Cooked by:
Titi
History:
Starting as a tipycal farmer soup where everything available was boiled in a pot (and that's the reason why many recipes are available), escudella became the usual Christmas meal with the introduction of 'Galets' a special sort of pasta since XX century.
Considered by some experts like Manuel Vázquez-Montalbán as the Summa Theologica of our catalan cooking and reported also in the chronicles of the famous catalan writer Josep Pla, as well as deeply treated by Nèstor Luján in his passion books for catalan cooking, you can be sure you are quite close to the soul of our cooking tradition.
This is one of the most traditional, ancient and tipycal meals of catalan cooking. The use of so much ingredients turns this soup in a 3 dishes meal consisting of: the soup itself, the vegetables and the meat.
Read this 1985 report from New York Times about catalan cooking, Escudella and Catalonia. Not much sure if he knew what he was talking about: "... Some will say that Monday is the best day for escudella, because it is the traditional laundry day, and the women can set their pots aboil and go about their weekly washes without concern that their suppers will overcook..." Maybe this used to happen 100 hundred years before but not in 1985, my friend.
Typical of:
Christmas
Veal, chicken, ham, bacon, black and white sausage, pork and veal minced meat, garlic and parsley, cabbage, carrots and potatoes, leek, celery, eggs, slide of bread, flour, chickpeas, galet (pasta shells)