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This refreshing vegetarian salad recipe is perfect for hot days and it can be an appetizer or an accompaniment, and it has the added bonus that it’s very easy to make.

In Catalan from Majorca the name of this salad recipe, trempó, pronounced tram-pOH, comes from the verb trempar, which means: to season to make food tastier.

In the hot Mediterranean summers, farmers ate it often, even for breakfast. It is, in fact, a communal dish like paella. You put the summer salad in the center, and everybody eats from the same dish scooping it up with country-style brown Majorcan bread and the fingers as needed. Forks were never used.

Trempó Salad Ingredients

The size of the vegetables is a matter of personal preference. Some people like wedges, others like cubes and again some like smaller or larger pieces. The trempó will be just as delicious.

Serves 4 as appetizer

• 4 slightly green tomatoes —neither green nor ripe
• 2 large green peppers —cored and seeded. The best are the Majorcan peppers like in the photo below, but green Italian peppers are also good
• 1 onion, sweet if possible — If the onion is too strong, soak it for half an hour in water
• Salt
• Olive oil to taste
• A handful olives —optional
• A dash of vinegar —optional

How to Make Trempó Summer Salad

1. Wash the vegetables
2. Dice or cut the tomatoes into wedges and place them in a salad bowl.
3. Core and seed the peppers and cut them in rings, and then in half. Add them to the bowl with the tomatoes. Many people swear that you mustn’t use a knife to cut the peppers, so use your hands instead.
4. Peel the onion and cut it into wedges, and then in half.
5. Add the onion to the salad.
6. If you choose to add olives, add them now.
7. Add salt to taste
8. Drizzle olive oil liberally and mix well but gently. The best way to know if you have added enough olive oil and salt is to taste it. It is impossible to give you an exact amount for this recipe.
9. Add the optional vinegar

The vegetable salad is now ready to be served. But if you let it rest for a while, it will taste even better.

Variations of the Trempó Summer Salad

If you want to do like in the small town of Porreres in Majorca, add two diced apricots. In Porreres they grow lots and lots of apricots, so it’s a great way to use them in the summer season. Apart from being even more juicy, apricots add another bright orange color to this simple vegetarian salad

Some people add capers, apple dices, pear dices, sea fennel, or even potatoes.

In other Mediterranean regions you find similar summer salad recipes. One particular version of this Majorcan salad adds crushed plain Majorcan biscuits. You could replace them with bits of dry or toasted bread or even bits of Melba toasts. This reminds us of the leftover dried pita bread added to the Arabic fattoush salad.

Trempó Brings Many Memories to Majorcans

Here’s how Tonina Oliver, a very popular Majorcan cook and cookbook writer, reveals to us the magic of this traditional vegetable salad on the island of Majorca.

When little by little the concert of the cicadas reaches that orchestral screech. When you are restlessly awaiting the first cool breeze of the evening to have a bite under a fig tree: This is the perfect time for trempó. Or for cuttlefish with trempó.

Les millors receptes de la cuina mallorquina (Best Recipes of Majorcan Cuisine)

Or for coca de trempó as well, another version of the Catalan coca de recapte, which is great for breakfast, tea time, appetizer, or main course.

Regarding the Summer Salad Ingredients

Try to buy the best fresh vegetables. This vegetable salad is based on simplicity as so many vegetable salad recipes. Indeed, when prepared with fresh ingredients, this Mediterranean diet dish is surprisingly delicious.

Also, try to get light green long peppers, perhaps you’ll find Italian ones which are similar to the Majorcan ones. Green bell peppers aren’t traditionally used for this cold appetizer, but if there is nothing else available, they will do well as long as they are sweet. Sweet banana peppers could work too.

Use white onions or any other sweet variety. Likewise choose heirloom or natural tomatoes, which are slightly green.

As with paella, there are endless discussions about which is the really authentic recipe. I have given you the traditional trempo recipe as I make it.

