The ultimate tapa for Catalans, pa amb tomaquet or pan con tomate, is the simplest and most beloved of tapas, a lightly grilled bread with tomato, extra-virgin olive oil, salt and sometimes a little garlic flair to it. 
If you’ve ever set foot in Barcelona or its region, you probably saw this dish on every single tables. Omit ordering it at the restaurant… surely your waiter will ask you if you want some pan con tomate with your meal. It’s simply inconceivable not to order it. Pan con tomate or its Catalan term Pa amb tomàquet is such an integral part of the Catalan culture, identity even. So popular, to the point of having a book written about it, by Leopold Pomés called Teoria i práctica del pa amb tomàquet. You know it’s a serious matter when a whole book is written about a single dish.
History of Pan con tomate
Nèstor Luján wrote about pan con tomate back in 1884 although its origin goes way back to the 16th century. It was a way to revamp dry bread by adding the juice of a tomato on it and let it soak all that delicious tomato flavor. Today, the technique is used also in sandwiches, called Bocadillo (Spanish) or Entrepà (Catalan). Instead of adding mayonnaise or mustard they cover the inside of a baguette bread with tomato pulp and olive oil and fill it with whether, iberic ham, cheese, sausage, sardine, etc.
The rest of Spain also do pan con tomate, although it isn’t as “holy” as in Catalonia. Done sensibly differently and often with a different type of tomato. The Spanish version uses a cheese grater to pick up the pulp from the tomato. There is also other variations like the one in Majorca, where they slice tomatoes, add it to bread and top it with olive oil, vinegar, capers and olives, this one is called Pamboli amb Tomàtiga.
Special hanged tomatoes from Catalonia
The tomato used are typically the ones you’ll see hanging on a string at any Catalan market called ramallet (Catalan). This type of tomato has a thicker skin, therefore it can be conserved way longer, the hanging factor also help to preserve them. The skin loses water and thickens, resulting in a concentrated interior which taste sweeter and bolder than most tomatoes. Plus, it has the perfect texture, once rubbing it on the bread, the pulp just breaks apart easily and evenly leaving the skin behind. It also gives the bread this uniform “tomato topping” without too much “water”, that most tomatoes are filled with. The perfect tomato for this dish! At home, I would suggest an Italian pear style tomato to reproduce this dish or any sweet type of tomato that doesn’t contain crazy amount of water.
The bread
The two main bread types used in Catalonia for pan con tomate is whether a flat bread or a round loaf. But really… the most important is to use a good “artisanal” type of bread, its form doesn’t ultimately matter. I, personally, prefer the flat bread, and most restaurant do too. It’s crust is crunchy and interior fluffy with lots of holes to trap the pulp in. There are also two ways to toast the bread, whether you do it lightly in the toaster or oven or often used in the Masia, or rural restaurants with the round loaf type of bread, grilled lightly on the BBQ. Remember it was originally made to revamp dry bread, it should not taste like toasted bread so go easy on the toasting, the bread should stay relatively white.
Service
This dish is usually consumed with other tapas, but also as an appetizer or side dish to a full dish. In rural restaurants, they’ll bring you the grilled bread, tomato, garlic, olive oil and salt separated at the table and let you make your own pan con tomate. Most times, they offer a garlic clove with it, which you can rub on the bread before adding the tomato, but the big majority of Catalans won’t use it.
So.. let’s make this Catalan ritual going!
Pa amb Tomàquet | Pan con tomate
For this recipe, I’ve made 3 versions of pan con tomate: the “Traditional Catalan way”, the “Spanish way” and the ” The new ‘garlicky’ way”.
Directions
- The Traditional Catalan way consist of flat bread or round loaf bread lightly toasted. Than cut a meaty tomato on its length into two and rub it on the bread, add a good extra-virgin olive oil and some salt. Voila!
- The new way consist of an added step of scrapping a sliced garlic clove on the bread before rubbing the tomato. Do not over do it, it’s quite powerful. Finish it up the “Catalan way”. Keep the garlic for later use.
- The Spanish way consist of lightly toasted bread. Cut the tomato into two and with the help of a cheese grater, collect the pulp of the tomato in a bowl. Add the tomato mixture to the bread with a spoon, topped with some extra-virgin olive oil and salt. (this version has a thicker amount of tomato)
Serve with tapas, or any Spanish dish!
The idea here was to showcase the Romesco sauce and asparagus together. It could have been a piece of chicken, red meat on top or nothing at all and it would be as delicious. Romesco is Spanish sauce consisting of roasted tomatoes, pepper pulp, paprika and roasted nuts (almonds and hazelnuts) blended with a touch of olive oil and vinegar. Frankly this orange thick sauce bring any grilled meat to another level, plus the nutty touch is simply divine with asparagus. It goes without saying that it’s by far healthier than ketchup or BBQ sauce. So if you want to give your next Salmon fillet a nice sunny touch, go for the Romesco sauce!
Ingredients
Knowing the common eggplants contains lots of water which makes them often saggy once cooked, the only way to make them relatively firm and crisp is by coating them in a light flour and breadcrumb layer and fry them up at high temperature. An important element to deep fry successfully the eggplant is to assure yourself the oil is hot enough, this way it won’t get absorb the oil and get saggy. Also be careful not to add too many pieces at the same time you’ll end up cooling the olive oil and finish up with sad greasy and soft fries. So make sure to keep the temperature of the oil between 180-190°C (300-350f) this way the eggplant won’t absorb much oil and will just get the top layer of the fries crisp.
Some people found eggplant have a bitter taste but personally I’ve never had a problem with bitterness. This unpleasant taste is mostly happening when the eggplant is too mature. Do not worry… there is a way to fix this problem. Soaking them in a salty bath for 30 minutes before you cook this purple vegetable is the way to eliminate the unwelcomed bitterness. This step is also giving an extra taste to the eggplant but if you do not feel like waiting for an extra 30 minutes, just omit this step and go right to the deep frying.
