Calçots amb salsa romesco

The story

The calçotada belongs to Valls, a town in the Alt Camp district of Catalonia, and to the winter months. Local tradition credits a Valls farmer, Xat de Benaiges, with the idea in the late nineteenth century; Directo al Paladar gives the year as 1895. The calçot is a white onion that is planted and then earthed up two or three times as it grows, so it stretches out long, white and sweet; the name comes from calçar, to earth up. Calçots are grilled over vine-shoot embers until black, wrapped in newspaper and served on clay roof tiles that keep them warm. Diners wear bibs, strip off the charred layers, dip the white stalk in sauce and lower it into their mouths, with wine poured from a porró. Until the 1970s the meal stayed mostly on family farms; the Fonda Universo, today Masia Bou, was the first restaurant to serve it. Valls holds its Gran Festa de la Calçotada, with a sauce contest, on the last Sunday of January, which is January 31 in 2027, and the Calçot de Valls carries a protected geographical indication. Plan the onions as a first course and follow them with grilled sausages and lamb chops, as a Catalan calçotada does.