Here is a the recipe for a dish I recently learned to make. This recipe comes from a book of twenty recipes in Catalan that my friend received when he took a cooking class in Barcelona. This is one of his favorite dishes, and I helped him make it for his wife (I got to eat some too of course!). With the two of us, it took two hours. It is similar to what we call “Fricassee” in English.
FRICANDÓ
(This is an ancient French dish that is also popular in Catalonia).
Ingredients
600 g veal (or pork), thinly sliced
200 g onions, diced
200 g ripe tomatoes, grated
20 g Scotch Bonnet mushrooms, dried (“marasmius oreades”)
50 cc “vino rancio” (a sweet, old wine)*
2 or 3 artichoke hearts
1 lemon
Ingredients for the sauce
2 cloves of garlic
20 g toasted almonds
Parsley
..===oOo===..
Salt the meat and flour it, and then fry it in a pan with olive oil until brown.
In a pot, using the leftover oil, fry the onions. When the onions begin to brown, add the wine. Add the tomato three minutes later. Let this cook for 10 minutes. Be careful that the tomato doesn’t stick; if it does, add a bit of water.
Place the mushrooms with water in another pot. When the water is boiling, turn off the heat. Strain the mushrooms and add them to the onion and tomato. Stir occasionally for 3 minutes.
Add the meat. Then pour the water leftover from the mushrooms into the pot until the meat is covered. Cook covered for 30 minutes on low heat.
Clean the artichokes and cut them in four or six pieces. Rub them with lemon to avoid discoloration. Boil them, drain the water, and then bread and fry them.
Grind the garlic, almond, and parsley in a mortar. Five minutes before the end, add this and the artichokes to the pot.
I hope you like it!
*Vino Rancio is a wine typical of Catalunya. Here is a decent discussion of what this wine is. They say that Vino Rancio is “a style of wine made by purposefully oxidizing or maderizing it by placing small barrels of wine in the hot summer sun. This procedure gives the wine a tawny color and a rich, unique flavor. Rancio wines are usually either naturally very high in alcohol or fortified. The results are similar to madeira, tawny port, or marsala.”
Treading in the Deep End 