Andorra - Escudella i Carn d'Olla

Location of Andorra, in Green

Hola! 
I have always liked to think of myself as an adventurous being. Just ask my mother! I was much more fearless as a child and as such, have come to the conclusion that fearless children create paranoid parents - rightly so! As you get older you naturally lose some of the fearlessness and bravery (stupidity?) that made your childhood magical and full of years' worth of stories. I no longer hitchhike from strangers when I know I won't make it home on time by foot. It has been years since I have jumped three stories from a bridge into the flowing waters of the Purdy Spit below. Nor have I recently swam as far out into the ocean as I possibly could - just to see if i could make it back to shore. If. If??? My god, my poor parents! 

As well-adjusted, functioning adults contributing to the betterment of society most of us aren't jumping out of planes to satiate that desire for adventure anymore. We 

All ingredients used for Escudella i Carn d'Olla

realized that we are probably too chicken to go bungee jumping and while we think we are 100% down to run with those bulls, we know in the backs of our minds that when we make it (back) to Spain that we probably will be watching the festivities from the sidelines, Sangria in hand. And that's OK.

I feel at this stage in my life, a lot of day-to-day adventures stem from food! There is always a new brunch, bar or bistro to try out - especially in this crazy City of Angels of mine! And give me any exotic fruit, vegetable, nut or seed that I have never heard of that can only be harvested every twelve years from a remote island off the coast of Iwo Jima and I. Am. There! I love trying new things and expanding my palate.

Pig Ears

What I do not like, however, is trying strange meats.

I am a straight up finer-cuts-of-beef-loving, white-meat-chicken-eating American girl. Ground turkey breast is my friend and the occasional pork chop is fantastic. But dark meat is nauseating, veal makes me sad and I was not thrilled with venison. Pig's Feet is a common treat in Mexico and while my family - with the exception of my brother and I - was exclusively born and raised in Los Angeles for an entire three generations, some food practices are harder to kill than others. My mother loves pig's feet. And I hated that she loved pig's feet, especially on those hot summer days as she devoured them in the car with the windows rolled up. There is not enough therapy in the world to help me work past this so traumatize you I will not. I will move on to the Soup d'jour: From Andorra, we are exploring a soup Escudella i Carn d'Olla. Andorran cuisine is unique in that - because it is of a country so small - it absorbs a lot of influences and dishes from typical Spanish, Catalan and French fares. I was told I could not go wrong with Escudella and from then on I was on board! Until that is I read the ingredient list. I will let you see for yourself.

Escudella i Carn d'Olla

Ingredients

Meatball

1/4 lb. Minced Pork 1/4 lb. Veal* 1/4 Bacon 1 Egg 1 Clove of Garlic 1 TBSP Parsley

1/2 Cups Plain Breadcrumbs 1/2 - 3/4 Cup Milk 1.5 TBSP Flour 1 Pinch Cinnamon 1 Pinch Salt

Pig Foot, look at the "thumb!"

Soup

1 lb. - Veal* 1/4 Hen* 1 Chicken 4 L. Water Chicken Giblets 1 Pig Ear 1 Pig Nose* 1/2 Unit Pig Foot 1 Unit Ham 1 Unit Spine Bone 1 Unit Bone Knee Calf*

1/4 lb. Blood Sausage 1/4 lb. White Sausage* 8 oz. Chickpeas, soaked 8 oz. Potatoes, chopped 1/2 Green Cabbage 1 Turnip** 1 Carrot 1 Parsnip** 1 Leek 1 Celery Stalk 10 oz. Pasta

Steps

Meatball

1. Soak Breadcrumbs in the milk. Drain any excess that may be sitting after absorption.
2. Mix Veal, Pork, and Bacon all finely chopped with egg, garlic and parsley (I used dried parsley) and drained breadcrumbs.
3. Add Salt, Pepper, Cinnamon and Flour and mix well.



Fresh Garbanzo Beans

4. With floured hands, form the meatball into one single, rugby-shaped ball. Set aside

Soup

1. Sear Pig Nose, Ear, Foot and Chicken after washing thoroughly.
2. In a stock pot, add water, all meat and bones and bring to a boil, skimming off any froth that comes to the surface.
3. Drain chickpeas and add to soup.
4. Add Carrots, Parsnips, Turnips, Celery, Leek, and return to a boil. Simmer for 30 minutes.
5. Add the Cabbage, Potatoes, Meatball, Sausages and Salt. Return to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
6. Add the pasta in the last 15 minutes of the cook time. 
7. Serve with the meats on one dish and the soup in another.

Vaughn skimming off the froth

Oh.
My.
God.

This recipe is marked with a difficulty level of 29, presumably out of 30. Here I was thinking soup is always easy to make and this one was pretty difficult! It was a lot of waiting, a lot of chopping and a lot of touching weird meats!

The ingredients were mostly easy to find, or rather minimally difficult compared to if I was cooking this soup in say Kelso, Washington. As mentioned previously, Los Angeles is incredibly diverse and, as such, consumers are able to find relatively specialized ingredients with relative ease. I was able to find most of my ingredients at a semi-Hispanic grocer, with the exception of the items starred above. My original plan was to follow up with a Mexican butcher to find the random pig parts but, well, there was an Argentine Butcher about a quarter-mile away from Grocer #1. Why not?

