Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking [1 ed.] 0714863637, 9780714863634

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MUGARITZ

ANDONI LUIS ADURIZ

MUGARITZ A NATURAL SCIENCE OF COOKING

CONTENTS

11

14

21

INTRODUCTION

BEGINNINGS

SURROUNDINGS

34

49

64

LESS

LEARNING

SHARING

73

83

BEING HERE

RECIPES

240 GLOSSARY & INDEX

THERE HAS BEEN an intense focus on food these past twenty-five years, as evidenced by the myriad of advancements ranging from television shows to biogs, to the proliferation of modern equipment and techniques, to the increasing popularity of food and wine events all over the globe. This unprecedented interest has spurred the evolution of food and cuisine as we know it and has helped catapult the average person's culinary knowledge, turning each one into the savvy and sophisticated diner that we see today.

C HE F S ARE KINDRE D SP I RITS. We may not see each other more than once or twice in our lives, and yet we greet each other like long-lost brothers and enjoy a camaraderie that is envied by other professions. We have different histories and backgrounds, yet our basest of motivations remain the same: the desire to make our guests happy and to provide an atmosphere that allows them to establish new memories for themselves. If someone were to ask the question, if you could choose which era you would want to be a chef, when would that be, my unequivocal answer would be 'right here, right now' . I would not change a thing and I know Andoni would strongly agree. All over the world we continue to support chefs who have strong points of view. Restaurants are not only defined by a specific style of cuisine, but by the personalities of those individuals themselves. It is a heady and transformational time, and for someone like Andoni it is also the perfect time.

ANDONI HAS HELPED redefine the standards of Spanish cuisine today. An early disciple of Ferran Adria, he continually pushes the envelope of traditional and accepted norms of cuisine and service. His tasting menus, comprising many small courses, are reflective of the seasons and express his story on every dish. The term 'adventurous' is what immediately comes to mind when describing his style of cooking. The book you are holding manages to engage our senses in another way. The rich images and recipes satisfy our visual and mental appetites, and his words sate our curiosity about his inspirations. Each page is a journey that connects on a cerebral level.

ANDONI'S PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS took me back to my own days as a young cook. W ithin his story I relived the frustration I felt when my earlier pursuits fell through, and I experienced once more the thrill of experiencing my first true taste of success at The French Laundry. It is evident that the disappointments and challenges that we were blind to on our road to realizing our dreams were the same motivators that made us hungry to pursue the successes that we enjoy today. It is that constant desire to improve, to question what we can do better all the time, that has allowed us to progress and evolve at our craft. In this era a chef's most significant role involves the responsibility of mentoring the next generation of young cooks. Andoni's work touches heavily on creativity, curiosity, awareness and collaboration. His contributions have greatly impacted our industry and the way we eat and cook. It is without a doubt that his impact will continue to propel our momentum steadily forward.

THOMAS KELLER The French Laundry

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MUGARITZ

THE FIRST THING that stands out about Mugaritz is its name. Restaurants tend to be named after people (Arzak, Daniel, MacDonald's), ideas (Noma, Per Se), buildings (El Celler De Can Roca, Osteria Francescana, French Laundry) or whimsies (elBulli, The Fat Duck, Combal Zero). Mugaritz is named after a natural thing, a 'border oak'. The name is even more precise than it seems: it doesn't refer to border oaks in general but to one specific tree, between Astigarraga and Errenteria in the hills inland from San Sebastian in Spain. When you go to Mugaritz you realize that it isn't named after an oak tree, it's named after that oak tree, that one right there.

ONE OF THE CORRUPTING THINGS about the contemporary idea of luxury gastronomy is that it can erode the sense of place. At times it is as guilty of this as are fast-food restaurants and chain hotels. Andoni Luis Aduriz is a great chef, and one of the reasons he is such an outstanding figure is because he has made such a determined attempt to be rooted in a place. It is not an uninformed or atavistic decision: Andoni is no peasant, clinging to the place he was born out of fear and because he has no alternative. But it is an increasingly pervasive feature of the modern world that you can do anything, anywhere, at anytime - eat sushi or a pizza, check your email or update your Facebook status, book a trip or steal some music. Mugaritz and Andoni are against all that: they are about what the scholastic philosophers called haecceity: they are about thisness and hereness. See that cow in that field? It was milked today; you may well be tasting its milk later, in the form of the freshest, most ethereal and yet also most complicated-tasting gelato you've ever eaten.

