The pestle and mortar are my favourite kitchen implements. There’s something quite primal about crushing toasted spices to release their exotic fragrance, something alchemical about turning a solid clove of garlic into a creamy, fiery paste. Long before Jamie Oliver invented his slightly wussy ‘flavour shaker’, women with formidable forearms in kitchens everywhere were grinding stone against stone or wood against ceramic to make seasonings and sauces.
The yellow-and-green ceramic mortar and its wooden pestle have become one of Catalunya’s foremost tourist souvenirs, but thankfully they haven’t been totally relegated to the realm of ‘knick knacks’. They may not have the spice-grinding power of a Thai marble set, but they’re perfect for making the picada, one of the foundations of Catalan cuisine.
Catalan food blogger Nuria Roig (www.mediterranean-food-recipes.com) sums up the purpose of the picada thus: “The Catalan picada makes a dish more aromatic, binds the cooking juices together, and thickens the consistency of those cooking juices in a particularly delicious and healthy way.” As Roig points out, the picada is a much healthier thickener than cream or flour, as it uses nutritionally beneficial ingredients such as garlic, nuts and herbs.
The famous Catalan restaurateur Ramon Parellada has written a whole book dedicated to the picada, El Llibre de les Picades. In the introduction, he writes: “In the cuisine of this country the picada is an essential element, which gives personality to the dish, fills out the flavours, and differentiates it from other cuisines around the world.”
He fears that because the picada is invisible in the final dish, it has become overlooked and that the pestle and mortar may indeed become mere decorative objects. But it’s the deceptive humility of the picada that makes it so special. Perhaps it takes an outsider to truly appreciate its worth. Food writer Paula Wolfert got so excited when she discovered the picada that she called it “the future of cooking”.
Born out of poverty and hard times, the picada was the final touch that turned an everyday dish into something special for a feast day. Such simple ingredients as a sprig of herbs from the garden, stale bread and a head of garlic have a transforming effect on a dish and it’s a formula that’s been tried and tested through many generations. Mestre Robert, author of the first printed Catalan cookbook, the Libre del Coch, published in 1520, mentions a picada-like recipe consisting of toasted almonds crushed in a mortar with chicken livers and bread that has been soaked in orange juice or white wine vinegar.
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