The secrets of Catalan cooking
Alberto Raurich, Michelin-starred chef of Dos Palillos, on the pandemic, takeaways and the Catalan secrets of a 700-year-old cookbook.
5 minutes to read
The essence of Catalan cooking can be found in a 700-year old cookbook.
Believed to have been published in 1324 and now located in the museum at the University in Valencia, El llibre del Sent Soví is the oldest surviving culinary text in Catalan.
There are many things that make it remarkable, not least its use of ingredients found in Arabic and Jewish cuisine, or the recipes from ancient Greece and Rome. This, says Alberto Raurich, Michelin-starred chef at Barcelona’s Dos Pallilos, offers both a window into the richness of Catalan cuisine, and proof that is has been admired since the middle ages.
“The Catalan-Barcelona food culture has been and is very rich,” he says. “Rich in diversity of products, vegetables, fish, fruits, poultry, meat, cereals, spices, herbs - and rich in knowledge.”
There are perhaps other reasons Raurich admires the anonymous cook behind El llibre del Sent Soví. The intelligent blending of styles and cultures that runs through the book are how he has made his name.
“Dos Palillos”, Spanish for “two chopsticks”, is among the most exciting restaurants in one of the most exciting food cities in the world. There are 22 Michelin star restaurants in Barcelona that together hold 31 stars. The Eixample district, a stone’s through from Dos Palillos, was recently selected by Time Out as the world’s coolest neighbourhood.
The neighbouring Raval district is where Raurich serves up what many call Spanish-Japanese fusion food, from Szechuan-style jellyfish to Iberian-Cantonese pork jowl. It is, according to ex El Builli head chef Ferran Adrià, “the best Asian restaurant outside Asia.” Of course, Japanese-Spanish food might sound like an odd match, but distinct eating cultures often overlap in ways that surprise.
In both countries, “the concept of eating at a bar is of the essence,” Raurich says. “This is a concept that both cultures share - a large part of our life is spent at a bar either eating, drinking or socializing with a waiter or a cook. At Dos Palillos, we take this to its highest expression – there is a bar around a kitchen served by cooks.”
His success in doing justice to the culture is down in part to Tamae Imachi, his Japanese wife. The pair met while working at the now legendary El Bulli, the Barcelona institution voted a record five times as the world’s best restaurant. Raurich, who was head chef there for more than a decade, and Imachi, the restaurant’s former sommelier, are now co´-owners of Dos Palillos. It is Imachi’s “great knowledge” of her country’s food, that has made it possible to meld the two cultures, according to Raurich.
“I think you cannot innovate or be creative from a condition of ignorance,” he says. “If a non-Japanese person wants to cook Japanese cuisine, he or she should know not only the food preparation and techniques but also the essential pillars of this cuisine, that is, the cuisine liturgy, spaces, dishes, movements, concepts and philosophy.”
Time spent at El Bulli has defined the careers of many chefs, see Gaggan Anand of the two Michelin starred Gaggan in Bangkok, or Massimo Bottura of Modena’s three-Michelin-star Osteria Francescana. It’s hard to overstate the impact the institution had both on Barclona’s standing as a leader in gastronomy, and on the city’s own food scene.
“El Bulli’s greatest legacy was philosophical - the freedom of thought, how to break down borders and old beliefs,” Raurich says. “The democratization of haute cuisine is here to stay, without linen tablecloths, without silverware, without valet parking, without paraphernalia that makes the bill more expensive.”
Unfortunately, one of the factors that makes Dos Palilos exciting – it’s intimacy and proximity to the cooks and other guests, are what has made it, for the time being, fall victim to the pandemic. The restaurant has been closed since March and Raurich says he’ll be unable to open unless restrictions ease.
“I can close one month, two months, three months and lose the money I saved, but one year? When we opened the restaurant, we did it in compliance with all the existing regulations,” he says “What can we do now? What happens to the restaurants that are not economically viable due to the restrictions?”
He suggests the city’s restaurant owners need to meet with officials to look for solutions that work both for restaurants, and that achieve health goals.
“It does not mean that we have to be cleaner, since cleanliness is at very high levels in the restaurant industry, but we have to increase health measures to give comfort to clients and regain trust.”
Catalan food has a long history of change. The recipes in El llibre del Sent Soví paint a picture of a food culture that adapts to the world as it evolves, such as the transformation sparked by the arrival of products from the Americas. Dos Palillos is no different, and Raurich is working on a new project to enable the restaurant to flourish in the world as it exists at present.
Dos Palillos en Casa is “taking shape little by little”, says Raurich, and will enable the public to enjoy its food home – a new trend in fine dining that increasingly looks permanent.
“Food delivery and take away services are here to stay, and I think that renowned cooks who benefit from this concept are here to stay,” he says, “But this will be a new business line, because what is clear to me is this: in Spain people will always go out for dinner.”