More than a year ago, a pilot program for food education in a select group of schools was announced. It has yet to begin, and chef Carme Ruscalleda used her platform in Girona to demand its implementation. "We're not going to lose traditional Catalan cuisine because it's in the hands of our young and senior chefs. But households are a different story. Generations X through Z don't dedicate time to cooking. The key is to cultivate knowledge. Generation Alpha needs to discover what they risk losing. We're behind schedule, and the pilot program promised by the Catalan government is still pending." Joan Gòdia, Director General of Agri-food Businesses, Quality, and Gastronomy, who was present at the event, acknowledged the delay. "We all know the shortcomings of the administration. It will happen this year. Next quarter. We've put it out to tender, and we'll get it done." "I don't want to say anything more until I can give Carme [Ruscalleda] a date," he declared in response to the chef from Sant Pol de Mar and vice-president of the Catalan Academy.
Why are Catalans evolutionarily designed to like escudella?
The Girona Gastronomic Forum dedicates three days to reflecting on the most iconic dish in our cuisine
GironaIn 1905 Santiago Rusiñol wrote a monologue, The escudel-o-meterIn it, he proposed a utopia. "An enormous widget would allow the stew to flow from every tap in every house. Noodles, stew meat, chickpeas, and rice would all come out." "Rusiñol reflects what escudella represents for Catalans, if our happiness depends on escudella flowing from the taps," explains Toni Massanés, general director of the Alícia Foundation, which is participating in the escudella monograph programmed at the Girona Gastronomic Forum. For Josep Roca, of El Celler de Can Roca, "it's a soup that can be popular but also imbued with solemnity. It's a lifestyle inside a pot." But apart from the sociological aspect, there is also scientific evidence. It's not an exaggeration to say that we are evolutionarily programmed to like escudella.
"Six-month-old babies prefer sweet, salty, and umami liquids to tasteless water," explains Massanés, showing the audience research that demonstrates this. The explanation is quite simple. We are born this way, designed to like some things and not others because our bodies need them. The desire-reward circuit ensures that we experience pleasure from the things our bodies require to maintain homeostasis, and therefore, balance.
Let's take the example of salt. "Mammals, in contrast to plants, from an atomic point of view, have fifty times more sodium than plants. We have receptors that detect this sodium and are linked to pleasure receptors. Consequently, we like salty things because we need that salt," explains Massanés.
The body's predisposition to like what we need is, of course, common to all cultures. Those who eat soup think things through, since we find everything we need to function, but also, making broth has several culinary advantages. Cooking with water allows for temperature control, and the water distributes heat evenly. It also hydrates the food and causes its properties to transfer to the liquid.
Another advantage of soup bowls is that they are interpreted as a dish that is also medicinal. Soup is given to the sick, and this was already noted by the Car manual 500 years ago. Studies have also been conducted, such as one cited by Massanés, which observed that giving soup to terminally ill cancer patients improved their health because it reduced their stress. "It gave them a will to live," says the director general of the Alicia Foundation. A significant finding indeed.
It's difficult to pinpoint the first escudella. It dates back thousands of years. In Catalonia, we have medieval escudella recipes quite similar to the current one, with the arrival of the potato from the Americas two centuries ago. The difference is that 100 years ago we ate escudella every day; it was a staple food, while now in many homes it's a Christmas dish. Cook Carme Picas explains that in the Maresme region, women in the textile industry were allowed to leave work mid-morning to tend to the pot. That's how important the escudella was in their daily lives.
The name escudella The name comes from the vessel in which the soup is served. Some dishes are named after the vessels used (paella, cazuela). Why? Because these vessels contain many ingredients, and these can vary. "Like all traditional cuisine—and if it isn't traditional, it isn't—it doesn't have a single recipe," says Massanés. "It's the sum of all the recipes made in homes. Every time we pontificate about whether a dish includes or excludes an ingredient, we are fossilizing it. We are killing it. Tradition must be alive, or it isn't tradition."
The Roca family, with wine waiter Josep Roca and chefs Marc and Martí Roca, demonstrated numerous versions of the traditional soup bowls they have created at their restaurant. An impressive and innovative repertoire. Josep Roca explained that he shares what he was told at a winery in Turkey: "Tradition is like an umbrella; it protects you, but it doesn't let you see the sun. You miss part of the view." And he concluded: "Tradition is, in essence, legitimate avant-garde."
The game of the stew
Chef Francesc Monrabà, of the Haddock tavern in Barcelona, has been serving a menu consisting entirely of escudella (a traditional Catalan stew) on Fridays and Saturdays for years. He is a member of the Brotherhood of Escudella and Carn d'Olla, as is the gastronome Antoni Campins, who says that "the first escudella made us Homo sapiens" and explains that they created the association because "it pained him to see the long queues in Barcelona of people who wanted ramen." For Monrabà, it's time we felt proud of escudella, and through the Brotherhood, he proposes a very fun initiative: creating the Escudella Game. "It would be like the Game of the Goose. From one stew to another, and look how wonderful it is. Death would be like lightning and thunder that ferments your stew. In the first few squares, you could ask for the list of ingredients. If you say five, you move to the next square; if you say seven or eight, three squares. If you say black pudding, you go back. It's the kind of game you'll want to play with your grandma because you're sure to win," explains Monrabà, who is seeking the support of government agencies and game designers to bring the idea to fruition.