If two years ago the Corpus of Catalan Cuisine included the recipe for gazpacho, which caused a great stir, the new edition brings grilled fish. "We don't understand how we hadn't included it yet [in the Corpus]; now it's there and also another novelty, fish 'romesco' instead of meat 'romesco'," states Pepa Aymamí (Vallmoll, 1945), who also adds that in the new edition they have included exhaustive files for all ingredients.

The Boqueria Market has named Carles Gaig alongside other great figures, as it has included him in its Council of Sages. A recognition also received by Juanito Bayén (from Pinotxo), Jean-Louis Neichel, Isidre Gironès, Josep Lladonosa, Jaume Subirós, or Francesc Fortí. The history of the Gaig family and gastronomy began in 1869 in Horta, when his great-grandmother created a "little tavern", in the chef's words, with chairs and a watering trough for horses. People passed by there to avoid entering Barcelona, where they had to pay a few cents to pass. So, to avoid the tax, many people used this route to go from Sant Andreu del Palomar to Esplugues and save themselves the fee. The great-grandmother, with a commercial nose, began to offer simple dishes, and that's how the business started and predestined Carles Gaig's future long before he was born. Today, he receives this tribute with his wife, Fina Navarro, National Gastronomy Award for her work in the dining room, and their daughter Maria, the fifth generation who has already joined the restaurant, seated in the front row.

I interview the producer Josep Grau (Barcelona, 1965) at Bar Milagros, where we taste two of his wines, the white Granit, made from white grenache, and the red La Florens, made from black grenache. We pair them with a dish of peas with sea cucumber and the famous chickpeas with squid. The photos, we take them in one of the most prized vineyards, in El Pas de l’Estudiant, near Capçanes, where there are vines from 1907. Josep produces a total of eleven wines, which are four whites, six reds, and one rosé, most of them within the Montsant appellation and also within the DOQ Priorat. And this despite starting only 23 years ago, in 2003. In Priorat, he has been there for ten years. He decided to change his life when he was 50 because he wanted to achieve his dream, and today he says he has accomplished it. His wines sell between 13, 20, and 60 euros. The most expensive, the Carenes, white. In total, Josep Grau produces 135,000 bottles annually.

Eggs have seen it all. There was a time when the advice was to only eat three a week. If you made a potato omelette with eight eggs or prepared a tower of omelettes, you had already consumed more than the recommended percentage. And then what? Our bad cholesterol would increase, we thought. A few years ago, nutrition studies showed that we had suffered counting the weekly eggs consumed for nothing, because dietary cholesterol does not have a direct or significant impact on blood cholesterol, as nutritionists Anna Costa and Anna Grífols state. Therefore, today we live in a golden age for eggs because we can eat as many as we want without worrying about having excess cholesterol in our blood, the kind that accumulates in the arteries, forms plaque and, consequently, increases the risk of heart attacks. Perhaps because of this and also due to dietary trends, egg consumption has increased throughout Europe: in the last ten years we have eaten 20% more than before.Regarding cholesterol, it should be said that nutrition knows that "a good part of it is manufactured by ourselves in our liver, and that what has the most impact is the entirety of the daily diet and the lifestyle we lead," explains Anna Grífols. In other words, we can eat an egg every day, which will have no consequence on bad cholesterol, but, on the other hand, if we accompany that egg with saturated fats, ultra-processed foods, and caloric excesses, then everything changes. And everything changes even more if we lead a sedentary life.The golden age of eggs

To continue, the golden age of eggs is also explained because we like to eat them for breakfast, for dinner and also at , according to data from the Poultry Federation of Catalonia (FAC), which clarifies that the

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Broccoli with potatoes and turkey in the casserole: stewed lentils and ham omelette; macaroni bolognese and nuggets of broccoli; chickpea soup and beef meatballs; and every Thursday, fresh fish from the market. These are some of the menus offered by the Sol Ixent school in Corbins (Segrià), for both its primary school pupils and those of the municipal nursery. All dishes are cooked on the centre's premises. Hot meals and, in many cases, locally sourced. And, since last September, it has also been an intergenerational meal.

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The Left of the Eixample in Barcelona is a neighborhood with its own life, but whoever walks through it at lunchtime knows that finding a plate of Catalan cuisine among so much brunch, poke and franchise offerings is increasingly difficult. The offerings have multiplied, yes, but not always in favor of those looking for a fricandó, some well-made bravas, or a Sunday rice dish.