BEING HERE doesn't mean you always know exactly where you are. Just as no one has ever gone to Mugaritz for the first time without wondering whether they have got lost - we went by taxi, and I still thought we must have gone astray - no one eats there without having several moments when they wonder what they're eating. Andoni's food plays games with ideas of comfort and familiarity, with tastes that make you feel safe and tastes where you don't know quite what you think. As he brilliantly puts it in this book, 'you don't have to like something for you to like it'. One of his signature moves, something you encounter with his famous edible stones, or fossilized salsify, or carpaccio (but carpaccio of what?) is to cook something that first makes you wonder what the hell it is; then make you think, it seems like x, and yet it can't be x; and then make you realize that not only is this x, it is the most intense, most x-like version of x you've ever eaten. The experience of visiting Mugaritz is an extraordinary dance of expectations and tastes. It gives you the sensation that you are both rooted in a specific place and yet also are right on the edge - like a border oak. JOHN LANCHESTER London

11

)

. ..

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MUGARITZ

MUGARITZ burnt in

THE BORDER AND THE OAK

2010.

0 NE FEBRUARY NIG HT, fire destroyed the kitchen. The alarms went off and three fire crews managed to limit the extent of the disaster. The next morning, while walking among the blackened debris and ash­ coated walls, I thought about how ignorance is bliss; if the whole Mugaritz team had known twelve years earlier that the fruits of our labour would be reduced to ashes in two hours, we would never have opened the restaurant. In fact, it wouldn't even have taken a fire. It would have been enough to have been forewarned of the huge effort it would take to turn Mugaritz into what it is today for us to have given up before we had even started. Today we know that we have gone much further than we ever dreamed we would; but neither that nor the fact that we would create our own language, not the awards, the dishes we take the most pride in, the number of people that we have come to know, the countries we have visited, the accolades, the certainty that one day a book like this would exist - none of that would have been enough to overcome the vertigo we felt at what lay ahead and make us change our minds. LUCKILY, we had no idea of any of this. We were young and naive; or rather, we were reckless. Our desire and the excitement we felt at the prospect of having our own place, of being free to create something different, stopped us from thinking twice about what we were about to . do. And there are certain things you have to do without thinking, or they end up never happening. ACTUA LL Y, it had never occurred to me to open a restaurant. In my days at catering school in San Sebastian, I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted. I lived for the moment, without giving much thought to what I would be doing the next day, with the sole obsession of being trained by master chefs, of being an apprentice in the best restaurant, at a time when doing a 'stage' , or work experience placement, wasn't as common as it is today. One of these establishments changed my life. IN I 9 9 3, people didn't fight to get a table at e!Bulli. There were no waiting lists and few people knew who Ferran Adria was. And yet, everything that has made him great was already there. At that time, a restaurant was rated on its ability to sell: its success was essentially measured by the number of customers it attracted. W hen I started at e!Bulli, I found myself working in a place where business took a back seat. Naturally, the till (cash register) needed to keep ringing if the restaurant was to survive, but what really mattered was nurturing creativity to build something special, something new - and what they were building was so special and so new that nobody came. They had a very tough time of it financially. But in the two years I spent there, not once did anyone refer to anything that wasn't strictly to do with gastronomy. Restaurants generally only shared their failures with you, not their successes, making you feel responsible for not working hard enough. This never happened to me at e!Bulli. Ferran was as relentless as he was passionate. He was obsessed with perfection, with building something that was different from anything else in the world. He wanted to shock his

BEGINNINGS

17

customers and to turn their visit into a genuinely festive event. The rest

and dinner at night. Martin's words to us were: 'You don't know what

was secondary. That left an indelible mark on me.

you're talking about.You're going to work your guts out for a pittance; yo�r talent is worth so much more than that.' Instead of going against

I WORKED like a dog those two years, from sunrise to sunset, but

us - and to make sure we wouldn't go too far - Martin offered us the

in conditions of absolute creative freedom. You could say e!Bulli freed

opportunity to become his partners, to help him find another head chef

my mind; it untied the knots that had bound me to certain culinary

and to see what opportunities came up.

conventions. Ferran untaught everything I had learnt until then. He worked outside the established norms, which were undoubtedly

THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY to arise was a small cake shop in

innovative, but only up to a certain point. For him, what mattered most

a shopping centre, so for the best part of a year David and I devoted

was the experience, what onefelt when eating at e!Bulli. Everything

ourselves to making coffee and selling sweet buns. Finally, a year and a half

necessary would be done to create this experience. And if no one else had

after leaving Martin's restaurant, we found what we were looking for.

done it before, so much the better.