As I walked in, it felt as though I stepped in a different country. There was another customer at the counter who spoke with the butcher in a relaxed, melodically friendly Spanish. The wall behind the counter was filled with paper calendars, years of files and a small, old TV. The worker on the other side of the store blew his nose behind the counter as the original customer, standing in front of the B-Grade on the shop window, took off her flip flop, rested her foot on the glass barrier and applied wart medicine. My eyes widened and as I looked to my cooking partner I hid my smirk. The adventure had begun!

The soup was starting to look good...

We stepped up to the counter as the butcher pleasantly greeted us in one of the friendliest tones of voices this Angeleno has heard in a very long time! As I began asking for random meats - veal, blood sausage, white sausage - he interrupted me.

"What is it you are trying to make? Maybe I can help you find what you are looking for," he mentioned, nodding toward my printed recipe. I told him it was just a soup and continued to rattle off ingredients: Pig Nose, Calf Knee

"What on earth are you making? Game of Thrones Soup!?!?" The butcher looked horrified.

I couldn't hide my amusement, laughing about it for the rest of the day! If Mr. Butcher didn't receive an influx of customers right after us, I would have loved to take his picture! When it came down to it we left with only the Blood Sausage. I had dodged the veal (thank God, since I have some moral hangups on this one), the Pig Nose and the White Sausage. At first I was a little bummed that I was missing ingredients; what about the authenticity?!? But then Vaughn, my aforementioned cooking partner for the night, broke it down: Chances are this soup was a sampling of the random parts of meat that were available to the cooks at any given time. If this cut was available, throw this in. If you can't find that, don't worry about it. It made sense, so we headed home to continue the adventure.

...But then this happened!

Now I was nice enough to spell out the recipe for you all - all you brave souls that perhaps want to attempt this creation - but these were not the instructions that were available to me. The original recipe was in Catalán and Google Translate always seems to leave quite a bit open to interpretation, instructions that are not always clear until you are in the middle of the process. As a result, we messed up.

A lot.

• We made small rugby sized meatballs, instead of one large rugby-sized meatball, and proceeded to put them in waaaay too soon!
• Instead of a pich of cinnamon, about 4 tablespoons got dumped into the meatball mixture.
• We threw the sausage in way too soon, as well.
• A translation error on my part led me to buy a zucchini instead of a turnip. (I confused the word "Nabo "in this recipe for "Courgettes" found in the next recipe). Additionally, we decided that we would be OK substituting a readily available Daikon Radish in for a turnip. Maybe this made a difference, maybe not.
• We cooked the pasta separately and added it to the soup when it was done, causing the noodles to become huge and absorb much more water than they were maybe supposed to.



The finished product. Not very soupy!

• Perhaps the biggest mistake was that fact that we had this soup boiling, literally on high heat for hours! We burned the soup!

I stepped into my room for a moment, came back out to the smell of burning! Vaughn was on the balcony as a bunch of firetrucks were passing, exclaiming on the commotion! I ran out and watched the trucks go to the end of the block and beyond only to come to the realization that the burning smell was completely independent of the outside incident! The soup was burning!
Careful not to scrape the bottom, I transferred the contents of the soup to a glass bowl, washed the scorched matter off the bottom of the pot and continued on. Throwing in the pasta and zucchini, I began to set the table. After about 15 minutes I figured the zucchini would be tender and the soup would be ready to eat. Then I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of steam coming from the stock pot again.
For the second time that night, we had burned the soup. Once again careful not to scrape the bottom, I took out the chunks of meat as indicated and transferred the rest of the soup to the freshly cleaned glass bowl. After 5 hours of shopping, prep and cooking, it was finally time to try the FrankenSoup! Prepped with spoons, forks and knives, we were ready to dig in.

I hated it.

The meat is served separately.

In my defense, I was not expecting to like it, however, I was really really looking forward to finding out if I was right! (Fact: I know I do not like to try new meats! Fact: I have been wrong once or twice in the past.) The flavor of the soup was admittedly good. I feel like my hangup with the soup comes 90% from my knowledge of what was included. Additionally, the soup, having been on high heat for far too long had come to resemble something more of a pasta dish, which did not necessitate use of a spoon at all, accompanied by a distinct yet mild "burnt" flavor. I cut off a tiny piece of blood sausage from the meat plate and attempted to get it down. It was not happening.I chewed and tried to swallow it, but eventually, there was a napkin with a chewed up bite of blood sausage stuffed in it accompanying my place setting. I reverted to being a small child as I counted down the bites that would indicate a fair effort. "Six more bites...five more bites....four more bites..."After six bites, my mind was made up and I was able to put down my fork guilt-free. I had tried.

So that was this week's soup adventure. I am definitely glad I took the chance even though it was not my cup of tea - or bowl of soup. If anything, my takeaway from this comes in the form of a bacon meatball that I absolutely look forward to exploring in the future! (Bacon is so in right now.) Additionally, I was pleased to find Chickpeas in their natural state with the green husk! I would have never recognized them as chickpeas had Vaughn not accompanied me! I love garbanzos and am excited to cook with them in their natural non-canned glory! Join me next time as I make a well-deserved vegetarian soup hailing from Angola!

Adéu-Siau!

"You will continue to take chances,
and be glad you did."
Good timing! I found this fortune as I sat to eat!

"With patience you go beyond knowledge." ~ Andorran Proverb