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In a time of change, the most emblematic festival of sparkling wines from Sant Sadurní d’Anoia is also taking a turn. "We have hired an advertising company to search for and propose another one, which includes all sparkling wine producers in the territory," explains the mayor, Pere Vernet i Caldú, who advances that they have not found it yet, but are working to achieve it. "We know that the name Cavatast is very consolidated," he states. "One of the conditions that the producing wineries not affiliated with the DO Cava have set for us is that we change it if we want them to be included," he explains. It is clear that in the Sant Sadurní City Council, the organizer, they want them to be included, because otherwise, they considered that it did not reflect the richness of the producing territory, and that is why they have commissioned an advertising company to find a name.

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Fran Tudela (la Vila Joiosa, 1996) became known on social networks by imitating English teachers and Valencian mothers. Today, with almost 200,000 followers on Instagram, Cabrafotuda –as he is known– has become one of the reference content creators in the Catalan language, and has made Valencian popular culture his territory: parties, traditions, grandma's cooking and, above all, the diversity of a language that changes its name for each thing from one town to another. Drinks are no exception.There is a very close relationship between Valencian popular culture and drink.

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The Hotel Palace has an undeniable mystique, as it is a historic enclave in the city of Barcelona. For many, it will always remain the Ritz, and in fact, when you enter, you can't help but look around to see if Xavier Cugat's chihuahua is still lurking. If we are not staying there, we can access it to use its gastronomic offerings. We can go

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Tomás de la Paz, Chilean by birth, will never forget how it all began with Gastón Acurio. “About twenty-five years ago, I showed up at the door of one of his restaurants in Peru, knocked, and blurted out: ‘I want to learn!’”. That audacity, almost unconsciously, changed his life forever. “After three months, he had already sent me to another establishment in Lima… and here I am today,” he recalls with a smile that still holds the spark of that first impulse.

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The winegrowers of Penedès have not been so afraid of the future as they are today. They have several indicators to reinforce their fear: Freixenet (which is 100% owned by the German group Henkell) for the past two years is believed to have stopped producing forty million bottles annually within the DO Cava (a figure the winery neither confirms nor denies), last harvest there was an excess of grapes and base wine, and the figures being released on the sale of wines and sparkling wines in general are not optimistic. For all these reasons, the president of the Associació de Viticultors del Penedès, Josep Anton Vendrell, states that they are living through “a very critical situation, in which 35% of the planted vineyard in Penedès would be surplus (between seven thousand and ten thousand hectares of vineyard), and in this upcoming harvest, the price of grapes could plummet; last year the DO Cava paid between 46 or 60 euro cents”. If there is surplus vineyard, if there is aid from the European Union to uproot it, it is clear that the territory could change in a few years to cease being the green lung between Barcelona and Tarragona, and give way to industrial estates or fields with solar panels, historical threats derived from urban pressure. To this situation is added a certainty: the transfer of some wineries from the DO Cava to Corpinnat, a brand that works to ensure an agreement with the winegrower with a steadily increasing price each year.

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Let's imagine a good pasta al dente. A cacio e pepe, for example. With the integrated sauce. They bring it in a deep pan and put it directly on your plate with tongs. Succulent, right? Or a beautiful tomato and a mozzarella so sublime that they serve it naked. When something is perfect, the only obligation is not to spoil it. Or a bresaola made of wagyu. It shines with the marbling of the fat. On the side, a raviolo filled with ricotta, truffle and tuorlo (that is, egg yolk). One last example: an eggplant parmigiana with that intense tomato flavor that obligatorily makes you dip bread. All these are some of the dishes that can be tasted since Tuesday at Bottega Bernacca (Carrer de Bonavista, 10), the Italian restaurant that lands in the Gràcia neighborhood and that curiously, unlike what it might seem, comes to us from São Paulo, Brazil. But you will see, dear readers, that everything has a reason.

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I interview Ricard Llop (Valls, 1995) together with his colleague Pau Feliu (Tarragona, 1992), seated at the table closest to the kitchen of the restaurant El Cup Vell. Both have proposed that I eat a menu (I will remember the turnip Russian salad with sorrel for a long time) in which I have verified the good work of both. El Cup Vell is located in the upper part of Tarragona, on a street where there are other restaurants. Its has the appearance of a private house, with a wooden door framed by a semicircular arch with voussoirs. The interior is cozy, with two spaces, and it is clear with the old vat, underground, which can be observed through a glass. Pau Feliu opened the restaurant in December 2017 together with another colleague, and three months later Ricard joined him. Nine years later, Pau and Ricard are the ones in charge. Before interviewing them, I ate some of the dishes from the menu, and paired them with kombucha tea. They also have wines, and no popular brand of soft drinks.

