Olla Podrida

Olla podrida, Spanish for ‘all mixed together’, is not so much a dish as a general description of a one-pot poached meal of meat and vegetables in which the broth and vegetables, often including chickpeas, were eaten first as a thick soup, the meat element being eaten afterwards. This is an ancient tradition you find throughout the Western world, in Italy bollito misto, in France the pot au feu. A close modern Spanish equivalent is the soup stew cocida, a robust affair of sausages and chickpeas. John Ayo points out in his fascinating The Diner’s Dictionary that olla podrida has been used metaphorically in English for any ‘heterogeneous jumble’. Sir Walter Scott even turned it into an adjective, ‘My ideas were olla podrida-ish’, though the phrase fell out of use around the middle of the last century.