Spring Onions Cooked Like Calçots (Grilled Spring Onions)

This is a traditional Catalonian dish made with an onion similar to spring onions. There are festivals dedicated to eating calçots, and these are called a calçotada. The usual accompaniment to calçots is a romesco sauce, made with red peppers and tomatoes. Although these are not in season, I have made a perfectly fine version of this with jarred peppers and canned tomatoes, and so I will include the recipe. The part where the onions are wrapped in newspaper may seem off-putting, but it allows the onions to cook through without incinerating the entire onion, and since you peel away the outer layer of the onion you won’t get any newsprint. This seems a simple thing, and it is, but it is rather addicting.

INGREDIENTS:

4-12 spring onions, or as many as you feel like eating

Coarse salt to taste

A couple sections of newspaper

A very hot grill

METHOD:

Trim the onions of all the roots and wipe away any dirt that is present. Trim the tops down if they are long so there is still some green on the onion (3-4 inches), and save the rest for other dishes. Heat the grill. It should be very hot. Put the onions on the grill, and cook, turning as needed to char them evenly. Salt the onions as you turn them. The idea is to blacken the outside without charring the inside past 2-3 layers. When the outside is evenly cooked, transfer the onions to some newspaper-around 4 or 5 sheets stacked together- and salt a little more before rolling up so they are covered at both ends and let rest 10-15 minutes. When you are ready to eat the onions, simply peel off the outer layers from the top down and dip in the romesco sauce.

Chef’s Notes:

There is not a lot you can do to play with this recipe. Eat these as a first course, and serve a cold crisp white wine such as verdelho or a cava or with a crisp beer. The newspaper allows the onions to steam all the way through, whereas if you tried to cook these all the way through on the grill you would lose a lot of the onion to burning.

Serves: 4

Source: Chef Andrew E Cohen