Latest news with #CatalanCuisine
Times
16-07-2025
- General
- Times
Tomás Gormley's cod en papillote recipe
Cooking fish en papillote — wrapping it up and steaming it gently — sounds more technical than it is. While parchment paper or tin foil is the modern go-to, people have been cooking this way for ever, from banana-leaf steaming in South America to clay-pot cooking in Asia. Here, sweet, slow-cooked leeks and wild garlic create a mellow, allium-rich base that makes everything taste better, while romesco — a smoky, nutty sauce born from Spanish fishermen making the most of what they had — brings contrast. Traditionally, romesco was about stretching ingredients, thickened with stale bread and ground nuts rather than just olive oil. This version keeps that spirit alive, with a touch of dark chocolate for extra depth. I first came across romesco while cooking in Catalonia during the summer months as a private chef early in my career. I was pretty out of my depth — or at least it felt that way at the time — so I stuck to recipes I knew I could get the ingredients for. Most of them came from the outstanding cookbook Catalan Cuisine by Colman Andrews, a deeply researched and practical guide filled with recipes, stories, and anecdotes about the region's rich history, language, and culture. It became an essential resource, not just for its insightful recipes, but for helping me to understand the context behind the food — which, in Catalonia, means everything. Serves 2For the cod en papillote • 2 fillets of cod (about 150g each)• 1 medium leek, thinly sliced• 1 small handful wild garlic, roughly chopped• 1 tbsp olive oil• 1 tbsp white wine• ½ Amalfi lemon, zest and juice• Salt and black pepper• Tin foil sheets For the romesco • 30g blanched almonds• 1 small slice stale bread, torn into pieces• 2 roasted red peppers (jarred or freshly roasted)• 1 garlic clove, peeled• 1 tsp smoked paprika• ½ tsp sherry vinegar• 3 tbsp olive oil• 10g dark chocolate (85 per cent cocoa or higher), finely chopped• Salt and black pepper 1. To make the romesco, toast the almonds in a dry pan over medium heat until golden, then set aside. Toast the bread in the same pan with a drizzle of olive oil until crisp. 2. Blend together the roasted red peppers, toasted bread, almonds, garlic, smoked paprika and sherry vinegar until mostly smooth. With the blender running, drizzle in the olive oil to emulsify. Stir in the dark chocolate while the sauce is still slightly warm, letting it melt into the mixture. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Set aside. 3. Now prepare the cod. Preheat the oven to 180C fan/gas 6, lay out two sheets of parchment paper and divide the sliced leeks and wild garlic between them. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt. Place a cod fillet on top of each pile of leeks. Drizzle with white wine, lemon juice and a little olive oil. Season with salt, pepper and lemon zest. Fold the parchment over the fish and crimp the edges tightly to form a sealed parcel. Place on a baking tray and bake for 12-15 min, until the fish is opaque and flakes easily. • Read more restaurant reviews and recipes from our food experts 4. To assemble, open the cod parcels carefully and transfer the fish with its leeks to a plate. Spoon the stale bread romesco over or alongside the fish. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and scatter with a few wild garlic leaves for freshness. Tomás Gormley is owner and head chef at Cardinal in Edinburgh's Eyre Place (
The Guardian
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘My grandmother never used yuzu': global gastronomy is out as Catalan chefs celebrate tradition
They revolutionised cooking worldwide with radical techniques and a highly technical cuisine of playful trompe l'oeil – but now many disciples of Catalonia's iconoclastic chef Ferran Adrià believe it's time to get back to their roots. Catalonia has been named World Region of Gastronomy 2025 by the International Institute of Gastronomy, Culture, Arts and Tourism and later this month 60 Michelin-starred chefs will launch a campaign to position Catalonia as a unique and exceptional gastronomic destination. While not rejecting the techniques of so-called molecular gastronomy introduced by Adrià at his restaurant El Bulli, with its foams, spherification and liquid nitrogen, the emphasis will be on local produce and the region's gastronomic culture. El Bulli closed in 2011. 