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They are called Mourtalla Diop, Mamadou Diop, Cheikh Wele and Thierno Sene; they were born in Senegal and speak Wolof as their first language. None of the four knew each other before meeting at the ports of Vilanova i la Geltrú and Cambrils, where they work. All four share a similar story of overcoming adversity: they come from fishing families in Senegal, a country they had to leave because one day what they knew how to do, fishing, had become a profession with no future. They left the so-called Global South of the African coast to look for a new job, a new life, and they have found it in the Catalan ports. “I like fishing because it’s what I’ve always done,” explains Mamadou one afternoon at the port of Vilanova i la Geltrú. Mamadou shares the same surname as Mourtalla, but they comment that they are not related. “We met working at the port of Vilanova,” they say, adding that the surname Diop is common in Senegal.

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Paella sparks discussions even on the day it appears as a prize. On March 1st, the day Òmnium Cultural awarded Josep Piera (Beniopa, 1947) the Prize of Honor for Catalan Letters, the entity did so with a Valencian paella, large in diameter, but, alas!, the debate began. "That it was white, and not yellow, that it wasn't right for me to be given the prize along with a paella because it was associating me with a cliché, it was even said that from now on Majorcans should receive prizes with ensaïmades, and Catalans, with botifarra and beans", calmly explains the writer Josep Piera in Lleida, where he has gone to participate in the Lleida Poetry Festival. But if Josep Piera has dedicated dozens of pages to paella! If he has dedicated countless hours of study to paella! If the angels sing to the paella that Josep Piera cooks!

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In an artisanal sausage, the ingredients can be counted on one hand, and there are usually some left over. They are meat, salt, and spices. Industrial sausages, let's call them that because the law allows them to be differentiated from artisanal ones, contain more additives, including lactose, which on the ingredient list of the cured meat can be mentioned as whey,milk powder, lactitol or directly lactose, explains dietitian-nutritionist Anna Grífols.

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Sílvia Bel (Barcelona, 1970) believes in authenticity and naturalness, and practices them. The actress, who has graced the major theaters of the Catalan scene and is currently known for her role as Marta in Com si fos ahir, alternates maximum expressiveness –gestural and linguistic– with introspective silence. Bel understands the arts as a space for sincere expression, far from affectations and hypocrisies; and it is also in this way that she speaks of gastronomy and wine.They made a Ribera del Duero for his daughter, Ainara Elejalde. How does Sílvia Bel imagine the wine?

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Three days before the start of the confinement due to Covid-19, Sergi Poyatos received the keys to what was to be his home and the gastronomic meeting point for all the people of Cervelló. Let's remember how we suffered and the vital and economic consequences that the pandemic had for everyone, but at the same time we saw that the world does not stop and, in July of that same year, El Secret del Vell opened its doors in Cervelló, a municipality that originates with the castle of Cervelló in the early 10th century.However, in 1714, the Catalan defeat in the War of Succession symbolized the end of an era. Among the first consequences of the conflict was the destruction of the castle, ordered by Philip V. The construction of the road between Barcelona and Valencia, in the second half of the 18th century, favored the formation of the grouped nucleus of Cervelló and marked the beginning of the town we know today.But let's leave history for another day and focus on Sergi's cuisine. We begin the meal with a taste of acorn "morcón" elaborated according to Sergi's family's traditional recipe. Originally from Cuenca and Extremadura, every year, for four generations, they return to their starting point to do the slaughter. We continue with "escalivada" aubergines from the Agrarian Park with goat cheese, hazelnuts, and their praline, and a dish of veal tripe with "capipota" and pork trotters. We are faced with a proposal based on good product, curious, and very well cooked.The main courses are house classics: steak tartare of aged Galician beef fillet, the famous cod pil-pil in homage to a centenarian client, and a rice dish with acorn-fed pork ribs, porcini mushrooms, and black sausage from a family slaughter. We ordered the rice after seeing it was a majority dish on many tables. The rib one was sublime, but we were left with the desire to try the seafood rice with squid, clams, and red shrimp. It will be a good excuse to return. The wine that accompanied us was Abadia de Poblet, from Conca de Barberà. A Santa Teresa toast in the Catalan style and a gin and tonic ice cream with Bulldog gelatin, lemon air, and red berries concluded a great lunch.A project to reconcile

