(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)
Our current Cook the Books Club selection is the novel Call of the Camino by Suzanne Redfearn.1 In alternating chapters the book follows Isabelle and Reina walking the Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain 27 years apart (in 1997 and 2024, respectively), for very different reasons and with different perspectives on what historically was a religious pilgrimage (pellegrinaggio), a dimension rather absent from the book, particularly its more recent thread. The relationship between the two women is revealed early on in the novel and readers can guess what will happen by the end of the book. A light summer’s beach read.
As Isabelle is from Andorra, I looked up traditional recipes from the country, which is located between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains. One popular dish, also mentioned in the book (chapter 51), is trinxat, a cabbage and potato hash for which you can find recipes online. If you decide to try it, something I didn’t do, make sure you read José Andrés’s tip about cooking the potatoes with their skin on.
Another traditional dish is escudella, a meat stew. The name reminds me of the Italian word scodella, which, depending on where you are on the peninsula, refers to the soup bowl or the deeper caffelatte bowl. I am basically vegetarian, so could not follow the original recipe, which includes various types of meat, but I extracted, so to speak, some of the vegetarian elements from it and used them to make a stew of green cabbage, beans and new potatoes, using local ingredients (ingredienti di produzione locale), including:
- Vermont cranberry beans from Rain Frog Farm
- green cabbage and garlic from Luna Farm
- new potatoes from John’s Happy Garden
- red onion from Shakefork Community Farm
In the spice department, I used paprika, which reminds me of my visit to Basque Country, geographically located along the coast of the Bay of Biscay, north of the Camino de Santiago.
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Rinse the beans then place them in a small saucepan with the water, the aromatic vegetables and the sea salt. Cover, bring the water to a lively boil and keep it there for 4-5 minutes.
- Turn down the heat, cover the pan, and let the beans simmer until they are tender. Taste them after 1 hour and estimate how much longer they should cook.
- Check the beans at regular intervals. If necessary, add some hot water to ensure there is enough liquid to cover the beans.
- Let the beans cool in their broth, then remove the aromatics and discard them. Let the beans rest in their cooking broth until ready to use.
- Time the preparation so that the potatoes are ready shortly before the cabbage is cooked.
- Heat oven to 400 F / 205 C.
- Dice the potatoes, then place them in a bowl.
- Sprinkle olive oil and pepper on the potatoes and stir well.
- Transfer the potatoes to an 8-inch / 20 cm cast-iron skillet and distribute in a single layer.
- Place the skillet in the oven and roast for 20 minutes, or until tender, shaking the skillet half-way. If necessary, roast a few more minutes. Set the skillet aside.
- In a 10-inch / 25-cm deep sauté pan or large skillet, warm up the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, stir well, cook for 1 minute, then turn down the heat. Cover the pan and cook on low heat for 10 minutes, or until the onion is soft, stirring often and making sure the pan does not become dry. (Add 1 tablespoon / 15 ml of the bean broth, if necessary.)
- In the meantime, quarter and core the cabbage. If the cabbage is large, halve each quarter. Cut away the external thick ribs. Slice each piece into ¼-inch / 6-mm-thick ribbons.
- Measure the vegetable broth. If desired, use 2 tablespoons / 30 ml of the bean broth and add vegetable broth to make 1/2 cup / 120 ml.
- Turn up the heat to medium-low. Add the spices and garlic to the pan and stir well.
- After 1 minute, add the cabbage and the broth and stir. Cover the pan and cook over low heat until the cabbage is tender (20 minutes, or as needed), stirring often.
- Add the beans and stir well. Cover and let cook for 2 minutes.
- Sprinkle the sea salt and stir. Taste and adjust the salt as needed.
- Add the potatoes to the pan, stir well and serve hot.
Notes
I served this dish to several guests and my husband, who likes adding a dollop of whole-milk yogurt to it.
Beside being pretty, the Vermont cranberry beans have a creamy consistency when cooked, which works well in this dish.
1 The book’s page on the author’s website
Click on the Play button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post
This is my contribution to the current selection of our Cook the Books hosted by Debra of Eliot’s Eats. (You can find the guidelines for participating in the event on this page.)
FTC disclosure: I have received the table linen free of charge from the manufacturer (la FABBRICA del LINO). I have not and will not receive any monetary compensation for presenting it on my blog. The experience shared and the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own.