Ingredients
Those laborious to grow onions are the pride of Catalans and with reason! The technique consist of dumping the onions directly over the fire and burning them completely and don’t think about cleaning them up before…. no! no! no! they need this layer of dirt to protect them from the flame and keep the inside moist. Once the calçots blackened, they envelope them in a few layers of newspapers and let them rest for about 30 minutes to let the residual heat do the rest of the work. You end up with a delectable tender and melting core but to get there… you’ll need to use your hand to pull down the burned layer and then dump the onion directly in the romesco sauce. After all those steps you’ll get the reward you deserve a tender and delicious onion with a nutty romesco sauce that brings it to another level. The whole process is quite a messy one… meaning your hands are going to get dirty and if you are lucky you won’t stain anything else… On a personal note… my first calçotada was on my wedding day… white is definitely not the best color to wear at those events guys!
This nutty and rich sauce is the ketchup of the Catalans, they put it on everything and believe me I’ve converted too. I personally love it with green asparagus, or you could give it a try as your new ketchup in a burger. (Check my Spanish Burger 
5 riped tomatoes
First of all the meat patties are a mix of pork and beef which I happen to believe is a winning combination for any burger. Adding pork to your patties also helps to keep the patties juicy, plus pork is the meat of choice in Spain making this combination a perfect one for this Spanish version Burger! The seasonning of the meat is pretty much what they do for chorizo sausages… (solely pork) which contains usually sweet and/or spicy paprika and garlic. Nothing too complex and I’ve added a tad of finely chopped flat leave parsley to the mix to give it a fresh touch.
olive oil, roasted hazelnut and almond. I’ve done a homemade version with a normal red pepper instead of the “special” one. (
Ingredients
In Spain, the common belief is that the small scallops taste better… although, personally I didn’t find a big difference if any…February is the peak of the scallops season, right now they are affordable (in Spain) and are great to serve as an appetizers or tapas. Spanish people often serve their scallops with a touch of iberic ham, sometimes with a garlic-onion sauce, a simple parsley, lemon and olive oil drizzle, or spicy tomato sauce, etc. For this batch I wanted to try scallops the surf and turf way with the cured ham. I’ve made the scallops with a tad white wine bechamel and topped it with a few pieces of iberic ham (or any cured ham) enveloped in bread crumbs. Then in the oven the bechamel will lightly get golden and smooth things up while the iberic ham will become crispier for a nicely textured and flavorful tapa!
Bechamel sauce
“Coca” is a Catalan, or northern Mediterranean coast of Spain, traditional dish. In other words, it’s a Catalan Pizza made with a touch of olive oil resulting into a crusty soft bread sometimes thick and other times thin and crunchy. They do all kind of “Cocas” in Catalonia, from sweet to savoury, minis to long and large, thin to thick and most of the time into rectangular form. One of my favorite is the “Coca de recapte” which means “leftovers coca” and mainly it is an eggplant, onion and pepper in escalivada (smoky, roasted veggie) but it could also contain meat, etc. because its name says it… it’s “a leftovers” coca. This version of coca, I’ve posted here, is a similar one although I’ve added a touch of goat cheese (my leftovers of the day) and let go of the whole roasting part. Cutting the cooking time by 1 hour. You could also add anchovy to this coca which is common to see in Spain. Surprisingly, they do not use much cheese on their “Catalan pizza”, most are with a meaty touch, like lard, rabbit or sausages or seafood like sardines, anchovies, tuna, etc. and veggies.
If you ever come visit Barcelona, you’ll see those cocas in many bakeries around town but my own personal favorite was the one in 
The dough
In Spain, they say 1 out of 100 paellas are made with saffron… because of it’s price, instead they use paprika, coloring powder or the paste of dried capsicums (ñora, choricero and piquillo). Those four dried peppers are the base to the famous paprika (pimentón), the ñora and choricero are sweet and quite similar in taste, the Mediterranean coast uses more the ñora, which is rounder, while the west uses the choricero, a long and sweet pepper. The Piquillo is a mildly spicy one, and the guindilla is the spicy one which gives the spicy touch to some types of paprika.
in the region of Extremadura and it’s a whole new type of spice from the previous one (paprika). The normal pimentón (paprika) is dried in the sun, while this “pimentón de la Vera” dried in a smoke house with oak and acorn wood. The process must be done really slowly, from 10 to 15 days, and it’s done with different peppers from the normal paprika, also 3 categories; dulce, agridulce, picante (sweet- bittersweet- spicy). So the paprika world is a whole world of it’s own in Spain, and I highly recommend you to try out the famous “pimentón de la Vera” for your paellas. It give this distinct flavour to it, as if it would have been done on a campfire (like the original paella). 
400g of bomba rice
Start by frying up in olive oil the zucchini in the pan, high heat, add salt and pepper and reserve
branch, salt and paprika (pimenton de la Vera), mix for a last time
touching it
The base of the sauce is the most important part here, it’s a “tipico Spanish” base sauce, which is called sofrito. It consist mainly of softening a finely chopped onion, garlic in olive oil and reduce the juice of a grated tomato to a paste, then you add whatever liquid to it like; wine, broth, water,etc. this right there is the base of many of Spain’s best dishes. It takes some patience to wait for the liquid to evaporate, but it’s so rewarding. Especially, those days, where under 30 minutes recipes are considered the ultimate recipes… I believe to take your time will always give a more adequate result. No offense, I do understand the need for those under 30 minutes meals, with those job-family balancing lifestyles but once in a while to take the time to make a great sauce, or dish is worth the effort.
