Esgarraet recipe: roasted peppers and salt cod

Esgarraet is a salad of few ingredients that shines with time: what separates a mediocre version from a good one is the roasting of the pepper and the hours of resting. This recipe follows Hola’s for about four servings.

Roasted, sweated and peeled peppers

The peppers are rubbed with oil and salt and baked for an hour at 200 °C. Then the oven is switched off and they stay inside for another hour, so they finish with the heat that remains. Here we follow Hola’s timings; the underlying rule is that they come out very soft.

When you take them out, leave them covered with a cloth or in a bag for about 15 minutes. They release juice and the skin comes off easily. Remove the stalks, skin and seeds, and tear the flesh with your fingers into irregular strips. That gesture is what gives the dish its name.

Hola roasts the peppers over a high heat so the skin toasts and peels better, without the flesh losing its texture. In a hurry, it allows jarred roasted red peppers.

The salt cod and the garlic

The salt cod goes in already soaked and flaked. If you want it less salty, Turisme Dival recommends soaking it before putting it on the peppers; the full soaking, with its changes of water, is explained in the rice with salt cod and cauliflower. The garlic is sliced very thinly so it doesn’t take over: Hola’s recipe gives no quantity, so adjust it to your taste.

Dress with a generous splash of oil, cover and put it in the fridge. The minimum is two hours; if you can, overnight, because the mixture improves with resting.

Esgarraet and espencat

This is how the sources tell it. Turisme Dival presents espencat as a variant of esgarraet that adds roasted aubergine cut into strips. Hola says esgarraet “bears a certain resemblance” to espencat, “with aubergine and hard-boiled egg”. Neither gives the espencat recipe with quantities, so we don’t develop it here. Esgarraet has roasted red pepper and salt cod, and Dival lists grated hard-boiled egg on top as optional.

Hola also names two Catalan dishes that resemble it without being the same: escalivada, which is only roasted vegetables, and esqueixada, a salad of soaked salt cod with onion, tomato, black olives and dressing. They are different recipes.

For anyone looking for something similar with dried pepper instead of fresh, it has its own recipe: the pericana.

What the resting is for

Esgarraet is not a last-minute dish. Turisme Dival puts it in its own way: if you prepare several servings in advance, the flavours blend better. That is why it is best made the day before and brought to table temperature a while before serving.

How to serve it

Take it out of the fridge 20 or 30 minutes before eating: too cold, it loses flavour. Hola suggests it as an appetiser on slices of bread, as a fresh salad or as an accompaniment to other recipes, and Turisme Dival as a tapa or montadito (a small topped slice of bread). The olives, green or black, are optional. It is eaten all year round, although Hola places it mostly in spring and summer.

For a table of tapas, esgarraet goes well with the titaina and with the tuna coca, two classics of Alicante and Valencian tapas.

Common mistakes

• Cutting the peppers with a knife. Hola asks for them to be torn by hand; that is what the dish is named for.
• Leaving the skin on. The recipe asks for the stalks, skin and seeds to be removed.
• Serving it straight from the fridge. It loses flavour; let it come up to temperature.
• Skipping the rest. Hola asks for at least two hours in the fridge, and overnight is better.

If there are lots of you at the table

Since it is best prepared in advance and served cold, it is a convenient starter for fiestas. If there are lots of you, we cook for groups at local fiestas.