'Copying El Bulli is over. Now it's become a huge repertoire of techniques that each person can apply to their cooking,' said Jordi Artal, chef at the two-starred Cinc Sentits in Barcelona. 'I wouldn't say there's a backlash; it's part of the natural ebb and flow. We use modern techniques but in ways that hark back to Catalan gastronomic history. That's the ideal.' Artal said there had always been a schism between those who believe you should only cook what's in season and Adrià saying: 'I'm an artist, find me the world's best cherry in January so I can make my dish.' Carme Ruscalleda said: 'The concept may have changed but my cooking has always been based in the Mediterranean and its produce.' The chef was speaking in her home town of Sant Pol de Mar, next door to the restaurant where she won the first of seven Michelin stars. 'We must embrace new ideas without losing sight of who we are. Catalan cuisine has Roman and Greek and medieval roots. We make many dishes that are basically medieval but with modern techniques.' This year chefs such as the Roca brothers in Girona and Jordi Vilà in Barcelona have opened – running alongside their flagship restaurants – more modest establishments where they offer more traditional dishes. 'We are taking a broad but not a simplified view of Catalan cuisine,' said Joan Roca about Fontané, the brothers' latest venture, where prices are well below those of El Celler de Can Roca, twice voted the best restaurant in the world. Vilà, chef at one-starred Alkimia and the more homespun Al Kostat del Mar, said: 'Joan Roca and Carme Ruscalleda have always cooked Catalan food but what happened was that what became important was what we call cocina vanguardista [avant-garde cuisine], when what really matters is to use local produce and express yourself in your cooking. 'Many young chefs don't aspire to be Joan Roca or Ferran Adrià but want to cook the dishes their mothers or grandmothers made.' Tradition doesn't always come cheap, however. The tasting menus at high-end restaurants such as El Celler de Can Roca cost upwards of €200 (£170), without wine. Oriol Castro, one of three chefs – all ex-El Bulli – behind Disfrutar, voted best restaurant in the world last year, said no one expected people to pay those sorts of prices for basic Catalan dishes. 'In Disfrutar we offer many dishes based on traditional recipes, with new techniques but traditional flavours, such as a suquet de peix [fish and potato stew] or mar i muntanya [seafood and rabbit or chicken casserole],' said Castro, who insists there is no backlash against the El Bulli school of cooking. 'People come here to eat modern, creative versions of traditional dishes. What's important is the combination of creativity and tradition. There isn't a war. All of us want to preserve this tradition.' Artal said that while he was no purist, in keeping with his principles there were only Catalan and Spanish wines on his wine list. 'I can't explain to a customer that a dish was inspired by my great-grandmother and that we're using locally sourced ingredients and then serve a wine from Bordeaux,' he said. 'I love yuzu but there's no yuzu on the menu because I couldn't say my grandmother used yuzu.' Everyday Catalan cuisine may be in good health outside Barcelona but in the capital it's far easier to find ramen, sushi, hamburgers or pizza than traditional fare. 'I'm not against ramen or hamburgers, I'm against globalization,' said Vilà, who has published a humorous 'self-defence manual' for Catalan cooking. 'Here there are 50 ramen places and none that serve escudella,' a traditional Catalan stew containing pasta or noodles. Ruscalleda said: 'Young people are attracted to the new, so they order sushi or ceviche but they don't know about their own culture.' She shares the view that the biggest threat to traditional cuisine everywhere is that people have stopped cooking at home. In the meantime, it seems it is up to the culinary elite to maintain tradition, a paradox that Vilà accepts. 'We're in a transition because the grandmothers of the future don't want to stay at home cooking, they want to be out in the world,' he said. 'Obviously, a top chef is no substitute for a grandmother, but it's up to us keep the tradition alive.'
