Trinxat

Feb. 16, 2011

It’s a cold, blustery autumn day. Your hair is being whipped into your eyes as you pick your way through the wet leaves and push aside the low-lying branches while the dogs bound ahead in a puddle-filled clearing. Every step in the loamy soil releases a whiff of decomposing plant matter, returning to feed the Earth when next spring dawns. Your ears hurt from the cold wind; you squint, but the microscopic droplets of rain enter sharp as knives. The air is brisk; the world is a multicolored whirl as wind shears the leaves from the branches.

Or maybe it’s brilliantly sunny day in mid-January. You’re in the mountains, skiing. It’s so bright you even have to squint with your sunglasses on. The sun is so warm that you take off your parka, roll up your sleeves and soak up those precious few rays of winter light, like nourishment for a starving, mid-winter soul. Everything is dazzling, all blinding blue sky and white snow. Skiers whiz by you, but you take your time inhaling the clean, biting, invigorating mountain air.

Either way, it’s a perfect day for trinxat.

Trinxat is a Catalonian dish from the Pyrenees, the mountains separating Catalonia from France. It’s a peasant dish, and like most peasant foods, the bulk of it is cheap, nonperishable or winter vegetables. Trinxat literally means “shredded”. A dish of shredded for lunch, anyone? The Spaniards and Catalans have a way of naming their dishes past participles: hervido, literally “boiled”, is a supper of boiled potatoes, green beans, and onions, more hearty peasant fare. Or escalivada, literally “roasted”, a delectable dish of roasted peppers, eggplants, onions and anything else you might have in your pantry. How about some roasted for lunch and some boiled for dinner?

If you asked a mountain-dweller for a recipe for trinxat, you might get a perplexed look. You don’t follow a recipe to make trinxat; you just put in whatever you have, whatever sounds good, in whatever quantities strike your fancy. You should definitely boil potatoes (as many as you like, depending on how many people you are feeding) and kale (ditto) in salted water. Meanwhile, sauté an onion (or two if you like oniony flavors), a few cloves of garlic (or none, or an entire head), and a few rashers of bacon until the onion is translucent. If you have no bacon, put some other savory meat – maybe blood sausage. Drain the potatoes and kale, mash everything together, then heat up some olive oil in a small, frittata-sized pan, press the mashed mixture to fit the pan and sauté it until it browns. Make sure it really browns before flipping: when you start to smell the garlic toasting, wait a few more minutes – don’t worry; it won’t burn, and if it does the crispy parts are the best – and then flip it. As you cook it, the aromas waft through the house, warm, nourishing, homey: the perfect winter meal.

Actually, real trinxat isn’t made with kale; it’s made with col d’hivern, or winter cabbage, a cold-resistant vegetable with tough leaves that are only edible after boiling. In fact, they say that col d’hivern is even better after it has survived a frost. Traditional peasant mountain food was made with whatever was available in the cold Pyrenees winters. Potatoes are perennial, kale reaches its peak in winter, and meat is used for seasoning, unlike like the Irish meals of my youth, where a huge chunk of meat was surrounded by some boiled vegetable matter. No, here the vegetables are what you’re eating, and eons of culinary ingenuity have found ways to make them unbelievably succulent, taking the earth’s humble onion and garlic and a few scraps of cured meat and turning them into a dish that fills the heart, belly and soul.

After a walk on that blustery fall day, or a ski run on that radiant winter day, when your hair is a moist, matted mess and your nose is bright red and running, or your face is glowing with a winter sunburn and your lungs are filled with fresh air, sit down around a large wooden table with lots of family and friends, pour a hearty glass of red wine all around, make a toast to friendship, fellowship, family, or the cozy delights of winter, and tuck into the delicious wedge of trinxat on your plate. And don’t forget to grab a piece of baguette to sucar the bacony, oniony, garlicky oil that the trinxat leaves on your plate. It's better than dessert.