At the same time, it’s a succulent vegetarian dish that more and more people eat as a first vegetarian course or as a side dish. It adds a bright touch of color to meals and tables too.

We eat it by itself as a vegetarian dish all the time as it is delicious and healthy. Some home cooks complain that it takes time, but I don’t, and in fact, it’s rather easy to cook and if you make a large quantity it freezes well.

Catalan Samfaina Ingredients

Serves 6 as a sauce, base or side dish; 4 as a sole course

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium size onion —peeled and cut into about 3/4-inch or 2 cm strips; or you can dice them if you like
• 3 bell peppers —cut into about 1-inch or 2.5 cm cubes
• 3 or 4 medium-sized ripe tomatoes — peeled, seeded (optional), and chopped into about 1-inch pieces or 2.5 cm
• 1 or 2 eggplants —cut into 1-inch or 2.5 cm cubes.
• 1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste

Instructions for Catalan Samfaina

1. Peel the eggplants only if they aren’t heirloom or organic. If they are good quality go ahead and dice them with the skin. Sweat them while you are preparing the vegetables. If you have a lot of time, you can do this step one or two hours before you begin with the samfaina.
2. Peel the tomatoes and chop them coarsely. I don’t usually seed them, but if you choose to do it, do this after halving them and before chopping them.
3. Dice or cut the onion into lengthwise strips. Next, dice the peppers.
4. Heat the olive oil in an earthenware casserole or Dutch oven. Add the onion and sautee 2 or 3 minutes over medium-low heat, stirring almost constantly. Before the onion turns golden, add the pepper. Stirr, cover and cook covered for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring a few times.
5. Add the eggplant that you have previously diced, stir, cover, and cook for about 5 minutes.
6. Add the chopped tomato, stir and cover. Cook for 10 minutes over medium-low heat stirring a few times. Add the salt, stir and cook for 15 to 20 more minutes over low heat, stirring the samfaina every 5 minutes or so.

Catalan Samfaina and French Ratatouille

Actually, what most people call French ratatouille is a traditional dish from the city of Nice and the Provence and is called ratatolha niçarda in Occitan. Catalan Samfaina and ratatolha or ratatouille are closely related recipes with similar ingredients.

Traditionally, the Catalan samfaina recipe includes onion, peppers, eggplants and tomatoes. And as usual, there seems to be as many variations as households. Some leave the onion out, others add garlic, or roast the peppers previously…

Variations and Tips regarding Samfaina

Actually, in Catalan cuisine samfaina is one of the basic sauces and it is regarded as a sofregit. But except when you eat it as a sole vegetarian dish, which is a new tradition, you generally cook it on top of the already roasted meat or fish, in the same pot or pan. With sofregit you almost always cook it first and add the fish or meat later.

When the eggplant isn’t in season you can replace it with zuchinis

Each recipe specifies if you want a complete samfaina like this one or you have to remove the onion or the eggplant.

Cooking longer or shorter depends on your personal preferences. I also make it a little different if we are going to eat it by itself or with fish or something else. In the first case I don’t cook it so long and the texture is more like in the images, you recognize eacg vegetable easily. In the second case, samfaina can be cooked down to even an almost marmalade like mixture, with many different degrees of consistency in between.

If you let the samfaina rest for a while, it tastes even better.

It admits freezing well, so you can also cook it a large quantity and freeze it for later.

Some people like to roast the vegetables.

The amounts I give you in the samfaina recipe are indicative. This is a recipe that admits experimentation and variations depending on your taste or love for one vegetable over the other or one consistency over the other.

How you can eat Catalan ratatouille

• With fish, chicken, meat and rice, which are the traditional ways
• As a sole vegetarian or vegan course, a new way of eating samfaina
• With pasta, brown rice or even a salad (new)
• As “coca de samfaina,” the Catalan pizza (traditional)

The main ingredient of crema catalana is milk. At this time of the year, cows and ewes had already given birth to their calves and lambs. So, when food production followed strictly natural cycles, in March there was already plenty of milk for mouthwatering desserts like crema catalana.

