I didn’t set out to make escudella.
I set out to cry into a baguette while pretending the rain meant something.
But the fridge was half-full of sad vegetables, and I had a bag of meat bits JC’s mum gave me last time she came over and judged the state of my freezer. “For soup,” she said. Then she said nothing for five full minutes and stared at my spice rack like it was a crime scene.
Anyway. The rain. It started at 4 a.m.—the kind that slaps the windows sideways like it’s got something to prove. Albert woke up convinced the sky was cracking. By 7 a.m., he’d drawn a diagram about “the water war.” JC, of course, slept through everything except the part where I accidentally kicked a pot lid across the kitchen floor and he sat up and said, “What’s happening?” like he was in a submarine.
So. Escudella.
Big pot.
Water.
Everything else optional, apparently.
I found a recipe online, ignored most of it, then remembered I hate recipes because they assume your child isn’t trying to bury a parsnip in the couch cushions. Mine was. I let him. The couch is a goner anyway.
I started with bones. Which is just how it goes, right? You throw bones into water and wait for them to become something more than bones. Very poetic, very witchy. Albert said it looked like a skeleton bath. I told him it was Catalan magic. He asked if witches eat carrots. I said only the good ones.
At some point I added:
– One slightly limp leek
– Two potatoes that had been waiting for their moment
– A cabbage that made me feel judged
– Pork something
– A meatball-ish thing that disintegrated and became “broth essence”
The flat filled with a smell I didn’t realise I’d missed. Not home, not quite. But something that wraps around your knees like a sleepy cat and says, “Stay here a bit. It’s alright.”
Albert licked a spoon. Said it was “too warm in the mouth.” JC said it needed salt. I told them both to leave me alone and let the soul food do its thing.
I sat on the floor while it simmered. Scrolled through pictures of Catalan grandmothers with actual skill and aprons older than democracy. One of them had a quote: “You cannot rush what feeds the soul.” I saved it. Then burnt the carrots.
The final bowl was weirdly perfect. Ugly as sin. Bits of everything. A floating chickpea here, a hunk of potato there, meat that looked confused but tasted right.
We ate it on the couch with a towel under the bowls. Albert asked if it was a holiday. I said no, just soup. But in my head I was somewhere else. Somewhere with fewer deadlines and more steam on the windows.
And maybe—just maybe—there was a witch smiling in the corner. Chewing a carrot. Approving.