There are many types of omelettes: with and without txapela (a type of hat), filled, in sauce, and even with ingredients that are normally discarded, such as the albedo omelette (the white part under the skin of citrus fruits), common during the Spanish Civil War due to food shortages. In this category of humble omelettes, the recipe for agafa-sants, made with flour and sautéed vegetables, is included.
The chef Pere Cardona, from La Nova Farga bar in Barcelona, prepared the agafa-sants for his €13.50 menu during the second and third weeks of November “based on a sofrito of onion, tomato, and a mixture of garlic, almond, bread, and parsley.” To the mixture, he added two beaten eggs thickened with rice flour, at which point he removed it from the heat and added a little more almond, this time sliced or chopped, “to give it a noticeable flavor,” along with a generous handful of fresh parsley.
Chef Pere Cardona, from the restaurant La Nova Farga, used to cook the “agafa-sants” for his 13.50 euro menu
In the fundamentals of this recipe lies the so-called flour omelette or tricky omelette, as it increases in volume due to the use of flour, which is mixed with eggs, salt, and a little milk. It must be vigorously beaten to avoid lumps and cooked in the pan just like a regular tortilla. It somewhat resembles French crepes, and that's why some people eat it with sweet condiments like honey.
The bar La Nova Farga is located in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona
There are also other variations, in which the omelette is cooked separately, cut perpendicularly, and then bathed in the sofrito, where peas can be added, releasing their juices at the bottom, and the picada diluted with a little water, giving the sauce a even more liquid consistency that the tortilla will not hesitate to soak up.
According to the dictionary Argot culinari i gastronòmic by Josep M. Daró, the agafa-sants is a “humble flour omelette, cut irregularly, cooked for ten minutes in a stir-fry with peas. A dish from the popular cuisine of our grandparents, now unused, very practical, easy and quick to make, and above all economical, an aspect that has always presided over the everyday Catalan cuisine. It was served without the stir-fry to accompany meat or fish, cut into pieces and plain or alone, on days of religious fasting,” presumably explaining its name.
It's very nice to see how they leave the plate clean”
Cardona discovered the recipe in Antoni R. Dalmau's book, 200 Catalan Home Cooking Dishes, a compilation that he describes as “intense, without frills, with straightforward recipes.” He decided to include it on the menu he prepares daily at his restaurant in the Sants neighborhood with a purpose: “I believe it is essential to recover our culinary memory with these economical dishes that amaze when we explain what they are and where they come from.”
For those who are not convinced, the dish has been a complete success. “We have repeated the dish thanks to people's curiosity. It's really nice to see how they clean their plates after this recipe that we have tried to shed light on after a long time in obscurity,” says Cardona, who describes the dish as light and affordable, 'a different approach to a typical and cliché omelette, which if it were invented now would be one of the trends that move the most circus-like things in current gastronomy.'
The chef of La Nova Farga reiterates the need to bring dishes like the agafa-sants to the present “without shame, because these types of recipes will save our day-to-day lives and another type of cuisine that used to work and has been gradually lost over the years, and another way of life that teaches us to make the most out of the basics and not be so banal.”