Main Differences between Crema Catalana and Creme Brulee

1. Crema catalana is made with milk while creme brulee uses cream. Hence it is safe to assume that it has fewer calories.
2. Crema catalana is made on a saucepan over the cooktop while creme brulee is cooked in the oven or in a bain-marie. We use this culinary technique for the flan recipe, but not for crema.
3. Vanille is one of the creme brulee ingredients while in crema catalana it is optional.

Ingredients for Crema Catalana

Serves 4

• 3/4 l or 1.5 pt or 3 1/5 cups milk
• 100 g sugar or 3.5 ounces or 3/4 cups
• 6 egg yolks
• 1 cinnamon stick
• The peel of a lemon
• 20 g starch or 2 tablespoons. Alternatively, you can use cornstarch or rice flour.
• Some more sugar for caramelizing

Kitchen tools

• Creme brulee ramekins or an oval serving dish or a creme brulee set.
• A creme brulee torch or a branding iron or the broiler of your oven

How to Make Creme Brulee in Catalan Style

1. Strain the milk. Add 1/2 l or about 2 cups of the milk into a heavy-bottomed or another saucepan. Pour the remaining milk into a cup and keep aside. Add the cinnamon stick and the lemon peel to the saucepan and bring to a boil. Let it boil for 5 minutes over low heat to aromatize the milk. Remove from heat. Strain the milk, discarding the cinnamon and lemon peel.
2. In the meantime, stir the starch or cornstarch into the cup of cool milk you kept aside. Stir until it is very well dissolved.
3. In a bowl, mix the sugar and the egg yolks. Beat the mixture until it is very smooth and spongy. Slowly add the milk while stirring. Strain the cornstarch mixture into it and stir until it is a smooth mixture.
4. Now pour the mixture into a saucepan. Cook over low heat, usually about 10 minutes, stirring all the time with a hand whisk or wooden spoon. Just when it is about to boil turn off the heat or remove it from the heat with one hand while you continue stirring with the other hand for about two minutes. See note below
5. Pour the crema catalana into custard cups, single-serving ramekins, or a larger serving dish. Allow it to cool at room temperature or refrigerate until set.
6. Just before serving, but in any case not before the Crema Catalana is set and cool, sprinkle a thin layer of sugar and burn it with a special branding iron or a creme brulee torch. If you don’t have any of these, burn the sugar under a very hot broiler, but make sure you use ovenproof bowls.

Notes and Considerations on the Crema Catalana Recipe

• Step 4 above is essential, perhaps the most important operation of the whole crema catalana recipe. First, the milk mixture should never come to a boil. Second, if you stop stirring the milk mixture suddenly and before removing the saucepan from the heat, the milk is likely to break, and your creme brulee recipe will be ruined. If you do it as I advise you, your Crema Catalana will be a gorgeous success.
• The traditional serving dish for this Catalan creme brulee recipe was a large oval serving dish, but nowadays —at least in restaurants— it is usually served in a 4-5 inch earthen cassoleta like in the picture above. In non-Mediterranean countries, you can find them in Hispanic markets and they are very inexpensive, but failing this any creme brulee ramekin or large serving dish will do.
• Some people prefer the crema catalana dessert without the burnt sugar top. Still, in many restaurants in Catalonia and Barcelona, they ask you how you want it before serving you the crema de Sant Josep. it’s just as good and traditional and a matter or personal preferences
• You can decorate the crema catalana with a cookie or two. The typical are cookies in longish, flute forms and in fan shapes also. They can be chocolate coated if you like.
• Some home cooks use the double amount of egg yolks for 1 liter or 1-quart milk — so you would use 12 for this recipe instead of 6. This is how a distant aunt of ours made it on her farm. I still remember exactly how amazingly mouthwatering it was, truly delicious! When my mother fell very ill, she used to bring her those huge dishes full of a very yellow Crema Catalana. Most of the times, instead of my mother, we the kids ate it. Maybe you’ll want to experiment with so many eggs.
• Some people prefer to use low-fat milk instead of whole milk. I always use whole milk, organic if I can, because when I eat “crema catalana”, I eat and enjoy it without remorse and don’t worry about counting calories or it’s not worth the trouble. Whenever he dined at a restaurant, a friend of my father used to order two cremes catalanes right away as dessert, not one, but two! And he wasn’t fat at all!

