Escudella and carn d'olla

After the soup are served the meats, vegetables and vegetables with which the broth has been made.

Two. pilots separated in a separate dish during the process of elaboration of the soup broth. The usual is that there's only one for soup. Next to them you can see a black butifarra.

The escudella i carn d'olla or Christmas soup, is a typical winter soup that is traditional in Catalonia. Already in the 14th century, the Franciscan Francesc Eiximenis described macaroni soup as an everyday dish for Catalans.

It is especially characterized by the use of a pilota in cooking, which is a large elongated meatball that once cooked is cut into slices to be distributed among diners, made with minced meat mixed with bacon, egg batter, bread crumbs or breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley, and that is passed through flour and browned a little before being cooked in the water that will give the broth. In addition, to make the broth, vegetables are used (carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, green cabbage, etc.) and eventually other ingredients, such as chickpeas, potatoes, black or white sausage, or different types of meat and bones that can vary according to the family, the region where they live, the season of the year and the occasion.

The macaroni soup is the soup, a broth obtained by boiling all the ingredients, strained and in which some noodles and a little round rice are cooked. A variant is the escudella barrejada (mixed soup), in which some ingredients are added in small pieces to the broth. In another variant, instead of a pilota, tiny meatballs are made, the size of grapes, which are placed in the broth. The humblest variants had only a ball of butter and at most a few bones, while the richest are those reserved for major festivities, especially Christmas, which is made with galets (formerly macaroni). In Cadaquès, bell peppers cooked over embers (scalivados) are added.

Consumption and customs

This ancient dish, which was eaten by all social classes in Catalonia, Roussillon, Andorra, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, is known by several different names, as well as macaroni soup. Some of them are, for example, sopa i bullit, bullit, putxero, olla, ollada or barrejada pot. Some people consider it to be two different dishes, one the soup or macaroni soup and the other the carn d'olla.

Currently it is considered more of a winter dish, because it is hot, but for a long time it was eaten throughout the year, since in summer it allowed the nutrients that were lost through sweat to be recovered. Eiximenis explains that in the XIV century it was already eaten by dipping bread into the broth, something that was done until well into the XX and that some older people still do. It was also customary for a long time to finish the last spoonfuls by adding a little wine and mixing everything together, a custom shared with neighboring Occitan gastronomy.

In the Valencian Community it had been a Sunday dish in times when the rest of the week they ate rice dishes and paellas; and with the leftovers, on Mondays they made a dish of baked rice.

For San Antonio Abad in Urgelense towns, such as Seo de Urgel, and Andorrans, it is traditional to make calderadas, which consists of a large macaroni soup and the townspeople can go get a pot to take home.

Serve

• La Escudella ("sopa", in Catalan), which is the soup proper, that is to say the broth with a bit of pasta (fideos) and of rice boiled in it.
• La carn d'olla is then served in an oval tray that is taken to the table and where each one is served, with the pilota and the vegetables used in the boil (also, if there are, the other meats, potatoes or legumes), drained, which can be added or not with olive oil.

Christmas galet soup

Galets fillers pilota still raw and before being boiled in the soup. This way of serving the pilotainstead of the most classic, in slices with the rest of the carn d'ollaIt is a recent variant that has become very popular.

A variety of this dish, the sopa de galets or escudella de Nadal, is the usual first course of the Christmas meal (the second is usually capon, or Stuffed turkey). In its preparation, a paste called galets is used (its smaller sisters are called snails or sharks depending on the commercial brand) that stands out for being of a considerable size. It contains a pilota of minced meat, the four evangelists (four types of meat: pork, veal, lamb and chicken or capon) and the seven sacraments: chickpeas or beans, potatoes, turnips, carrots, celery, green cabbage and parsnips. Depending on the family and region, it can have chickpeas and beans, or it can contain broad beans, as was done in the old days before these previous ones, or it can be complemented with other vegetables such as leeks, sweet potatoes, cardoons, etc.

The stuffed galets were born from this variety, originally and typically pilota, a very popular Christmas recipe today that coexists with the traditional old soup. These galets are eaten inside the soup, instead of the "empty" galets, and then the carn d'olla contains no pilot.

The Christmas escudella i carn d'olla is a richer version than the everyday one. In some places a major festivity was celebrated like this, but in other areas of Catalonia they preferred to eat something different from what they used to eat every day, precisely anything except escudella i carn d'olla.