[Spanish guitar music playing]
Spanish chefs are the vanguard of great modernist cuisine;
their recipes, ideas and techniques followed avidly around the world.
And Andalucía is no exception.
Talented and imaginative chefs like Dani Garcia at Calima in Marbella
or Angel Leon at Aponiente in Puerto de Santa Maria outside Cadiz,
are the rock stars of Andalucian cooking.
Their talents, along with many other chefs,
were recently showcased at the Third Annual Andalucía Sabor International Fine Food Exhibition
— the region's most important and prestigious gastronomic event.
Like most great chefs around the world,
they know that cuisine is nothing, unless it is firmly planted in traditional ingredients
and traditional ways of using them.
Fish from the region’s seas,
vegetables from local farms, great wines and cheeses,
and above all, exceptional extra-virgin olive oil,
all combine to give Andalucía’s great chefs the material they need to create great food.
Often, there is only a fine line between these fundamental traditions
and the playful invention of Spanish chefs, as we will soon see.
As Nancy Harmon Jenkins puts it, “not something innovative for the sake of innovation.”
One dish that is recognized more than any other as a truly Andalucian tradition is gazpacho.
A thicker version of gazpacho, typical of Córdoba and Granada — is salmorejo.
María García Morillo is the house cook at the olive oil estate Castillo de Canena.
María’s version has all the hallmarks of a traditional gazpacho:
tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, bread, some water and salt and blended until creamy.
While it’s thickened with bread, the gazpacho is still creamy enough to eat with a spoon,
and is served with a garnish of chopped jamón ibérico and chopped hard-boiled eggs.
In contrast, Juan Andrés Morilla, executive chef and owner of the elegant
El Claustro Restaurant in Granada,
starts with salmorejo, and in a sense, turns this simple dish upside down
and serves it on a bed of thinly sliced scallops.
[Chef Juan Andres Morilla speaking] What we are going to do first is take our ladle and freeze it.
We add the soup, then we freeze the ladle again.
We have to have a lot of precision right now
because if we freeze it for too long, it will be too hard.
But if we don’t do it long enough, it will break on us.
Let’s take the risk right now.
We will submerge the ladle in a little water to break it loose.
What we obtain is an igloo, or a dome of salmorejo
that we will finish, of course, with an Andalucian garnish.
It’s a very simple dish, but it results in a very fun and visually attractive plate.
We still maintain the flavors of our Andalucian gastronomy --
the flavors of our grandmothers, of our homes –
but we play with these flavors in the kitchen, with everything that is now available to us.
We try to make this cuisine something fun.
[Narrator] In Málaga, José Carlos García is the chef at the Café de Paris
—a family restaurant, established by the chef’s grandparents.
Tradition counts for a lot,
but in his version of a very famous cold soup from Marbella called "ajo blanco,"
tradition gives way to some modern touches
and the Thermomix is the instrument of choice for producing it.
Ajo blanco is a white garlic soup— but it is much, more than just garlic.
Usually made with almonds, José Carlos’s version combines almonds and cashews
to give an extra richness to the production.
[Chef José Carlos Garcia] These are the ingredients used in the traditional recipe that you would find in any house in Andalucía,
and not just Andalucía, but in any household in Spain.
First you add bread and water,
then cashews and almonds.
Normally this dish is just made with almonds, but we put half almonds and hand cashews.
The next ingredient is garlic, without the heart.
We have to cut each clove in half to remove the heart.
[Narrator] The result of using the Thermomix is an unctuous blend that comes out at exactly the right temperature for service.
And it preserves all of the sweet aromas and flavors of the nuts and olive oil.
[Chef José Carlos Garcia] Now let’s process this for 5 minutes at high speed.
[Blender sounds]
This is the texture five minutes later, with the olive oil already added....
Just a few tablespoons to make sure the emulsion can stabilize.
Now salt,
a little vinegar,
and we will pour the mixture in this bottle.
Now for the modernist part.
We've cooked an apple and made a natural green apple jelly.
These sprouts are from different kinds of plants, harvested 15 to 20 miles from here, near the ocean.
So we now place some batons on top,
and at the table we pour the dish like this.
So this is a traditional ajo blanco taken to a higher expression here at Café de Paris in Málaga.
At his restaurant, El Choco in Córdoba,
Kisco García captures the flavors of a typical regional salad —
— Picadillo de Tomate, but creates a completely new experience for the guests.