IT WAS I N HON DARR I BI A, a small city near the French border, I COULD HAVE spent the rest of my life at e!Bulli. However, during

east and up the coast from San Sebastian. It was a modern property in the

my second year in Barcelona, I felt the need to return to my native Basque

town's new sports centre, a unique contemporary building that suited our

Country, even though I had no firm prospects, only the hope that

needs. We were immediately thrilled about the prospect. We worked on the

somebody would give me a job. That somebody was Martin Berasategui,

project for months, figuring out where the kitchen and dining room would

a Basque chef whose restaurant in Lasarte, about nine kilometres

be, and which area we would set aside for banquets and groups. We could

southwest of San Sebastian, has three Michelin stars. I shared the role of

see ourselves cooking there; we could almost touch it, smell it. Everything

head chef in his restaurant for one year with another Basque chef, David

was agreed and the deal as good as done; we were the only ones who had

de Jorge, once again working in conditions of absolute freedom. And again,

put in an offer. But three days before the closing date, a bid was made for

I could have stayed there the rest of my life, but one day David said:' Let's

double the rent we were offering, and it all came to nothing. Twelve years

start something.' At first, the idea was to open a bar where you could listen

later, in the middle of our burned-out kitchen, I was overcome by a strong

to music, a place that served breakfast in the morning, pintxos at lunchtime

hollow feeling, but it was nothing compared to what I felt when the

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MUGARITZ

Hondarribia project fell through. The problems we faced after the fire were financial and work-related, but whatever happened, even if we were unable to reopen the restaurant, we had already accomplished something; we already had an experience behind us - a story we could tell.W ith the Hondarribia project, our dreams were dashed even before we could make them come true. Overnight, we found ourselves out on the street, in absolute despair. THEN TH E TELEP H O NE RANG . It was my business partner, Bixente Arrieta, with whom I had shared those years of training at elBulli. 'There's a place up in the hills, quite abandoned and derelict; it's not operational. It used to be a dairy and it's been fitted out as a traditional cider house and restaurant ...' We had to get our act together and go up there, to the middle of nowhere, to negotiate with the owners.The location was fabulous, magical, surrounded by nature. But the premises were anything but a dream. The direction the building works had taken was nowhere near the unassuming, simple look we were aiming for, and the original window frames had been replaced with plastic PVC. At least now we could tackle our first challenge: removing those windows and putting wooden ones back.

SO WE WENT to work on this Plan B that had come out of nowhere. The restaurant was initially going to be called Haritz Gorri (haritz is Basque for 'oak', while 9orri means'red'), a name that referred to autumn leaves and, of course, to the hundred-year-old oak tree that stood - and still stands - in the garden. However, our designer Santos Bregafia, who created our logo, proposed the name Mugaritz, which, while retaining the reference to the oak, also hinted at the restaurant's location on the mu9a, or border, between the municipalities of Astigarraga and Errenteria, about six kilometres apart and southeast of San Sebastian. Over time, our doubts and contradictions would give a whole range of nuances to the meaning of'Mugaritz'. TH I NG S WERE INCREDI BLY DI FFICULT at first, as any young chef who has ever tried to succeed in a similar venture will tell you. No matter how good your CV (resume) is, you will always come up against the same series of problems at the beginning. To start with, nobody trusts you. In the early stages, it's hard to find people to work for you on these sorts of projects, so the team we managed to put together was made up of familiar faces and people we had worked with previously in other places: Bixente, chefs Dani Lasa, Martxel Arozena and Aitor, Garbifie Martija in front of house ... More than sixty people work in the restaurant today, but at the time there would have been twelve or thirteen of us at most. Here were young people with little more than basic training, who were extremely naive and inexperienced; most of us hadn't travelled, hadn't eaten at good restaurants and therefore didn't have the perspective and the knowledge that enable you to contrast what you do know and what you take for granted with other ways of doing things, of thinking and of cooking. It wasn't even a junior team, it was only just starting out. But the team had a capacity for work and commitment that, after all these years, still continues to motivate me. In the early days, some team members,

having worked fifteen hours straight, would go and lie down for a short nap somewhere in the restaurant, before getting up and starting again.

