Pilar's calçotada: “If you buy calçots, make sure they have the PGI of Calçot de Valls, which are sweeter”

"Welcome to Clos de Ca Gras. I invite you to a calçotada and I'll make the sauce for you," she tells us. It's Pilar Dolç, a surname—what sonorous surnames, Catalans!—that seems to have predestined her in the kitchen. She's the daughter of farmers and now, at seventy-eight, she still is.

The calçotada is a Catalan custom that survives with all its strength, uniting young and old, and which, like all our cuisine, stems from resourcefulness. At the time we harvest the calçots—these spring onions we "roof"—we've also pruned the vineyard. The vine shoots, or "knees," left piled up in the field, are used to make a fire. The fire that will char the calçots on the grill. Then, while we eat them standing up (and without gloves, please), dipping them in the sauce, the meat will cook over the coals. We'll eat the meat sitting down. While we're cooking them, we'll laugh, drink from a porrón, and chat. Then, we'll wrap them in newspaper so they finish cooking in the heat. Note that the newspaper serving this noble purpose is ours: AHORA. The subscribers who make our writing possible should also know that they make our calçots possible. We'll serve them, if we have one, on a tile. And while we eat them (looking up at the sky, as is proper), we'll do something very Catalan: we'll have a competition to see who can eat the most. The winner's digestion will be like a python's. For three days.

But first, we prepare the sauce. The mystery of every calçotada. This is our wise woman's recipe:

Ingredients for Pilar Dulce's calçot sauce for four people.

• Four or five hanging tomatoes. Before refrigeration, tomatoes were hung up to keep them fresh throughout the winter. Today, you can find these tomatoes in greengrocers or at the market.
• A head of garlic.
• A lady.
• One hundred grams of almonds. We note that Pilar uses the perfectly correct dialectal pronunciation of "almonds." This "u," which sometimes colloquially becomes a "d" or an "n," simply indicates that the "m" is geminated. We pronounce it "almonds."
• 30 grams of hazelnuts, bought, like the almonds, at the Vila-rodona cooperative.
• Homegrown olive oil. It's called "Parada Rodona" and it's made from Arbequina olives from the Camp de Tarragona region.
• A "mini-blender" or a "blender", as some wise women say.

"Before, my grandmother used a mortar and pestle," Pilar explains. "But now we've modernized, everything has advanced"And we use the electric immersion blender." We like this idea from the cooks, which is a recurring theme. They don't give up modernity to continue offering us tradition.

We roast the tomatoes in the oven and peel them when they're cold.

"At home, we used to grow a lot of tomatoes. When I was little, my father did," she explains. And then she goes to get the ñora pepper. "I've soaked it in hot water to soften it. I'll remove the pulp; it needs to soften because it's a dried pepper that's been saved from the summer. It has a really nice flavor. I'd say that's the best part.

We grind the almonds and the tomatoes, but we set them aside. We made sure there wasn't too much liquid. Now the garlic, we grind that too. We add the almonds and hazelnuts.

Pilar tastes it and approves. We approve. And that sauce with endive is also very good. My husband likes it better with endive. It all varies from house to house. Some add parsley, raw garlic, if they like it spicier... Some add pepper; it depends on each family's taste."

While the young and not-so-young people prepare the calçots, we talk to Pilar, who, first of all, asks the cleaning staff to close the door.

"Many generations have lived in this house. Three. My sister, my son, with my wife and three daughters, and there was a time when there were four of us, because my mother was here. I married a man from Vilavella 55 years ago. And I went to live in Vilavella. And my three children, because I have three, Xavi, Núria, and Laia, and my six grandchildren. And the children grew up between Vilavella and Les Gunyoles. And since my husband was a farmer, we would go down to help them. And of course, I practically never left Les Gunyoles. And we were always like that, going up and down and down and up."

I smile. "You seem very much in love," I tell her. Because we've seen the farmer, Anton, walking around proudly with her. "Yes, always have been. We celebrated our second anniversary," she tells us, "and we've been together for 55 years now!"

And this word, now obsolete, "festejar" (to celebrate), seems very modern to me.

"I spent a lot of time in the countryside. Gathering hazelnuts, we raised chickens... This helped, because farmers have always been a bit frugal, and the animals helped. Then my mother made me go and sew. And I really liked to sew. I made the Cort"And I made clothes for my whole family. For my daughters, I made their First Communion dresses." I ask her if she had a Singer sewing machine, and she says yes. I explain that when we read the ads for "Cutting and Dressmaking" academies, which promised to use the "Martí System," I never knew what it was. She did. "Yes, yes. You made the patterns, took the measurements..." And she smiles, explaining a sign of the times. "I never made anything for the cleaning ladies, because the buttons, the fabric... it was already more expensive."

Cooking comes from her grandmother. "Grandma Guadalupe was the one who cooked. My mother went out more. She did the laundry... She had other things to do. And when Grandma got older, she cooked for my mother. That's what the children remember. Grandma María. What my cleaning ladies perhaps remember about me is the beef. In the stew pot. The beef we make for holidays. I've never gone hungry, quite the opposite." At home there were always potatoes, a vegetable garden, and fruit trees. We started with loquats, then they sold cherries, followed by pears, peaches, and apples. What I remember is that I used to put them on the stove because we had a wood-burning stove. My youngest daughter still remembers that. Now I put them on the stove, but in the microwave.

"The onions planted in summer are now grilled, tied up, and made into calçots. Always in winter. And we use the round ones to make the fire and the smoke. And you've seen how well they cook."

"I've worked a lot. We tied up so many calçots. I used to count them, in bunches of fifty. And I harvested them. But now everything has changed a lot. Now we use tractors, cultivators, and some seats they invented... But it's still very manual. I've really enjoyed tying up calçots in other places."

Don't miss, readers, the ritual of the calçotada, the passport to being a good Catalan. With or without a bib, with or without a porrón, with white wine for the onions and red wine for the meat. With crème brûlée for dessert. And with a secret sauce that Pilar's sweet baking has shared with us today."