[Kisco García voice over] Here we are going to prepare a salad that is also very typical of the region.
It is generally prepared at home and it is normally chopped, or “picadillo.”
And we bring it here to a fine dining setting.
First, we plate the tomato that was grown organically by a producer from the area just for us.
We place the “torrija,” or the toast.
The cucumber…
....and the smoked eel.
You know, when people come into the restaurant, they recognize this dish immediately
because it is stored in their food memory bank.
Everyone remembers this from home.
We have made a cucumber sorbet that we will form into a small quenelle that we will put on top of the toast.
And finally, we would serve at the table, a tomato water
that we have made by blending and pressing the tomatoes
and filtering them so we only have the water without the pulp.
[Narrator] Andrés Morilla at El Claustro in Granada
cooks lamb sous vide for twelve hours at 150 degrees Fahrenheit...
...then serves it, bathed in its own reduced juices with a side of crumbly migas —
— only this time they are actually made from olive oil and garnished with an olive branch,
and what look like lush black olives
but turn out to be shaped from. . . creamy goat’s milk cheese.
This kind of playing with customer expectations
is something Andalucian chefs all seem to delight in.
Dani Garcia, at Calima restaurant in Marbella,
is famous for sending out dishes that are not what they seem.
Here we have a very traditional, down-home chickpea soup,
made with a rich meat stock and garnished with whole chickpeas.
Only guess what? ....The soup is served cold
and the “chickpeas” are actually made from sesame butter in a silicone mold.
[Dani Garcia speaking] It's very easy to do, okay? We have the butter here.
And then, we put it into the silicone mold. We clean very good.
Then we put into the fridge.
Here. You know?
We put in water. Normally water with ice.
[Narrator] The whole thing is garnished with “caviar” that is not caviar at all,
but made from arbequina olive oil.
So what looks traditional —garbanzos in remojo—
is actually a surprisingly modern dish!
You might even say, a joke— for the delighted customers of Calima.
There are elegant restaurants throughout Andalucía, from Almería to Cádiz,
and there are more humble places where traditions are still intact.
Juanito, on the outskirts of historic Baeza,
could not be more traditional.
Three generations of the same family have been
running this eating place for more than half a century,
during which it has gained a well deserved reputation for the finest local cuisine.
Much of it based on recipes that have been passed down over the generations.
What that means to Chef Juan Luis Salcedo
are dishes like his version of patatas pobres or “poor man’s potatoes.”
[Chef Juan Luis Salcedo voice over] Right now, what we are doing is frying
the potatoes in extra virgin olive oil to make a sort of potato confit.
We are not really frying, because we are cooking them at such a low temperature.
Now we’re going to fry the eggs for the potatoes.
What we’re looking for here is getting the oil at a good temperature,
hot enough to cook the egg quickly.
Now the potatoes are perfectly cooked.
We strain out a little of the oil from the potatoes
and mix the potatoes with the egg until they are all evenly coated in egg.
[Narrator] Simple, rustic, and utterly delicious.
You could imagine this being served for a farmhouse supper
instead of in this elegant dining room!
[Chef Juan Luis Salcedo voiceover] This is pork loin that has been marinated in spices or “adobado,”
and then we cook it slowly.
As you can see, this is a cuisine of olive oil.
We preserve the pork in the oil perfectly,
and we are using pork because it is elegant and very subtle.
[Narrator] The dish all depends on the best potatoes, the freshest eggs,
the finest extra-virgin olive oil from the family’s own groves nearby.
And finally, an example of a truly innovative menu item:
Chef Angel Leon, at his restaurant, Aponiente, in Puerto de Santa Maria,
serves almost nothing but products of the sea.
He experiments with such exotic products as rich, green plankton
and makes a series of sausages that look like standard issue salchichón or chorizo,
but turn out, surprisingly, to be made entirely, and deliciously, of seafood!
[Chef Angel Leon voice over] We created these with the idea of serving something that people are familiar with
because it is a flavor they know, that they grew up with....
But changing all the pork fats for fish fats and pork meats for fish meat.
As you can see, this sausage is like a real sausage,
but this is not fatty.
And this is chorizo — made with fish, of course.
[Narrator] And in the end, while it's the traditions and foundations
handed down over the generations that may be the heart of a dish,
challenging those traditions is at the heart of today's innovative chefs.