Between November and April in Catalonia, Spain, calcotada are held throughout the region to partake in the new harvest of green onions. Calcot or a type of green onion which is slightly fatter than our locally grown onions are planted as a single bulb throughout autumn and winter. These single bulbs sprout up to a dozen shoots of calcot which are them harvested from November through April and several bunches of these “green onions” are then tied in large bunches and cooked directly on smoldering kindle – sometimes the pruned branches of grapevines, sometimes directly in outdoor ovens and once the outer layers are charred, wrapped tightly in paper and allowed to steam within the confines of the paper. After peeling off the charred bits, the white portion of the calcot is dipped in almond and red pepper based Romesco sauce and consumed with Priorat or Rioja wine often directly from a poron. Why am I describing this when the calcot haven’t even been planted yet? Because we’re in the middle of summer during grillin’ season when we can hibachi our own Hawaiian calcot, local style!
Fessing Up
I’ll admit it. I only attempted to recreate a calcotada once. Why? Negi in the 50th don’t grow very large or wide. And it’s mainly the white portion that’s consumed so I purchased those large Tokyo negi that Marukai often sells… at about $6 per pound. And unlike leeks where the green portion isn’t usually consumed and reserved for stock, the green portion of Tokyo negi is also consumed but when used in a calcotada, the green portion is sacrificed and charred beyond recognition simply to protect the inner white portion. So, I just spent $30 on green onions albeit gourmet Tokyo green onions and I’m about to waste about 2/3 of each stalk? So what I did was remove the green stalks and saved them for ramen and stir frying then wrapped the lower white portion in paper to function as the green portion and placed them on smoldering charcoal then finished them like the usual calcotada preparation. They were very good with the Romesco sauce though I’m not sure if they were $30 good but the Rioja that I drank with my calcot softened the blow created by the large hole made in my wallet.
My Usual Application
My usual cooking application with negi often doesn’t apply any heat at all, just the whir of serrated blades within a food processor. It’s my version of that luscious “sauce” served with Chinese style poached chicken, the ginger and green onion sauce. I simply place roughly chopped, peeled fresh ginger in my trusty 7 cup Cuisinart along with 3gm of powdered Vitamin-C (to prevent browning of the green onions), a dash of powdered white pepper and several grinds of Ono Hawaiian Seasoning and roughly chopped, fresh green onion from two supermarket bunches then pulse everything until it gets to the consistency seen in Chinese take-out. From here, I take one of two routes. If I plan on using it ahi poke, I then drizzle vegetable oil with the Cuisinart running until a pesto-like consistency is reached. For all other applications, I’ll place the mixture in a metal bowl then heat the oil on medium heat for several minutes then drizzle the hot oil over the green onion and ginger mixture and mix everything until the sizzling subsides. This technique releases more of the green onion and ginger flavors into the mixture but it doesn’t retain the vivid color of the negi as the mixture is essentially cooked by the hot oil. I’ll use this “sauce” for everything from a sandwich spread to a spread for crackers or chips to a “sauce” for local charcuterie or poached chicken breasts.
My other cooking application where negi is the star of the dish is with a simple scrambled egg. My Dad didn’t do much cooking other than his “famous” spaghetti sauce which was simply Lawry’s package seasoning and shortbread cookies but I did see him make these green onion scrambled eggs and to this day, continue to make these whenever we have an abundance of eggs (usually when Ms. S and I separately purchase a carton of eggs on the same day) and green onions. It’s just something about butter, green onions and eggs where one plus one plus one equals twenty. And mind you, my favorite egg applications are either raw – tamago meshi – or just past raw – sunny side or poached but I’ll devour a plateful of green onion and butter scrambled eggs any day! Since that first fateful day when I observed Dad creating these scrambles, I have zhushed my rendition a sukoshi bit using Chef Jean-George Vongerichten’s method of whisking the eggs constantly over medium-low heat to create a thick, custardy texture, using French style (generic butter and French style butter clogs arteries at the same rate so go with the additional richness) and also add a little truffle salt to my current rendition.
The Newest Application
I found a new application that I’m intent on mastering but still nowhere near even creating just a decent rendition of that seemingly simple dish found in Chinese restaurants, the Scallion Pancake. With just four basic ingredients; green onions, flour, water and sesame oil, a wedge of perfectly rolled and fried pancakes with unmistakable green onion flavor that’s both crisp and tender married with a sauce of shoyu, ginger, vinegar, sugar and sesame oil… I could have a plateful of these scallion pancakes and a glass or two of Riesling and I would be in my happy place.
The recipe that I’m still trying to perfect is on my internet Bible of cooking, the Serious Eats website so If you too enjoy those crisp and savory scallion pancakes, just go to the Serious Eats website and search for “scallion pancakes”. Apparently, the flakiness comes from creating a logarithmic number of layers by simply rolling, rolling then repeating. And perhaps one day, you’ll achieve what I still haven’t mastered, the perfect scallion pancake.
Not the Best Actor
This dish usually highlights either the best donko shiitake mushrooms, sweet artisanal tofu or heritage grown pork and I usually just add the green onions as a simple garnish. However, on this one fateful day, a co-worker gave us some home grown negi from her garden. Normally when you slice into the supermarket variety of negi, the blade meets very little resistance and the act of slicing doesn’t produce any sound as the stalks are already slightly soft once displayed in the produce bin. However, Annie’s negi produced a pronounced crisp sound like slicing into the freshest apple or celery and I immediately knew that they had to be the star of the dish so I reduced the quantity of the Two Lady Farmers ground pork, shiitake and tofu to highlight the freshest (and tastiest) negi I’ve ever sampled. So perchance, you ever as blessed with a gift of the freshest negi, you can recreate the same experience that we had.
Stir Fry Green Onions (and pork, tofu and shiitake)
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 cup vegetable broth
2 tbsp shoyu
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 & 1/2 tsp sugar
3 tbsp oil
2 tbsp minced fermented black beans
2 tbsp minced fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp chili-garlic sauce
Two 14-ounce containers firm or extra firm tofu, drained, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 lb lean ground pork
20 shiitake soaked in hot water
2 bunches green onions cut into 2-inch strips
Mix first 5 ingredients and set aside. Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan the add the next 4 ingredients and stir fry until fragrant. Add the tofu, ground pork and shiitake and cook until the pork is brown then add the slurry of the first 5 ingredients and simmer until it thickens then add the green onions and toss until the green onions just start wilting.
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