A dessert recipe by many names

Crema Catalana is known by at least three names:

1. Crema catalana —pronounced CREH-mah cah-tuh-LAH-nuh— that can be translated as Catalan custard;
2. Crema de Sant Josep, which means Saint Joseph’s custard, in honor of this patron saint;
3. The third name is crema cremada (pronounced CREH-mah creh-MAH-duh), literally burnt custard, or creme brulee in French, which refers to the delicious sheet of burnt or caramelized sugar that tops crema catalana

When to Eat Crema Catalana

In earlier times, Saint Joseph’s Day was the only day of the year when you could enjoy this delicious dessert. As you may have guessed, nowadays you find Crema Catalana in the dessert lists of virtually all restaurants across Catalonia and Barcelona.

It is a very popular dessert that famous chefs like Ferran Adrià or Jordi Roca from the Celler Can Roca, Girona, twice declared the World’s Best Restaurant, have transformed into foams, modified, and refined.

You can eat the Catalan creme brulee recipe by itself, but you can also add it to other delicious dessert recipes like apples stuffed with crema catalana and sweet coques or pastries.

It is delicious, nutritious, and not unreasonably sweet. And the final result will certainly make the little ones very happy.

Well, at least it made us all happy — the irresistible caramel, the sense of accomplishment we had when we, the children, unmolded the flan… I reckon it’ll be the same for your kids now too.

In the picture above you can see the traditional shape of a traditional Catalan flam. Never mind if you don’t have such flan pans, you can easily adapt to whatever molds you have. After all, the taste is much more important than the shape. Another option is to use one large flan pan if you like.

Flan Recipe Ingredients

Serves 6

• 2 cups or 1/2 l milk
• 4 eggs —beaten
• 7 tablespoons or 100 g sugar
• 5 tablespoons or 75 g sugar for the syrup
• 1/2 stick cinnamon
• 1/4 of the peel of a lemon

Baked Flan Recipe Instructions

1. Bring the milk, 7 tablespoons of sugar, the stick of cinnamon, and the lemon peel to a boil. Cook for 10 minutes over low heat stirring often. Afterward, allow cooling to room temperature.
2. In the meantime, beat the eggs.
3. Discard the cinnamon and the lemon peel. Sift the milk and add the beaten eggs to the cooled milk. Mix well.
4. While the milk is cooling, prepare the burnt-sugar syrup, which is essential for the success of this flan recipe. Add 5 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of water to a saucepan. Cook it over medium-low heat for a few minutes until it turns a golden-brownish color. As soon as it is ready, immediately coat the bottoms of the single-serving flan pans or the large flan mold with the caramelized sugar.
5. Pour the milk mixture into the flan pans. Put the molds in another pan with some water. Bake in a bain-marie in the oven for an hour at 360 ºF or 180 ºC.
6. To know if the flan is done, prick it with a fine knitting needle. If the needle comes out clean, the flan is done.
7. Allow to cool. Unmold the flan. Serve cold or cool.

You can eat this flan by itself or you can accompany it with vanilla ice cream or even cream.

Above we mentioned how kids love this baked flan recipe, but don’t think that this dessert is only for children or you’ll miss out on a delicious dessert — Catalan flam is for everyone!