WE WE RE VE RY YOUNG. I was twenty-seven, Bixente was twenty­ six, Martxel twenty-three, Dani and Garbine were twenty-two, Aitor twenty. And we were so naive that when we opened, we put up a sign that said 'Reservations only'.We were convinced that people would queue (line) up to eat at our restaurant; we had no doubt that the phones would be ringing off the hook. Of course, nobody called. On the first day, with the restaurant empty, a cyclist arrived ... dressed as a cyclist. He left his bike outside and came in to see if he could get something to eat.You could overlook the helmet and jersey, but the shoes ... those shoes made an unbearable noise. It was clear that things weren't going to be easy. BESIDES THE FACT that nobody trusted us, we didn't have huge funds. I had come from restaurants with a great deal of personality. I had spent those two years on the creative team at elBulli and had, perhaps inevitably, been infected by their way of thinking. I wanted our project to be completely different from any of the places I had worked in previously. I had to cut the cord and separate myself from Ferran and Martin's style. But the early days were simply about survival, so our approach to cooking was one of putting things together to get us through. We weren't yet able to work with our ideal ingredients, but we poured all our creativity and passion into those dishes, all the while thinking that the time would come when we could turn our ideas into reality.

WE KNEW we had a lot to offer, but we would have to build up to it. The page remained unwritten for the time being, while we slaved in the kitchen to make those 'better days' happen when we would be able to demonstrate everything we had inside us. W hat would we do? I had always been drawn to Michel Bras, whose style of cooking seemed to me to be one of the strongest at the time. His style was also unlike that of any chef I had worked with and, like him, we were located in a very special natural setting, which at some point would probably become evident in our dishes. BUT IT WAS TH E TI M E to lay the foundations, to make the business work.We knew far too many stories of young people who had opened restaurants only to end up closing them two or three years later.We had no intention of giving up so soon.W hat we needed was time, a great deal of time ahead of us. I remember one of the first team talks we had in the little shed near the dining room. I said to everybody there:'We're going to make Mugaritz one of the best restaurants in the world.' That would have been like addressing the Luxembourg army and announcing: 'We're going to conquer England.' I knew that at that time our only aspiration was to survive, but I somehow had to motivate everybody. However, few things are as surprising and powerful as human determination. For many years, the kitchen at Mugaritz has been inspired by the motto 'Only human will can distinguish the possible from the impossible.' You're most likely to die in the attempt, but if you don't die ... there is every chance that you can at least take Liverpool.

BEGINNINGS

19

21

(

SURROUNDINGS

24

MUGARITZ

MUGAR IT Z is not only the restaurant but also the road leading up to it, the countryside that you can see from the car and that, bend after bend, stokes the anticipation of everyone who visits us. Mugaritz is also its setting. It is that oak woodland we can see out of the window, the largest in Guipuzcoa province, in northern Spain; it is the orchards and

AMONG

THE FERNS WE EDS AND BABY CARROTS ...

farmhouses, the local people, animals and plants, all of which dictated our way of doing things right from the start. We live according to the rhythms marked by the seasons: we keep our creations in step to what nature has to offer at the time, without daring to push for anything else. In the same way that we believe our surroundings to be an extension of our small vegetable garden, we like to think that the restaurant is not confined to the limits of the room but is projected through the large windows. Mugaritz is everything that can be glimpsed through the windows ... but things could have been very different.

