Kitchen
Catalan kitchen is a synergetic of Italian, French, Iberian and even Arabian culinary traditions. This kitchen is rather nourishing due to its constituents: sausages, wild fowls, olive oil and sea-foods. Basic constituent of Catalan kitchen is tomato.
When traveling in Catalonia you will see vegetable gardens with high poles where tomatoes and kidney beans are grown. You will also see shaggy fruit gardens where peaches, sweet cherry, apricots and pear are grown. Another essential ingredient is rice that is grown on the south of Catalonia in estuary of Ebro. Dairy products are carried from Catalan mountains and coast is rich of sea-foods. A number of farms rear cattle stock as far as meat is also a basic constituent of this kitchen.
This rich nature laid the foundation for famous Catalan kitchen that originated in XIII century. Its documentary records were placed in "«Cookery book» of famous gastronome Rupert de Nolla (1490).
One of the most famous and popular meals of Catalan kitchen is paella that is similar to pilau cooked in wide flat frying pans. Catalans prefer eating paella with sea-foods but it can also be cooked with meat and it can be vegetarian. They also like black rice colored with inks of ink-fish.
Catalonia had been in close tides with Southern France and Italy for a long time so fantasy of Catalan cooks is measureless. One of four sauces is a base for various meals: sofrito (composition: garlic, onion, tomato, pepper and greens), samfaina (composition: tomato, pepper and aubergine), picada (composition: garlic, greens and scorched almonds) and Ali-Oli (composition: garlic and olive oil).
There is a great variety of salads made from tomatoes, pasta, greens, anchovy, tuna, green beans and other ingredients.
Bread also stands out in Catalan kitchen. It is eaten with olive oil and tomato. Pieces of toasted bread are good with fresh garlic.
Well, no kitchen does without desserts! Catalonia is also rich of desserts. Among them you can meet rice with milk (rice is boiled soft in milk with sugar and egg), cuajada (meal similar to mixture of curds with sour clotted milk and sugar), dessert called «Hand of Gipsy» (Swiss roll with cream), flan (jelly-like dessert made of frothed eggs, milk and sugar), «Fried milk» (fried pieces of pastry made of flour, eggs and milk), «Macedoniu» (fruit assortment in one’s own juice).
And of course, wine. Excellent red wines, white wines and vin rose are produced in Catalonia. Wine-producing traditions of Catalonia that came from ancient Greeks have experienced certain influence of French and Mediterranean viniculture. This influence developed in the second half of XIX century when French wine-makers left their vineyards due to irruption of vine fretter and migrated to Catalonia.
European sorts of grapes Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Sira as well as Mediterranean sorts — Garnacha and Macabeo are grown here. Autochthonic sorts such as Charello and Parelliada are also grown here. Combination of these sorts of grapes as well as hot and sunny climate near Mediterranean sea give deep, rich and saturated taste to these wines.
The most popular Catalan wines are produced in Penedes and Priorato. Penedes is known thanks to its white wines with strength of 10 to 13 degrees. Their mild fruit taste results from mixture of yields from three local vineyards. Wines from Priorato are the most domestic Spanish wines. These are dark red, strong wines with saturated colour, smooth taste and magnificent race.
World-famous wine Cava is produced in Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, near Barcelona.