In October, when the cold starts to bite, you suddenly remember this traditional vegetable dip recipe using quince fruit from the Mediterranean Catalan Pyrenees. Allioli de Codony, in English Quince Aioli, is a healthy fruit dip recipe that (as we suggested above) masterfully blends the unique quince flavor and the spiciness of the garlic into an unexpectedly aromatic fruit dip.

Ingredients for Allioli de Codony

• 2 quinces —whole
• 6 garlic cloves —peeled
• 1 cup or 25 cl olive oil —Use extra virgin olive oil if you can. We always use Catalan arbequina olive oil but any other mild olive oil will do.
• Salt

How to prepare this fruit dip recipe

1. Wash the quinces. Cook them in water on medium heat in a covered pot for 20 minutes or until they are soft. Decrease or increase the cooking time depending on the size of your quinces. Do not allow the quince fruits to become mushy.
2. Meanwhile, add a large pinch of salt to a large kitchen mortar and add the peeled garlic cloves. Pound and mash the garlic cloves with the mortar pestle until you get a smooth, creamy paste with a thick consistency. Set the garlic paste aside.
3. Drain the quince fruits and let them cool for a while until you can handle them. Peel and core them. Cut the quince fruits into large cubes, squash them with a fork, and add them to a large mortar. Work them with the pestle until smoothly pureed.
4. Add the garlic to the mortar and work the mixture with the pestle until well mixed.
5. Slowly add olive oil and continue stirring and working the mixture with the pestle until you get a thick emulsion with a smooth consistency.

Tips about quince recipes

If your quince fruit is anything like the one you see in the picture above that I got from a local Mediterranean small farmer you’ll need to increase the cooking time to about 45 minutes. If it is similar to an apple in size, fifteen minutes will do.

Many home cooks prefer to peel and core the quinces before cooking them. In this case, the cooking time is much shorter. However, peeling robust quinces is rather cumbersome. I have tried it both ways and I much prefer peeling them after cooking them. Not only is it a lot easier, it preserves the aroma of the quince fruit much better.

Another option is to use a food mill to mash the cooked quinces. It is a much better solution than a blender or a food processor that liquidizes the quinces too much.

This quince-garlic dip belongs to the allioli family and is a superb accompaniment to meat, chicken or rabbit. It combines very well with rice and vegetarian dishes. For a healthy breakfast recipe, spread it on a bread slice or toast. As a dip or appetizer, it is also inviting.

Watch the video below, read the step-by-step aioli recipe instructions, and you’ll learn how to make this delicious and colorful homemade sauce in no time.

Allioli or aioli is an essential sauce of the Mediterranean Catalan cuisine that you can add to many dishes and foods, use as a dip with pieces of bread, or even as a spread on a bread slice or toast if you like.

Our video below focuses on showing the circular movement of the pestle in the mortar in order to bind the garlic and the olive oil that make Catalan allioli. In Catalonia, we’ve always made allioli like this and with a bit of practice, anyone can learn how to do it.

We make a point of demonstrating it as some people wrongly assert that it’s impossible to bind garlic and oil, so you have no choice but to add an egg yolk. It’s perfectly legitimate to add eggs to allioli if you choose this version of the Mediterranean aioli sauce, but it may distort the taste of some dishes, particularly fish recipes. Click play below and enjoy the video!

Watch the video: How to Make Authentic Catalan Allioli

Ingredients for One Cup of Aioli

It is very important that the ingredients are at room temperature, that is, not too cold not too warm.

• 3 cloves garlic —peeled
• 1 cup or 250 ml olive oil — using extra virgin olive oil or another mild quality olive oil will give the best results. We love doing allioli with Catalan arbequina olive oil, but this might not be available to everybody.
• 1 pinch salt

Kitchen Equipment for this Aioli Recipe

• Mortar and pestle
• A traditional oil dispenser that allows you to add the olive oil drop by drop

How to Make Aioli with Mortar and Pestle