IN THE BEGINNING we were naive. In

1998, when we had just opened

the restaurant, there were no customers, so we spent the day waiting for

AN ODE TO UNCERTAINTY

the phone to ring, staring into the distance, at the hills and meadows, at the expanse of green surrounding us on all sides. We were city dwellers - we still are - and the asphalt of the city was our natural environment, so the pervasive greenness stretching out before our eyes seemed never-ending, without even the slightest variation in shade. It was a green that could only be described as total, categorically and undeniably green. The hills were green, and so too were the trees sprouting from a bed of grass, every blade of which was also green. In those days we still talked about 'blades of grass' rather than 'herbs'.

IN HIS BOOK

The Omnivore's Dilemma Michael Pollan accurately

describes this 'uninformed' way of perceiving nature - the only way we knew then: How much do you really see when you look at a patch green,

ef

course, perhaps a transitory recording

ef

ef

grass? The colour

the breeze: an abstraction.

Grass to us is more ground thanfigure, a backdrop to more legible things in the landscape: trees, animals, buildings. It's less a subject in its own right than a context.

THE 'GRASS BACKDROP'

began to lose its status as a context

and turn into 'a field of herbs' the day we decided to go out there (after admitting we had nothing better to do) and take a closer look at the plants growing in the field opposite us, with a view to trying to get to know them better. Suddenly the continuous expanse of green began to offer up shapes and hues that until then had been invisible to us. Here and there, we were struck by glimmers of light homing in on us from various sides - it was as if the plants were clamouring for our attention . We began to gather a few leaves and sprigs of herbs. We snapped them off and smelt their fragrance; sometimes we chewed them, wondering whether or not they were edible, suspecting, sensing that it might be an idea to think about using some of them as ingredients in our dishes. We delved into books on botany and saw that the herbs considered to be 'culinary' were those that contained a large amount of essential oils, such as bay leaf and rosemary. Then there were the

SURROUNDINGS

25

'medicinal' herbs, those that had proven curative or palliative powers on human beings. But something didn't add up: is it only the aroma that determines whether a herb is not just medicinal but also edible?This question was followed -and continues to be followed- by many others. We began to do some tests, cooking with herbs that were, theoretically, 'non-culinary'. Trips into the hills in pursuit of wild herbs turned into an obsession. Discovering a new, apparently edible, plant felt like winning the lottery. We ran to the Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi (Aranzadi Science Society), a non-profit scientific organization studying the natural and cultural environment, with our treasures to request the botanists' help in identifying these herbs, verifying their degree of toxicity and whether there was any history of their use in the kitchen. The botanists looked at us as if we had just arrived from outer space.

WE REAL I ZED THAT even what is closest to us can seem exotic and mysterious, merely on account of our ignorance: even though we are surrounded by a specific environment, we've never really lived in close contact with it. Not so long ago, peppers, tomatoes and potatoes were foreign, brought to our plates from the other side of the ocean. Considered to be good and nutritious, they are now part of our traditional dishes. Fuelled by our passion for wild herbs, we decided to carry out an experiment: to attempt to establish a new tradition based entirely on pleasure, bringing to the table seasonal produce from our surroundings that tradition had completely overlooked. This is how we created a dish with pumpkin, curd, fern and hay (SHEEP'S MILK CURD. Seasoned with hay and toasted fern. Pumpkin glazed in savoury syrup, 2006, page 98), in which the latter served as a powerful, evocative spice. All the elements in the dish represented our environment perfectly, yet it seemed extremely foreign, innovative, radical, avant-garde to those who tried it. No one identified it as something that was their own, local or familiar. Quite the contrary: it was a dish that stopped you in your tracks.

WE BEG AN TO RECREATE landscapes in our proposals, trying to capture images, aromas, sensations within the boundaries of the dish. This also ended up being reflected in the very names of the recipes, which were sometimes reminiscent of the place where -or even the moment when -the ingredients flourished: SALAD OF BEECH FOREST HERBS: Oxalis acetosel/a, Glechoma hederacea over a layer of potato and yeast.Wild mushrooms ... (2004, page 156), SUN-RIPENED BERRY FRUITS, drops of extra-virgin olive oil and lime. Cold beetroot (beet) bubbles (2006, page 132), Evoking a spring morning: LATXA E W E'S MILK ICE CREAM, sun-ripened red fruits, mild textured anise herb buds (2007, page 166) ...

