Romesco
Romesco is a Catalan sauce of roasted tomatoes and garlic, toasted nuts, dried nyora peppers, bread and oil, traditionally served with seafood, grilled meat and calcots.
Salvitxada
Salsa de calçots · Calçot sauce
Salvitxada is a Catalan sauce from Valls, thickened with toast rubbed with garlic, served almost only with calcots at the calcotada barbecue.
The sauce for calcots
Salvitxada is a Catalan sauce from Valls, in the province of Tarragona. It is also called salsa de calcots, the calcot sauce. It is served almost only with calcots, the thick spring onions roasted over an open fire at the calcotada, the traditional outdoor barbecue of the district.
Its body is toast, not nuts. The toast is rubbed with fresh garlic, moistened with a little vinegar and pounded, which gives a thick, sharp paste that is spooned or dipped against the sweet, charred onion.
Compared with romesco
Salvitxada is close to romesco, the nut and pepper sauce of the same region. The key difference the page gives is the thickener: garlic-rubbed toast rather than the nuts and pepper of romesco. The two are often confused, and a Valls cook would treat them as separate sauces. Sources give no quantities, so no measure is recorded here.
History
The page gives Valls as the place of origin and no date. The Valls calcot tradition is recorded in a source that credits a farmer with the calcot of 1898, presented as tradition rather than documentation.
Ingredients
ToastBread toasted, then rubbed with fresh garlic and pulverised.
No quantity given.
GarlicFresh garlic, rubbed onto the toast.
Amount not stated
VinegarA little, to moisten the toast.
Amount not stated
Method
- Toast the bread and rub it with fresh garlic.
- Moisten the toast with a little vinegar and pulverise it to a thick sauce.
Places
Valls
Traditional preparation · Locality evidenceThe page gives Valls, in the province of Tarragona, as the place of origin, with no date.
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Sources
WikipediaDefinition · Method · Uses
SalvitxadaAlso called salsa de calcots; from Valls, Tarragona, Catalonia; served almost exclusively with calcots at calcotades.
Toast, garlic and vinegar; thickened with garlic-rubbed toast, pulverised.