Rick Stein Tastes a Classic Catalan Broad Bean Dish in Spain

At their house his partner Rosa prepares something very Catalan. It's what everybody eats in this part of Spain. The basic version is toasted bread with tomato, salt, and olive oil. But she's using roasted vegetables, sweet red peppers, onions, and aubergines, all softened and skinned. Then she puts in a couple of anchovies and more olive oil, and that with a glass of dry sherry makes a very agreeable elevenses. Antonio though is making something much more substantial for lunch. A dish from his childhood. So what's it called this, Antonio?

This is called habas a la catalana. Broad beans on Catalan style. So this is a typical Catalan country recipe, I guess. Absolutely typical. Typical mainly in the country because this is product of the farms, you know, fresh. Even the onion. You know, we are using fresh onions because if we have fresh, the flavor is the aromatic. So you used to be a rock and roll drummer. Why you I used to. You used to. Ah, because I don't know. You know, it's a mystery. Passion. I mean, cooking is an artistic thing. I cannot paint a nice picture, but I can do something here full of color. But not only color.

Smell, taste, everything. Everybody must do that. Why not? He bought the new season's garlic from the market that morning, and he uses the green stem as well as the bulb. Now, this is the ham bone. Okay. When you finish that the belly can ham, you put this. This to me is very important because this reinforces the flavor and give you the old-fashioned flavor Yeah. like granny used to do. I remember when I was child and give this special taste. Put a ham bone. Now fresh broad beans. This is the centerpiece of his dish. At the start of the season, they're highly revered and quite rightly. I just love them and they go so well with ham and fatty bacon and

some fresh mint. So what's that? Is that going in now? The secret. And what is it? uh this is aniseed. Oh, yeah. That's a new one on me. And now stock, chicken stock. How long are we going to cook it for then? Uh 25 30 minutes. Okay. They used to put piece of paper on top. Uh-huh. And this and leave it minimum fire. Yeah. Chup for 25 minutes. 10 minutes before we put the sausage. And that's all. I'm finished. Great. Chup. And Herminio, while we weren't looking, puts in a couple of thin slices of belly pork. And now the black pudding. The morcilla.

And he cooks it for a further 10 minutes. Finally, it's time, thank goodness, for lunch.