of effort into gathering herbs- dandelion, ground ivy, betony ... These were not obtained in large quantities, nor did their flavour surpass that of cultivated varieties, but in itself, such effort had real sentimental and testimonial value. The symbolism that these species acquire by becoming ingredients goes far beyond their sensory significance: including a charred fern leaf in a dish generates a unique kind of pleasure, which is not just about how it tastes. 0 F COURSE, Luis thinks we're crazy. Every time he sees us picking the sorrel and dandelions growing beneath his apple trees, he looks at us as if we're insane. Nothing could be more outlandish to him, and yet these plants grow no more than twenty metres from his front door. However, if you showed him a pineapple, he would immediately identify it as such, even though pineapples only sneaked into our diet a few decades ago and grow IO,ooo kilometres away in Costa Rica, from where they continue to be imported. It is clear that today 'exotic' is no longer associated with distance.Today, exotic is synonymous with the unknown. And the unknown, or mysterious, can be hiding right next to us, under that apple tree. ACCORD ING TO LUIS, the purslane that grows around his potatoes, beans and peppers is a weed, something he rips out and throws away, an evil that must be eradicated. W hat he doesn't know is that in other places these plants are cultivated in greenhouses, and that other cultures believe they have value. They are only 'weeds' to him because that's what he's learnt, not because they really are. The fact that some time ago we asked permission to use his purslane in one of our dishes only confirmed to him that we were not right in the head, although he was grateful that we saved him the work of ripping it out.The dish was called 'In search of a summer picture: Red prawns soaked in hay tea and the weeds from our garden, Portulaca oleracea, Chenopodum album, Stellaria media ... ' (2002), which was pure provocation. Asking someone to eat weeds opened a door to the unknown; it introduced a certain risk and tension into the menu. But it also offered an element of surprise involving something that was quite familiar: instead of trying to wow our guests with the most extraordinary tropical fruit from some remote corner of southeast Asia, we did it by using something that had always been around, and which was even more astonishing.

THESE 'FOOD EXPERIMENTS'

0 UR NEIGHBOUR Luis knows nature like the back of his hand. For Luis, nature is a space he has learnt to master and tame to suit his own requirements; he draws everything from it that he needs to survive. W hat we were doing, however, was exploiting these natural resources from the perspective of someone who has access to all the ingredients they would need. We had very little knowledge of nature and approached it meekly, seeking rather than demanding, with an emphasis on its symbolic and poetic aspects rather than more practical matters. We were putting a lot

in which we played with herbs and tradition made us see our environment in a completely new light -as an inexhaustible factory churning out constant surprises; a forest, a hill, a sea full of exceptional ingredients that have been hidden, forgotten or simply ignored. We found that our customers were willing to take risks, by sampling, exploring and flirting with danger. We discovered that they trusted us- up to a point- not to poison them with those herbs they were highly unlikely ever to sample of their own accord. But to be able to serve up these treasures that lay buried in our hills and forests or were hidden in the depths of the Bay of Biscay, and offer this unique, extraordinary experience, we were going to have to change many things. We realized that the way of understanding the environment that had been imposed on us by our own culinary training hindered - if not forbade - access to what

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SURROUNDINGS

27

we wanted, to this exceptional nature in its broadest sense. We set out to dismantle this approach, and to access the produce provided by nature in the most direct and purest way possible, whether or not we could find it in the markets, regardless of demand, and without any concern for the two conditions usually required of a product in order to ensure profitability for the producer and security for the buyer, namely quantity and reliability (most chefs need to know they'll get a minimum quantity of an ingredient, year in year out). No, we will not need a lot. No, we will not always need it.

have enough space to produce all the vegetables we needed, but we also thought that by buying them from local producers we could support our region. The dish was composed of dozens of different vegetables, so we started knocking on doors and visited many small local markets. We talked to farmers about our obsession with texture, explaining that we needed the best pods, picked when they had just begun to sprout. We wanted carrots, of course, but tiny baby carrots, pulled from the earth when they are so small and delicate that you can eat eight in one mouthful.

