, Pa amb Tomaquet (tomato bread) and some cava and red wine to wash it down.

The mojama came served with darkly toasted almonds and a drizzle of strong olive oil - it was fantastic stuff.  The initial taste was like an expensive ham, salty and melting on the tongue.  Up to this point you'd be forgiven for not thinking it came from the sea but the aftertaste quickly stopped these thoughts as a strong, but pleasant, fish flavour came through.

A bikini is a cheap eat by the beach, €3 of plastic bread and plastic cheese to fill the gap between a vast late breakfast and an evening of grilled seafood.  Here it was transformed to posh tapas though with some top draw ingredients.  The bread was still mass produced - would anything else work? - but the ham was now jamon Iberico and the cheese buffalo mozzarella, black truffle added its inimitable muskiness.  It was very good.  If I was being critical the one thing I would say is the use of a squeezy bottle of melted butter to grease the outside left butter hot-spots that were literally soaked in the stuff.  When I recreate this for the blog - I have the truffles waiting - I'll thinly spread the outside instead for a more even flavour.

This was my first encounter with Padron peppers and I loved every one.  The sweet earthiness was a delight and the tentative Russian roulette of waiting for a hot one certainly didn't detract.  The occasional tingle of warmth suggested my time had come but then the one truly hot one showed prior peppers had been false alarms.

The McFoie was billed as a mini-beefburger with foie gras minced into the patty and the fatty liver making a second appearance in the accompanying mayonnaise.  I watched this being made and at one point it did look like a normal burger, sat inside a tall bun, but a few minutes inside the contact grill left it flat and crispy.  The foie gras definitely added some fat to the patty but I found the taste a bit lost, this could have been due to the preceding hot Padron pepper though.

Pa amb tomaquet (pan con tomato/bread with tomato) was simply the best I've eaten.  The usual slices of country style bread replaced with a thin, ciabatta like loaf cut into top and bottom.  It was crunchy and sweet, which is how I like it.

The low point of the meal for me was the patatas bravas (or Braves) on the menu.  The potatoes were chips, and good ones at that, but there was just far too much mayonaisse for my tastes, they were literally swimming in the stuff. 

Braves aside it was a fantastic start to what turned out to be two days of culinary delights in Barcelona.  It was pretty cheap too - a pair of cavas, a pair of red wines and all the food working out not a lot more than €20 a head.  Definitely recommended and, if you eat at a UK time seemingly OK to get a seat - at 8.30pm on a Saturday we were seated instantly.