After a very demanding service, we sit down with Sergi to talk about family, the town, cooking, and secrets. “I am a thirty-five-year-old family man, I have been living in Cervelló for fifteen years and I have a total family unit. The three things I like most are being a father, being my wife’s partner, and the restaurant business. I created the project ‘El Secret del Vell’ to be able to reconcile everything”, he tells us with the demeanor and tone of a happy guy. The team is very important: Sergi, Annuar, and Àlex in the kitchen, and Danae and José Luis in the dining room. The restaurant is divided into three spaces: a dining room with seven tables, a private room for eight diners, and a very nice interior terrace.Sergi began studying Art History, but his passion was cooking. His family is in the trade and, after studying and working in various renowned kitchens, he decided to start his own project. Cooking is his passion and the house that hosts his restaurant, his devotion. It is one of the first houses that was part of the beginning of Cervelló as a town; it was called the "basket makers' house" and is dated from the year 1793.Hey! We almost forgot to tell you about the secret, but we'll leave that for when you go. Ask Sergi about it: his face lights up when he explains it. A promise: you will eat very well.

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Bread with tomato is linked to Catalan identity, and we probably wouldn't find another food that identifies us so emotionally in such a clear way. The slice of bread spread with tomato, then salted and finally drizzled with extra virgin olive oil is a (universal) symbol of Catalans, but there are those who don't like it, who don't eat it, who only see drawbacks, and who, despite all this, are also Catalan, that's clear. The latter are the ones who, when they order a sandwich or some slices of bread, kindly ask for the bread to be only with olive oil. You will hear them emphasize it a few times, because they know that, in our home, by inertia, the bread will be with tomato. The novelty is that, over the years, another group of people has joined this last group, who maintain that currently barbarities and sacrileges are being committed with a food that, in theory, is very simple to prepare, and which has an economic cost. The sacrileges or barbarities are multiple: grated tomato with a grater on top of the slice of bread; tomato sauce obtained after crushing the tomatoes, with skins included, and spread on the bread with a brush; acidity of the food due to using tomatoes that are not ripe, red, or shiny. To all this we can add that the food has not managed to become universal despite the fact that there are Catalan chefs who have opened restaurants around the world and put it on the menu. The longed-for Montse Guillén did it in her restaurant in New York, and the Catalan Clos family also currently does it in the hotel they have in London and Madrid, where at the breakfast buffet they serve bread with tomato, and made in an orthodox way and, therefore, good. We cite only two examples; surely we can find more, but they have not amplified the food to make it a Catalan icon in the world. Thus, when we travel, we don't need to try to explain how to make bread with tomato because it will be difficult for us to get it right: at most we will manage to get the tomato cut into slices between the bread, which, it must be said, is how bread with tomato is eaten on the islands of Mallorca and Ibiza.Indignation like the Italians do

