Boiled meat-and-vegetable stew (traditional “bullit” / cocido-style dish)

Ingredients:

The most traditional ingredients for a good bullit are 400 g of pork backbone/spine, a piece of beef with bone, 1/2 kg of hen, a pig’s trotter or 200 g of pork belly, eight whole potatoes (peeled), 200 g of chickpeas, four tomatoes, one onion, a good piece of cabbage, a bunch of soup vegetables (celery, parsnip, turnip, carrots, leek) and salt to taste, plus a piece of sobrasada and the pilota (about 300 g), made with minced pork and beef, egg, breadcrumbs, a little sobrasada and one chopped clove of garlic.

Method:

Put about four litres of water into a pot and, while still cold, add the chickpeas—soaked the day before—together with the meats, the pork belly or trotter, the beef bone, the vegetables and herbs. Bring to a boil and simmer for a couple of hours, then add the potatoes and cabbage and simmer for another half hour.

This recipe describes the old-fashioned way of making bullit, when it was cooked in an earthenware pot over a wood fire, but nowadays it can be made in a pressure cooker: add all the ingredients at once and cook for about half an hour.

Serve the soup first, then the potatoes and chickpeas, and finally the boiled meats. To make the soup, remove the broth from the pot and transfer it to a smaller pot, then add thin noodles or any pasta you prefer.