Where does contemporary Spanish cuisine come from?
That traveling makes us better , in many respects, is something that I suppose we are not going to discuss at this point. What we usually do not stop to think about is that it also makes us better cooks.
And not only because you have gone to a cooking workshop on a visit to Southeast Asia or have returned from Tunisia with some bags of spices, that too, but because throughout history travel has been enriching our gastronomic culture in an amazing way.
What would European kitchens be without medieval journeys along the spice route ? How would we eat today without the great journeys that the Portuguese made in the XV century to bring cinnamon and cloves from the other side of the world ? EITHER if the Arabs had not brought to the peninsula the rice, the aubergines and so many other things?
Our kitchen would be much sadder today without the expeditions to America : goodbye to potatoes, corn, tomato, peppers and chilies, vanilla, yucca, chocolate, pumpkins, sunflower, beans, peanuts, sweet potatoes, pineapple, avocado, turkey, quinoa...
You imagine an American kitchen without burgers or pizza? A Greek cuisine without the Turkish influence ? A Israeli cuisine without all that the Jewish communities brought to it arrivals from all over the world?
Without these contaminations there would be no Japanese tempura or dishes like Indian vindaloo (both of Portuguese origin); American Creole cuisine would not exist without the influence of Spanish and French dishes A Portuguese cuisine without cod, piri-piri and chamuças? Unthinkable.
The process continues. quietly but steadily our pantry is getting richer thanks to those trips . And Spanish haute cuisine is no stranger to all this. That culinary revolution that dazzled the world from the 90s of the last century has profound roots in Mediterranean, Basque or Andalusian traditions . But also a traveling spirit. And here are the proofs.
It all starts with the New Basque Cuisine...
THE NEW BASQUE AND FRANCE CUISINE
Everything begins –with the permission of Josep Mercader, who we will talk about another day- in the Basque Country in the mid-1970s , when a group of young chefs, including Juan Mari Arzak, Pedro Subijana or Karlos Argiñano , are dazzled by a Nouvelle Cuisine that was taking its first steps in France.
More controlled cooking , greater attention to temporality, regional cuisines as a source of inspiration and the first nods to the east or to a healthier kitchen they crossed the border with these chefs.
From there were born dishes that are now historical classics of our cuisine, such as Arzak scorpion fish cake and Subijana sea bass in green sauce . And, above all, a way of understanding the trade and of losing complexes in front of the great classic kitchens that was the basis of everything.
FERRÀN ADRIÀ, THE BLUE COAST AND JAPAN
What Ferran Adrià and the elBulli team did with Spanish cuisine is off the map to such an extent that surely we are not yet aware of it. But this phenomenon is not born out of nowhere.
The Côte d'Azur, Japan... cuisine knows no borders!
Adrià had been crossing the French border for years to be inspired by the work of Gallic chefs when he knew the work of Jacques Maximin , who worked in Nice, and his maxim “Creating is not copying” , which became his professional motto.
That, added to the influence of an Alain Ducasse that at the end of the 80s began to publish books on the cuisine of the Côte d'Azur and the Riviera , are the bases from which a whirlwind is born that ended up taking shape in the book that changed everything: The Taste of the Mediterranean (1993).
And with all this going on came Adrià's trip to Japan and his encounter with Hiroyoshi Ishida , one of the great names in Japanese cuisine. from there they came dishes with raw foods, algae, dressings, the use of new citrus fruits but, above all, a radically new way of understanding cuisine in Europe.
MUGARITZ AND THE FRENCH MASSIF CENTRAL
Andoni Luis Adúriz has an essential role in our kitchen for many reasons. One of them is that he is a of the first chefs in which these two previous tendencies converge.
On the one hand, his formation together with Martín Berasategui , the greatest exponent of the second generation of New Basque Cuisine, links it to the autochthonous tradition and the French influence.
On the other hand, his time at elBulli connects him with that new Mediterranean cuisine that was taking off. And to this he adds the fascination for the work of a cook who, retired in his village in the French Massif Central, practiced a cuisine unlike anything else, in which vegetables were protagonists in a different way: Michel Bras.
The role of Andoni Luis Adúriz and Mugaritz is essential in the kitchen we know.
The influence that Bras exerted from Laguiole on European cuisine of the last 30 years is indisputable, but in the case of Adúriz and his Mugaritz restaurant it is essential. Because of what he assumed for a stage of this house, but also because through it he passed other younger chefs who are now key names in our cuisine.
THE ANDALUSIA - FRANCE CONNECTION
They seem like two almost opposite extremes of the European culinary world, but Andalusian food culture and French classicism fit surprisingly well . The most obvious proof is in the work of Juanlu Fernández in his restaurant Lú Cocina y Alma (Jerez) , where he redefines this relationship taking it to unprecedented places.
But other French chefs also hint at the remains of their travels or their training in France. It is the case of some dishes by Dani García, for example, but also by Ángel León , who passed through that country during his training and who continues to integrate French references into his culinary universe even today.
ANGEL LION AND MOROCCO
And since we are talking about Ángel León, we must talk about Morocco . Because he is right next door, a stone's throw from El Puerto de Santa María, and because the chef is hooked on the culture and gastronomy of that country , something that is noticeable in his kitchen, in which he integrates naturally based on small winks that reinforce the link between the two shores of the Strait.
THE TORRES BROTHERS AND BRAZIL
Today they are better known, by the general public, for their television facet. But there was a time, about a decade ago, when the brothers Sergio and Javier Torres were the great introducers of Brazilian products and influences In our country.
It was a time when Brazilian cuisine emerged as one of the most interesting in America hand in hand with chefs such as Álex Atala or Helena Rizzo and in which the Torres had a restaurant in São Paulo.
This allowed them to explore the local pantry, the Amazonian products and integrate them into a cuisine with Mediterranean roots which is also not exempt from French references, thus creating a unique language of its own.
**THE TIME TRAVEL OF PACO MORALES IN NOOR **
Paco Morales is not a journey in space but in time . your restaurant Noor (Cordoba) is a rare bird, an exceptional phenomenon that bases his culinary philosophy on the Andalusian universe.
Exploring cookbooks, collaborating with historians and traveling to other countries to explore the products of it, Morales has created a completely new language of his own, an exciting neo-Andalusian cuisine for what is unusual about it and, at the same time, because it fits like a glove in the Córdoba in which it takes place.
The Torres brothers gather Brazilian influences to create their own unique language.
These cooks are just one example of how the kitchen is something open to the world , to travel, to influences. There is no such thing as an autochthonous Spanish kitchen, closed , disconnected from other gastronomies.
It is something that we see in old recipe books, from the Middle Ages to the 19th century, full of sauces, sweets and preparations from France or Italy . And in other countries exactly the same has happened: French cuisine cannot be imagined without the Italian influence which opened the arrival in Paris of Catherine de Medici.
Just as you can't imagine English cuisine without the French influence, or Italian cuisine without contact with France and Spain. Cuisine, like culture, is a succession of communicating vessels that feed off each other.
Contemporary Spanish cuisine is no stranger to this trend . It has been and is capable of creating its own language, but it does through this conjunction of product and local language with influences from all over the world in a process that has been going on for thousands of years and in which we are still fully involved.