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.