Seven hundred years of history count for a lot… and on the table too. Travel through time in the most flavoursome way.
the first successful cuisine: mediaeval cooking
The first recipes in Latin-derived languages 14th and 15th century are in Catalan, like the so-called Sent Soví. Probably much of the uniqueness of Catalan cuisine comes from the fact that it has managed to bring together, from the basis of its classical and visigoth heritage, the fine influences of Andalusian culture, thus guaranteeing the Mediterranean culture and transmission of oriental treasures.
The Arabs introduced and reintroduced many products to the Iberian peninsular, some of these still play a part in idiosyncratic nature of Catalan food, like rice, spinach, egg plants, lemons, sugar or pasta (fideus), and there was a certain taste for greens, which the philosopher Ramon Llull identified as a source of health, especially taking into account that garden fruits had really undervalued until then by feudal masters. As well,
the presence of fish and other products from the Mediterranean characterised this mediaeval Catalan cuisine. And there were also some exquisite sauces like ginestrada, a cream made with rise, saffron, with the milk of almonds, and costum —exported to a large extent— made by cooking poultry in citric fruits, as well as various dishesdelicately scented with rose water and prohibitive mixes of far off spices.
Remember that ginger arrived much before sushi, or coriander before guacamole, and that galangà came before the Tom Iam soup.
Catalonia shared this way of cooking with, firstly -and in a very special way- Occitània, as it did with serenading, the trobadors and an occasional heretic, and afterwards there were successful contacts with Sicily, Sardinia and the Italian Peninsular.
In the moment when Catalan cuisine was really founded, it already
showed its most characteristic trait: the capacity to incorporate the best of other culinary cultures, that for one or another reason, it had come into contact with. This was not a unique thing; anthropologists have shown that cuisine reflects societies quite clearly. So it is not at all strange that cuisine in Catalonia reflected the spirit of a place that was very much a thoroughfare and place of arrival, preferring to incorporate that than resist other styles.
the fusion of «new» americas products
With time ultramarine products from the Americas were incorporated into Catalan cuisine, which without them today would look very different. For example, sausages and beans (American), Egg plants with peppers (American), Soup of Cauliflower and potatoes (American), and tomato (American)-bread and even our bread and chocolate (American) for an afternoon snack.
Modern times is not especially good —as everyone
knows— for the production of Catalan culture, which
was persecuted and occasionally had to hide even in convents or monasteries. Precisely it was in the
monasteries where many of the recipe books of the time were written, faithful to the mediaeval tradition (there was still a fair mix of sweet
and salty dishes that were so liked in the Middle Ages, for example, but also with the healthy meat restrictions as prescribed by monastery rules. And bit by bit the new incorporations began to bring the makeup of the dishes, despite not losing their character, to current day ones.