Forbes
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
This Uniquely Catalan Luxury Hotel Puts Priorat On The Wine Travel Map
Gran Hotel Mas d'en Bruno at dusk Michellle Chaplow Deep in Catalonia, in the wine-soaked heart of Priorat, there's an ambitious fine dining restaurant inside a luxury hotel that's cooking without tomatoes, without potatoes and without peppers or chilis of any kind. Obviously, this poses a challenge for any kitchen in Spain. But it's a challenge that makes sense for Gran Hotel Mas d'en Bruno, which just celebrated its second birthday. Although the hotel does everything well enough to have landed in Relais & Châteaux from its very beginning, it's not doing anything the easy way. Rather, it's been doing things slowly, carefully, by hand and always with respect for tradition and history. That strangely limited menu is a fully realized homage to the past. Chef Josep Queralt and his team at the hotel's Vinum restaurant took a deep dive into the medieval Llibre del Sent Sovi, which is the earliest surviving recipe book in Catalan, dating from 1324. That's about two centuries before explorers landed in the New World and brought back some of the crops that are now cornerstones of Spanish cuisine. Bruno's Bar Courtesy of the hotel Queralt isn't the first Spanish chef to explore this idea—Paco Morales has been diving deep into Andalusian history in Córdoba, for instance—but his choice holds extra relevance now. In 2025, Catalonia has the distinction of being a World Region of Gastronomy, remarkably the first European area to hold the title. And while some of that honor reflects the modernist cuisine coming out of Barcelona and beyond, Queralt's backward-looking approach is worthwhile: Dishes like conger eel loin with a sauce of smoked fish bones and almond, or grilled stuff partridge in a sauce of fresh herbs and mustard seeds, offer delightful bites of gastronomic time travel. To be sure, Vinum is still serving its 21st-century menu, in omnivorous and vegetarian formats. There are also tapas-style plates at Bruno's Bar (hand-sliced Iberian ham, anchovies from the Cantabric Sea, toasted bread with tomato and D.O.P. Siurana extra virgin olive oil), and a separate lunchtime menu of local fare (sea bass tiradito with green olives, creamy ganxet bean hummus with savory candied pork belly) at the poolside Tarraco that caters to contemporary tastes. Everywhere, the sommeliers pair dishes with wines from Priorat, an up-and-coming DOQ region known for its robust, powerful reds, and beyond. Rather than producing its own wines, the hotel works with many of the 106 wineries in the region, serving their vintages in the restaurants, selling a wide selection of their bottles (on commission) in the boutique and organizing tours to visit the nearby wine cooperative or small producers. The Lobby Michelle Chaplow Other tours take guests to explore the area, including the beautifully decaying Carthusian monastery of Santa Maria d'Escaladei (which offers a seriously impressive VR tour) and to impossibly picturesque hilltop villages with views for miles and miles. Don't be surprised when someone calls Priorat the Tuscany of Catalonia. One could be forgiven for imagining that that nickname came up in marketing meetings for the hotel. Mas d'en Bruno is part of the Stein Group, a privately owned firm that specializes in the development, restoration and management of a few dozen boutique hotels in (mostly southern) Europe. This helps explain the budget that went into renovating the hotel's historic buildings, which were once also a monastery and then later a private residence. The renovation, which combines Catalan heritage with modern niceties, is the work of the Barcelona design firm Astet Studio, a group that's known for some of the sexiest dining rooms in Marbella. For their work on Mas d'en Bruno, they were recently honored with a Hospitality Design Award in the category of Restoration, Transformations + Conversions. A suite Courtesy of the hotel The designers blended the historic essence of the original stone masonry with contemporary materials like natural stone and pale oak. A burgundy color palette reminds you that you're in wine country, and a recurring motif of arches is a nod to the original facade. The rooms in the original building have a good amount of variation—the best suites have grand arched windows, wooden-beamed patterned ceilings and double-sided fireplaces—while a new wing contains ten identical garden suites, which makes it a good choice for groups. (Well, almost identical: The one at the far end of the building has a private little pool.) In both areas, the rooms' furnishings, from the coffee tables to cocoon-like headboards, are curved, a reference, general manager Jordi Compte Stevens surmises, to the sinuous geometry of Priorat's landscapes. It's another case where there might have been an easier way of doing the expected luxury hotel things, but the creative minds behind Mas d'en Bruno committed to going all-in on giving it a sense of place.