THIS WAY OF RELATING to the environment is based on the assumption that nature is in charge, not us. Dealing with nature according to this basic guideline completely changes your way of thinking: you realize that you cannot have things whenever you want them, but when nature provides them. Traditionally, restaurants would serve bream all year round - a promise sealed in black ink on their menus; an irrevocable, indelible, laminated agreement. This was because the quality of the bream was not

GRADUALLY we found producers who were willing to adapt to

as important as allowing customers to eat whatever they fancied, whether it was in season or not. Just like herbs, fish has characteristics that stand out when it's in season; for instance, its fat content makes it tastier. The all-powerful diners exercised their rights as lords and masters of the environment, as rulers of nature, which they had become used to subjugating to their every whim. These diners could not be disappointed by something as prosaic as a change of season. Today things have changed. Those who visit us know that they must accept our position, which means they cannot control all variables.

UNCERTA IN TY, inconsistency and irregularity are essential qualities of the natural environment, and it is essential to respect them to find exceptional products. We had to skip the standard market channels and go in search of what we call our' unique producers'. Finding them has been as challenging and exciting as those initial expeditions in search of wild herbs. PERHAPS THE FIRST CREATION exemplifying this kind of relationship with the environment was our dish 'VEGETABLES, OVEN ROASTED AND RAW, SPROUTS AND GREENS, wild and cultivated, seasoned with browned butter and dusted with seeds and petals. "Emmental" cheese generously seasoned' (2000)'. This dish made us relate to the production of unique ingredients. It made us grow our own herbs, which included seeding, growing, collecting, tasting and improving them. Since we were growing our own plants, we inevitably had more significant interactions with the nature around us. Although the ingredients for this dish change daily based on the available products (market and garden), its general requirements are set by the season. It is only available during a very specific part of the summer when everything flourishes (May-October).

ALMOST RIGHT from the start, we have had a little garden, in which, in addition to flowers and herbs, we also grow vegetables, such as pumpkin, courgettes (zucchini), Jerusalem artichokes and asparagus. For this dish, we wanted to take a giant leap: instead of using our own vegetables we would try to find them in the surrounding area, which we regarded as an extension of our own vegetable patch. Not only did we not

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what we asked of them, even though they thought our ideas were crazy. Sometimes they were the ones who established the guidelines we needed to follow, contributing their knowledge and expertise. In any event, it wasn't easy. No farmer in his right mind harvests his vegetables before they have reached a minimum profitable size: the heavier they are, the more money they bring in. This is why many of the unique producers we work with today have something in common: profitability is not their main objective. They grow produce for their own consumption and take any surplus to the market or sell it to us, but it's not how earn their living. The man who supplies us with baby squid goes fishing because he enjoys it. The same goes for the person who comes to our door with a basketful of xixas (wild mushrooms) after having spent a fantastic morning in the forest. For all of them, profitability ranks fifth or sixth on the list of values they demand from their products. Quality is at the top of the list. After all, this is what they themselves, their children or grandchildren are going to put in their mouths every day. And that maximum quality, that excellence, is precisely what we are looking for. Quantity doesn't matter to us: we want those carrots, those xixas and that cuttlefish, and we don't care if the supplier has one kilo, two kilos or twelve. We know that there is insecurity in providing exceptional produce. However, the comfort, regularity and consistency offered by the market of supply and demand also makes all products more or less the same. It evens out the differences that make them unique. But we want those peas. We know that they are not always going to be available. We also know that when we have them, they will be extraordinary. Even if we have so few that half the diners will not be able to try them. We will give them something equally wonderful instead.

FROM A PRACTICAL point of view, this attitude has forced us to work with more dishes, and with a wider range of products, because we never have produce in sufficient quantities to feed all our guests. Fortunately, our public has evolved to such a point that it is willing to indulge in a certain amount of culinary masochism. Our customers no longer view the fact that they cannot try the peas as a failure on our part or a reason to demand the complaint form, but as evidence of our values, an ethical commitment to the environment. Moreover, from a symbolic point of view, this way of working reinforces certain intangible assets: we are not only offering a product, but also knowledge. We draw on other people's philosophies and expertise to feed people a whole environment, a landscape. Eating an egg is not the same thing as eating an egg that has a story behind it. We like to eat stories.