At the Semproniana restaurant, chef Ada Parellada assures that "without pan con tomate" she would die, because for her "food is home, comfort". She thinks it's great that "people get indignant if it's done badly", just like Italians do with their dishes, who, when they are not prepared in an orthodox way, raise their voices to the sky. "If we get indignant about bad pan con tomate, we don't let ourselves be trampled on, and perhaps there are few dishes that make us indignant when they are poorly prepared". When should we say no to pan con tomate? When it's pureed, the sauce is placed in a bowl, and they dip a brush in the sauce to put it on sliced bread. "And they do it in front of us, defying our eyes; that's when I celebrate people getting angry". And it's like that because the chef maintains that it's not that difficult, because there are four ingredients: bread, tomato, salt, and olive oil, and because "we have good products". In fact, the same "tomate de colgar" (hanging tomato) "is technologically manipulated to have good skin, to be picked with tweezers, and good pulp, so that it comes off on the bread when we moisten it", says Parellada, who adds that she understands that restaurants, when working in large volumes, might find it quicker to have the tomato pureed beforehand to moisten it. "I understand, but I repeat that it's easy to prepare it when they ask for pan con tomate". To all this, she only has one more nuance to add: "if the tomato is ripe it won't be acidic, and you also have to be very picky because those of us who eat it regularly have a very integrated taste". Meanwhile, at the Trü restaurant in Barcelona (C. Córsega, 232) the slice of pan con tomate is prepared by the chefs with ceremony and passion. The "tomate de colgar", you will see it from the table or the bar where you eat; the chefs pick one while they toast the slice of bread in front of you. Then they rub the tomato on it, add salt, and drizzle with oil. Chef Artur Martínez and his entire team show that there is hope when it comes to eating a very good one.On the other hand, to understand how a slice of pan con tomate has become a symbol of a people's identity, we have to go back centuries, but not too far. The tomato arrived from America at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors, and when it arrived in Spain it didn't arouse passions, quite the opposite: that intense red color could only be a sign of the devil, it was believed. The 16th, 17th, 18th centuries were passing, and it wasn't until 1884 that a Catalan writer, Pompeu Gener (whom bestselling author David Uclés confesses he would have liked to meet) mentioned the dish in a writing. The one who first explained Pompeu Gener's reference was Néstor Luján, who wrote it down in a newspaper article a century later, in 1984. A year later, the artist Leopoldo Pomés wrote it down in the most complete and original book on pan con tomate, "Teoría y práctica del pan con tomate", that the oldest reference was from 1884. And since then we have relied on this data, which is difficult to verify in Pompeu Gener's work, or at least, we must confess that we haven't succeeded. The phrase that the journalist and writer Néstor Luján said was the first written literary reference to pan con tomate was the following: "What we ate one night was bread with oil seasoned with tomato". In any case, Leopoldo Pomés maintained in his book that the orthodox way of preparing it was with "pan de payés" (a type of rustic bread), spread on both sides with the "red and substantial varnish", then salted, and finally, drizzled with olive oil. The order of the ingredients is basic, because if the salt was placed after the olive oil, it would then slide down. On the contrary, if the salt is put on before the olive oil, it sticks to the bread. For the dish not to be acidic – one of the reproaches of the anti pan con tomate crowd – the important thing is the ripeness of the tomato and also that the maximum acidity limit of olive oil is 0.4. "You also shouldn't rub the tomato hard; the spreading shouldn't be excessive", because spreading pan con tomate is not like putting jam on it. "The exact point is what gives it a red tint", said Pomés, who also theorized about the centimeters needed for distance when applying olive oil to the slice: 10. And above all, skins should not be used, the tomato skins, which are only useful for handling, for picking them with your fingers and rubbing them on the bread.Beyond the orthodox recipe, let's remember this: with both sides spread, Leopoldo Pomés also revealed a conversation he had with the founder of Motel Empordà and Hotel Almadrava, Josep Mercader. In a conversation they had, Mercader had told him that he "considered it a mistake to add sugar to tomato sauce to soften its acidity", so those who had thought of this resource so that acidity wouldn't be an argument to reject the dish, wouldn't be doing it right either. For the tomato to have a good flavor on the bread, he would cut the tomatoes in half, remove the water and seeds, wrap them in a clean cloth like a small bag, and hang them in the refrigerator overnight. This is how "the tomato shed all its acidic liquids, and then acquired a natural and splendid sweetness", wrote Pomés. Chef Jaume Subirós assures that even today this is how they prepare it at Hotel Almadrava. Finally, the author of the book dedicated to pan con tomate assured that it was a very economical dish. In 1985, preparing one cost 17.60 pesetas, which if euros had existed would have been approximately 10 cents. With the accumulated inflation from 1985 to 2026, it is difficult to say that a slice of pan con tomate has this cost. However, Pomés maintains an argument that remains very current today: pan con tomate is versatile and adaptable. You can eat it for breakfast, lunch, a snack, or dinner. It can be a festive dish or help you survive a meal. And for many more advantages we find, there is always the freedom of those who don't like it, those who say that Catalan identity cannot be identified with a dish that we haven't been eating for so many centuries. Long before we ate pan con tomate, we ate bread with oil and garlic.

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Nevin Cohen (Brooklyn, New York, 1962) is an expert in public food policies and director of the Urban Food Policy Institute – belonging to the City University of New York – and advocates for actions that can lead to more egalitarian, sustainable, and healthy food. He visits Barcelona to participate in the first international congress of the FARO observatory on the future of food, held at the University of Barcelona, where he is amazed by its historic building. “How beautiful it is to study here,” he says, taking a photo of the cloister.

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