The burning of Saint Joseph of Mary: "It's so good it seems much harder to do!"

This week's featured woman is so wise that she has instilled in her three children a love for cooking and a passion for it. One of them, Josep Sucarrats, is a food journalist. He has written books on food and edited a magazine. Kitchen And he writes for various publications. His mother says that he and his two brothers have been raised in the kitchen since they were little. "At home, we drank water from the well. At nightfall, since we have a shop here at the farmhouse, we go and choose a cabbage, or whatever is in season, so it's fresh and good, it adds up. Everything comes from Grandma. Eating good fruit, eating rabbit, good wine is what matters most, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. eh?"

Cal Garrigosa, the farmhouse we're visiting today, has endured, in the middle of Abrera, like a wild vine surrounded by asphalt. They sell wine, they sell vegetables, they sell eggs, they sell sausages from Cal Rovira (the ones from the Els Casals restaurant in Sagàs). Maria is a small woman, with a clear, melodious voice and bright, intelligent eyes that miss nothing, hidden behind her glasses. One of those slender women, always in a smock, who work all day and bring joy wherever they go. "Welcome to Cal Garrigosa," she says. And then, that question they used to ask: "Was it hard to find? Did you find it easy?" Everyone in the village knows them. "I come from Martorell. There I was Maria de Cal Palet, and here I'm Maria de Cal Garrigosa." She'll make us a Saint Joseph's Day bonfire, or "quema quemada," what they call a "Catalan bonfire." Her vision of cooking is deeply rooted in tradition. She understands, and conveys this, why each dish is made at a particular time of year. We'll soon learn why the Saint Joseph's Day bonfire is made on Saint Joseph's Day.

Once we arrived at her charming kitchen, she explained the ingredients, which she had already arranged on the table, prepared with the utmost care and good taste.

Ingredients for the burning of Saint Joseph explained by Maria

• One liter of fresh milk
• Twelve fresh chicken eggs
• 300 or 350 grams of sugar
• Rice or wheat starch (your family much prefers the texture with starch). You can also use cornflour. 60 grams per liter of milk
• Lemon peel (from the Maria tree). Be careful not to include "the white part", as it will make it bitter.
• Cinnamon

We separate the egg yolks from the whites. "I know it's clear you can't do it the old-fashioned way anymore, just pouring the yolk into the shell. But this is how I do it." We'll save the whites for another recipe. In a separate saucepan, we dissolve the cornstarch in milk until it's completely dissolved. We mix the milk and sugar, then add the yolks and blend it briefly. All the wise women in the series, being the professionals they are, use all sorts of electrical appliances that make their lives easier. We really like this. There's a difference between cooking "back in the day" and cooking "the old-fashioned way."

Let's continue. We add the dissolved cornstarch to the mixture. "There used to be some little packets that worked really well, from the Teixidor brand, but they don't make them anymore. I found this one at a herbalist shop. We add the cinnamon and lemon peel. "And that's it." On the heat. You can't stop stirring. And you have to keep an eye on it. If you see it's getting too hot, you should slow down, because it should thicken but not boil. And when you find the thickness you like, you take it off the heat but keep stirring a little longer with a wooden spoon or a whisk, just in case it clumps. At home, we like it on a real high heat."

María smiles and says, "It's so good it seems much harder to make!" And she adds, "But the amount of sugar used has changed. Before, the custard was made with twelve egg yolks and 300 or 350 grams of sugar. Now we use nine egg yolks and 200 or 250 grams of sugar. This made sense. People had a goat or a cow, and it's a time when they produce a lot of milk. The hens, too, lay a lot of eggs. And those people were coming out of winter." And for dessert... what did they have?

Burnt or unburnt?

But we haven't finished the recipe, because now we have to ask ourselves the big question: burnt or unburnt? "At home they prefer it unburnt, but I like it burnt, so we'll burn it. You can do it with a blowtorch or, if you prefer, with the old-fashioned iron device, heated over the fire. You have to sprinkle sugar on top and burn it when it's cold."

We talk while she works. "I didn't cook when I was young, but I came here and my mother was such a good cook..." She's referring to her mother-in-law, whom she calls that all the time. "They had so many products here... that's what made me like it. But I didn't cook until she broke her collarbone. Anyway, I learned a lot from her. You notice things... And then I already had the chop "From her. When she died that Christmas, I said to myself, 'How will I do without Mom...? I won't be able to ask her anything...'"

The sound of the milk falling into the jug, the stirring "so it doesn't get too slurred," envelops us as we talk. "Once, at a Caramelles gathering, we said, 'And what shall we make for dessert?' And I said, 'Do you want me to make quema?' I made nine liters! In three batches, mind you! And they really appreciated it. I serve it on plates, but that day it was individual portions, more practical."

There's a knock at the door. It's a customer who's come to buy vegetables. She pauses for a moment and serves the customer. "I like dealing with people. And sometimes it happens that I've had to serve a lot and I can't cook. Then I tell the children, 'Kids, the hottest one is in the sink, okay?'" Think about it, we're used to eating whatever's in season. When strawberries are in season, we eat strawberries, these ones from Maresme. But until they're out of season... I tell people, "If you want beans out of season, you'll find them, you know? But they're not going to be any good." Or someone comes in saying they have to go on a diet where they only have to eat zucchini, right now! And I say to them, "And what doctor told you that?" Where did they get that idea? Yesterday a lady came in saying she had to do some kind of diet with cucumber and celery. "Well, that must be bad for you, right?" Delicious, and I tell her that she, on the other hand, looks very healthy because she eats everything. "Health... I'm very lucky. I'm 76 years old and my tests come back without a single asterisk!"

At the long dining room table, we tasted the cream, and I think it's the best I've ever had. We had to get back to the shop right away because customers kept coming in. We sat down there and finished our conversation. "Something has always been sold here. I'm the youngest in this house. When I came here, wine wasn't made, but then it was. First at the Martorell cooperative, then at Masía Bach, which belonged to Codorniu. And my grandparents, who came here in 1921, used to go and sell to them... Two expensive ones, they don't say that now they say that now they say that now they say that now they say that now they say that now you're called... they would find them because they went on foot..."

"I never went hungry. But my father and uncle were in prison, condemned to death, things of that time, and we had some cousins ​​who worked as maids in Barcelona, ​​where they certainly did. They would come and get us things to eat. Here, we ate what we didn't even have. A friend who said you had to share a banana, you see, she knew how to bake bread... My mother-in-law went to work in a textile factory in Esparreguera, Can Sedó.

María's words, like those of all wise women, always make me look at food differently. Simplicity is luxury, luxury is making the most of what you have, and making the most of what you have is philosophy.