Nina and Roger's farm is located near Falset, the entrance to the Priorat wine region. On weekends you can enjoy the chef's menu, but during the week they cook especially for you!
On a rainy day in April we drove through the low hanging clouds into the mountains to experience this. Depending on the season, you choose one of the themes and get to work together with the chef. Despite the fact that the season was almost over, we were still able to opt for 'Calcots' at the last minute. This typical Catalan specialty is somewhere between a spring onion and a small leek, and is available between December and April. The whole meal you eat here is called Calcotades.
After a friendly welcome, we can go straight to the vegetable garden with the chef, where you jointly pick the vegetables from the ground. When we have harvested a large wheelbarrow full of calcots, the chef removes the worst of the mud with the garden hose and places them on a huge portable grid. In the back of the barn is a wall-to-wall fireplace where the wood fire is already burning. For this, prunings from the surrounding vineyards are mainly used. A number of local winegrowers bring their syrah, grenache and carinyena sticks here after the annual pruning
The large rack of calcots is placed over the fire and when the vegetables are well cooked and blackened it is rolled in newspaper and served in a roof tile. We are now provided with a good glass of wine and vermut and we warm ourselves by the fire.
To eat the calcots we get an apron, this will get messy. You 'strip' the blackened outside of the calcot by hand and dip it in a delicious sauce. Then you hang the long stem above your head like a herring and bite it like that.
Meanwhile, in the barn, the table is covered with white linen and we choose a bottle of wine for the main course. Chef Roger makes delicious white beans, potatoes, asparagus, sausages and lamb chops on the large fire and in the wood-fired Josper oven. The wonderful afternoon is concluded with a creamy Crema Catalana and a glass of dessert wine.
This private experience can be booked from 4 people. Depending on the season, you can opt for calcots, mountain rice or a tasting of T-bone steaks with different maturations.
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