MUGARITZ

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FINDING THESE unique products and establishing a common language with their producers has taken years, but now that search is imprinted in the genes of the restaurant; it has been assimilated to such an extent that all our staff are involved in it. Thus we have ensured that a large percentage of our products - milk, cheese, foie gras, veal, partridge, wild mushrooms, eggs - come from this type of source outside the usual markets. Today, we speak directly with the captains of fishing boats so that they keep the red bream or the muxarra that have bitten the hook intended for the hake. In the past, they would have had no other option than to throw them overboard or have them for their own lunch. These fishermen have had to adapt their way of fishing to the demands of the mainland, turning their back on what the sea offers them naturally. They have also shown us which fish can only be obtained from our own waters, and which fish they value but do not bother about because the effort is not worth it in monetary terms.

IN MANY CASES we have changed the way our suppliers work, since they have ended up cultivating things they would never have planted or turning their attention to details they would never have been interested in were it not for us. Some of them have even become true outsiders among their colleagues, who consider them to be crazy and eccentric (if not dangerous degenerates) for cultivating 5,000 baby carrots and extolling the virtues of pleasure, hedonism and texture. But after all these years they have come to share our goals and values, and quite rightly feel that the accolades we have received in recent times also belong to them.

MUG AR IT Z is also the road leading up to the restaurant; it includes the local environment. Perhaps things would have been different if we had been overwhelmed with bookings right from the start, if we had not had so much free time to look around and stare for hours into the never-ending stretch of green that enveloped us. The constant ringing of the phone would have interrupted this contemplation and prevented us from turning it into action. We could have used the conventional market channels and turned our back on the forest, our neighbours, even the seasons. But this was not the case, and now, among other things, Mugaritz proposes a different approach to nature. It is a window for our customers (mostly city dwellers like us), who can catch a glimpse of the environment that tries to find its place in our dishes. Mugaritz is really nothing more than our interpretation of the environment, the contrived and culture­ influenced filter through which we observe it, the standpoint from which we try to recreate it, the place where we stand and wonder, where we become restless and are filled with emotion.

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MUGARITZ

SURROUNDINGS

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32

MUGARITZ

WE BEG AN

FLOWERS

to include flowers in our dishes not only because of their obvious colourful appeal, but also because they fit perfectly into an approach that was suited to discreet, silent contributions: the flower of an aromatic herb contains and releases the essential flavour of the herb, albeit in a more subtle way. Its perfume is noticeably milder than the fragrance of the plant itself. In addition, flowers offer unexpected textures, a velvety quality that you cannot find anywhere else in nature and that, once in your mouth, catches you unawares. There is also something perverse in the act of eating a flower, and experience involving a plant's sexual organ and therefore opening the door to all kinds of erotic interpretations.

A FLOWER

represents one of the greatest endeavours nature makes to survive, enabling the plant to reproduce and spread. T he result is a delicate, fleeting object that only emerges once a year. If you miss it, you have to wait another cycle of seasons to see it again. Its symbolic value has always been important to us. The decision to include flowers in a dish must always be consistent with the amount of effort exerted. It should always be backed by serious reflection and never become a contrivance, or a decorative resource to attract attention and divert it from any shortcomings. Today, we use flowers as little as possible, only using them if the dish truly requires it or because, in a radical gesture, we have decided to make them the centrepiece of the dish, as with' Flowers, flowers, flowers' (2008, page 150), to have petals and more petals elegantly overwhelming the mouth.

THE CLO RO FIL IA

CLOROFILIA

(Chlorophilia) project was our way of recording the time when we were first obsessed with wild herbs. It gathered a selection of fifty wild plants and the original recipes that use them. Together, the images, texts and spaces were evocative, like a declaration of intent. It was a milestone project for us that presented our way of relating with the environment, a stance that has since inspired a whole way cooking and been widely influential. Basic botanical principles showed us that using herbs as a physical, inspirational or suggestive tool should grant our dishes a certain sense of purpose� we decided, like nature, to avoid gratuitous statements. The book also allowed us to continue working with people outside the world of gastronomy, in this case the biologist Unai Ugalde and the novelists Miguel Sanchez Ostiz and Hasier Etxeberria.

SURROUNDINGS

33

PRODUCE CALENDAR These charts show the seasons when ingredients are at their best for foraging and consumption, rather than reflecting market availability. Most ingredients here are either grown or obtained in the area around Mugaritz. A few others that often feature in our recipes are also included.

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