Calxotada

I went to my first calxotada! This is a typical Catalan event, usually during the winter months. The one I went to was at the very end of the season. It's basically an excuse to get together with friends and eat a whole lot of food. It's kind of like a barbaque and typically held outdoors, using an outdoor grill. We went to a house in the countryside outside a town called Sabadell. The house had a huge indoor grill, which is good because during the party it started to rain! The first step was to go outside and collect wood for the fire. We then grilled boxes and boxes of calxots! These are kind of like really long, skinny onions. The calxots were cooked over the fire until the outtermost layer burned and turned black. We then layered every surface with newspaper and put bibs on ourselves, since the blackened layer tends to get all over everything! The traditional way to eat the calxots is to hold the bottom and slowly pull the top in order to remove the outside burned layer. The inner, cooked calxot is then dipped in a wonderful orange sauce, dropped into an upward facing mouth, and then pulled out while the teeth scrape off as much sauce and onion as possible. It's really quite entertaining to watch a room full of people with blackened fingers and faces facing upward, eating one calxot after another. We also had blackened artachokes, butifarra and other types of sausage, beer, wine, bread with tomato, etc... I was so full after the entire event but it was definitely an enjoyable and entertaining experience!