Bagá
Pedro ama su tierra por encima de todo y siempre quiso situar a Jaén y a
su cocina en el mapa gastronómico nacional, algo que ha conseguido con
esfuerzo y cariño. Hoy en su nuevo y arriesgado proyecto sigue
trabajando arduamente para mostrar todo lo que un cocinero es capaz de
dar cuando trabaja en el espacio que siempre soñó. La cocina de Pedro es
sencilla pero intensa en sabores y texturas llevando por estandarte
platos tan personales como las quisquillas de Motril con escabeche de
perdiz, los riñones de choto con caviar, el tartar de vaca con anguila
ahumada o las natillas de coco, miel y trufa. Bagá es hoy el sueño de un
cocinero humilde hecho realidad.
Este
libro plasma su pensamiento culinario a través de 62 creaciones ya
icónicas de Bagá. Platos con apenas 3 ingredientes –como mucho– hacen
que la receta no sea lo importante. Esta obra se adentra en la mente del
chef con 1 estrella Michelin para desunir el cómo y el por qué de sus
platos. Un libro único de uno de los cocineros más respetados.
Nature Intended
Juanjo López took the lead of La Tasquita de
Enfrente (Madrid) 20 years ago. Since that moment, the chef has earned
the greatest respect thanks to his honesty, essence and a timelessness
luxury understood through his particular point of view. Praised as a
custodian of flavour by the best chefs and the most demanding gourmets,
he reveals, in first person and with a gastronomic literary voice, the
ins and outs of a unique restaurant and the product it offers.
One day, Juanjo López decided to stop the career that made him manage an
important insurance company and dedicated himself, in body and soul, to
the hospitality industry. He ‘hung up his tie’, replaced the blazer by
the chef’s jacket and started to run La Tasquita de Enfrente, the
establishment that his father, Serafín López Gaona, opened in Calle de
La Ballesta, in Madrid. Two decades later, this restaurant is unique in
Spain as a reference for the best chefs and the most demanding gourmets.
All of them use to sit at the tables for tasting something so simple
and so complicated as it is the best produce treated with the highest
respect. ‘When it is in safe hands, a quality produce can become
something memorable’, as José Carlos Capel, culinary critic in El País
verifies. ‘It is not easy to go out from a restaurant without any
objection. But here you can’, Carlos Maribona, responsible of the
gastronomic section in ABC for more than 25 years, asseverates.
As
Nature Intended is the book published by Montagud Editores where Juanjo
López dissects, in first person and with a gastronomic literary voice,
the ins and outs of a unique restaurant. In the same vein, he analyses
the clues of a chameleon-like industry that suffers the whirlwind from
the modern times; and reflects about a magical profession which demands
honesty, common sense and love. All of that explained through 11
chapters that, like a base, hold everything that can be found on La
Tasquita de Enfrente.
The
author reveals his particular perspective to understand and work with
the Luxury in the first chapter of the book; and emphasizes at a time
the reading goes on in the indispensable Honesty he has with his diners
and suppliers. He reflects about the importance of Thought in the
kitchen, at the same time that he focuses on how the intimate Magic is a
fundamental objective on his restaurant day to day. He stops, for sure,
on his Team, and on how he experiments with Wine; and ends up revealing
his best kept-secret. That is the Essence, what made him earn, little
by little and almost without realising, the greatest respect of the
industry, and to be pleased as a custodian of flavour. ‘The years have
taught me how important it is to travel light through life, to carry
what counts on the inside’, he affirms, as an appetiser.
Likewise,
luxury is the central point of the text the publicist and writer Risto
Mejide narrates on the foreword of the book. ‘A luxury is somewhat
closer to an attitude than something material’, he assesses. ‘It’s being
treated well all the time, regardless of who you are and in spite of
who you are.’ Because Juanjo López knows, better than anybody, how to be
the best of the hosts: he has sat at many tables before tying his
apron. ‘Bear in mind as you read this book that the author has eaten in
the world’s best restaurants’, affirms Jãvi Antoja, editor-in-chief of
the book and of Montagud Editores’ publishing projects. ‘And those world
travels are what gives him the authority to… do what he pleases?”.
Creations riddled with knowledge
As Nature Intended includes 30 emblematic creations from La Tasquita de
Enfrente. With an absolute fidelity to those pillars described by Juanjo
López in first person, creations are presented with a vast comment from
the author, who reveals essential details of the elaborations. There is
also a profuse explanation about the product, or about the preparation
it needs. The images, as all the pictures that appear in the whole book,
are signed by Mikel Ponce, and some of them take part in the detailed
step-by-step process. For instance, the celebrated ‘Gaona tripe’,
honoured as the most quintessential dish by the Gastronomic Academy of
Madrid.