“At the beginning of the 70s my favourite toy was a lovely little white kitchen my father gave me as a present. I emulated the dishes my grandma and mother cooked with their gas kitchen. I remember the off-white plastic tablecloth covering the brazier table in the dining house, and there were all my kitchen utensils. Even my mother handed me some onion or tomato slice which, evidently, were never cooked.
I was raised between pots and dishes: slow cooked sautés and aromatic herbs’ scents and my mother’s dishes with sometimes delicate, other times all wrapping aromas stimulating my sense of smell.
I keep on looking for that flavour which reminds us of the forkful of fish salad with a pinch of paprika, a subtle and smooth garlic flavour with top quality monkfish, potato from Sa Pobla and persil finely chopped.
Mallorcan cuisine cookery book is so diverse and rich, offering so many possibilities that it would be a shame spoiling it because of the massive globalization of our daily meals..
Our story is forged by the experience of gustatory and olfactory memory. I am not the sole one having this memory in being raised in a kitchen: we all have it. Some of us foster it and for others it remains unnoticed. The search of the gustatory memory needs to be seasonal, meaning that every product has its own season. I remember as a child when ‘tumbet’ and ‘trempó’ were always summer dishes; ‘greixeres’ and fried cabbage with pumpkin were kept for winter. My mother Catalina, a great chef, always did it this way”.