This wonderful world we live in has many problems. One of them, and not a minor one, is that we increasingly eat less things.
It seems the opposite, because we find mangoes at the corner grocery store and oranges in August. Supermarkets simulate infinite cornucopias of packaged products in all kinds of formats and colors. Furthermore, many homes, where the entire family used to eat the same menu at the same time, have now become almost a la carte restaurants—fast food, of course—with long dining hours. This food fragmentation reaches its limit in apartments shared by students or other people who, having a salary, cannot even remotely consider a mortgage or full rent now. Each tenant in these homes usually has their own personal shelf in the refrigerator and pantry, which forces them to shop, cook, sometimes eat in the room and even wash the dishes individually. Add to that the coexistence of origins, beliefs, tastes, intolerances and fashions and it will seem that the current heterogeneity is insurmountable.
However, global figures tell us that fewer and fewer varieties of plants and animals make up the planet’s food base. Many have disappeared because what is not eaten is not (re)produced. Although for decades we managed to reduce hunger extraordinarily and indeed that is perhaps the best news that can be given, food biodiversity has become poorer in recent years. We should be concerned because only by diversifying resources will an increasingly populated world that we cannot exhaust without condemning ourselves be sustainable.
That is why it is important that we do not all always eat the same ingredients or the same recipes. For that reason and to not die, even from starvation, from boredom.
At what point do we forget that maxim so beneficial for our health and that of the planet that was clear that “you have to eat everything”? When did we start to have so many manias and prejudices as to reduce our diet to two or three fish (from distant seas) and two or three muscles from two or three animals?
Before, the landscapes dictated the diet much more, our longing for local products and dishes comes from there. Altitude, latitude, geography and orography were determining factors and it is good that they are again. Although only to a certain extent, because isolation can lead even faster to extinction.
As far as knowledge is concerned, without the wisdom, technology, uses and recipes learned from other places, let’s see what community is capable of surviving. As for products, autarky becomes a sentence to which a few months go by without rain.
It is, therefore, about knowing how to be local and open, first taking advantage of the best that the environment offers, but not only, and learning the more the better. Without forgetting how valuable what we already knew is, as Benito Gómez from the appetizing Bardal restaurant in Ronda recalled in his tasty presentation at the second edition of the Andorra Taste International Meeting that was held in Escaldes-Engordany. In the professional days – because there were also activities, tastings and dishes in the very popular popular section – a selection of the best chefs who work or have developed projects related to mountain cuisine – some from remote places, others from nearby regions in countries neighbors and, of course, also representatives of Andorran cuisine itself—shared their experiences and findings; illustrating them with succulent demonstrations. The producers also contributed testimony, wisdom and reflection.
To cite just some of the many learnings that the days led to; José Antonio Guillermo, a reference in Andorran restoration and owner of Odetti Bistro, reviewed the powerful historical tradition of lamb in the Principality and claimed practical knowledge of wild herbs and their gastronomic application; Josetxo Souto and Ramón Aso from the Callizo de Aínsa restaurant, in Huesca, gave a masterclass with the varietal treasures recovered by the peasantry of their land. Joel Castanyé from Lleida presented with brilliance and sympathy his fruit project of gastronomy and rural revitalization coinciding with the optimal point of mountain apples. Through the concept of sea and mountains, Marc Gascons demonstrated his extraordinary ability to develop great platforms based on the best product and inherited tradition. With a handful of Marc Gascons spread throughout the territory, local gastronomy would not go below cum laude. His cooking should be a mandatory subject in the country’s gastronomic universities.
Doctor Joan Roca, who has long managed to exhaust all our adjectives, demonstrated, among many other tricks, how to fill Girona’s most traditional sweet, the xuxo, with a game species that we should consume more of, the wild boar, to get a dish which, on a scale of ten, does not go below twenty. He also taught us how to cook wild boar with masterful formulas to take off the hat, Edorta Lamo, responsible for that reference called Arrea! from Campezo, in Álava, among others.
The traditional Andorran recipe book includes wild boar civet among its classics, as well as dishes with trout. Trout, herbs, wild boar and other game species… Mountain products that are now trending in the best gastronomic restaurants… while society consumes them less and less.
Let us hope that the prescription capacity of haute cuisine will serve to increase our taste for food diversity, the season and what each landscape offers us. And that, as the Manifesto signed by the participants states, all of this contributes to “defending life in towns and making known in urban environments the reality and value of our mountain societies.”
