It's Christmas, the chefs hang up their jackets in the restaurant, but they wear their aprons at home. Most of them have to prepare the food or some star dish for the family lunch. There is no other option. Theirs hope that this mastery of cooking that has led them to obtain a Michelin star in the last year will be demonstrated in one of the most anticipated meals of the year. Some, following some home tradition, share stoves with the family.
This is the case of Oriol Castro, chef and owner of the Enjoy restaurant in Barcelona, crowned this year with three stars by the French guide, who this Monday will help his mother-in-law, Maite Fandos, prepare a broth based on clams, mussels, mouths and lobster, which will serve as a preamble to a lobster rice, which he makes, and a baked lamb shoulder. Another important meal awaits the cook on the 26th, St. Stephen's Day, led by his mother, Montserrat Forns, who cooks an escudella every year, which she describes as “deep, because my mother cooks very well, and I have become a chef.” for her”. It will not be the only dish on the table: “We are customary, although the important thing is to be with family, and there is always meat in sauce with mushrooms, roasted chicken with raisins and pine nuts, Torreblanca panettone and nougat.”
Paco Morales is also one of traditions, who this year also climbed to the three-star podium with the Noor restaurant, in Córdoba. For a decade, he and his father, with whom he also shares a name, have prepared, after the previous night of roast lamb in sauce, a meatball stew, to which they put everything, snout and bacon included. It is the main dish, after the prawns and prawns, and before the lemon cake prepared by his sister, Nati Morales.
In Daroca de Rioja (La Rioja), where Venta Moncalvillo is located, at the home of the Echapestro brothers, who this year obtained their second star, it will smell like seafood, thistle with almonds and fish. “We don't get complicated, we always wink at traditional cuisine and good products,” says Ignacio Echapestro. He is in charge, as on Christmas Eve, when he makes a “restorative” fish soup, of preparing the Christmas feast, which consists, as he details, of a thistle sandwich with almonds, baked sea bass with baked potatoes, endive salad the garden, as well as an assortment of fish croquettes for the children, and a fruit compote. The selection of sparkling wines and white wines is made by his brother Carlos Echapestro.
The banquet at the home of Sara Peral, chef at the OSA restaurant in Madrid, which this year, seven months after opening, entered the Michelin firmament, pays tribute to her people. “As a large part of the family is of Extremadura origin, an assortment of classic recipes could not be missing from the table, such as chorizo, salchichón, Cabecero, shoulder. Everything from the massacre of the previous year, and if it is from the town much better,” explains Peral. There is also seafood on her Christmas table, “we are about getting our hands dirty and shaking heads. Prawn, white shrimp, spider crab legs and crab, which are cooked that same morning.” Following another tradition, established by her grandmother, who traveled from Valdemoro to Arenal Street, where the Ferpal cafeteria was located, closed in 2021, they serve a selection of pâtés and creams, which bring back such good memories. They also smoke salmon, which they cut into thin slices and put on toasted bread with butter. Before the main course they serve stew broth, “which each invited family brings to share their own recipe,” and for those who prefer meat they make goat at a low temperature and roasted in the oven, and for those who prefer to continue with the sea, creamy rice. with lobster. “We are more salty than sweet, but we put the typical Christmas sweets.”
The Asturian Marcos Granda, who this year got a star in the two restaurants open in 2023, in TOKI (Madrid) and Marcos (Gijón), enjoys a menu, which he describes as “very simple”, with a seafood soup and some fish in stew For the second course, “this year it's Conil snapper, with baked vegetables.” He tops it off, he says, with lots of Christmas candy and shortbread. And with champagne.
Also in charge of the kitchen at these parties is Javier Sanz, owner of Cañitas Maite, in Casas-Ibáñez (Albacete), a town where OBA is also located, with a Michelin star, which this year, together with his partner Juan Sahuquillo, They have received the first distinction in this guide at the Cebo restaurant, at the Urban Hotel in Madrid. “At Christmas, I eat with my parents and siblings and some of the people we have in internships.” The night before he usually prepares the same sea bream recipe that his grandmother made with preserved tomato sauce, with onion and a few slices of lemon embedded in the back of the fish, and for this Monday he will put a kid in the oven, which he buys at the town, with salt and pepper, which will be served accompanied by potatoes, which are cut irregularly and confit with garlic in olive oil. To whet your appetite, a stew from the family recipe, with chicken, pularda, partridge, ham, backbone, pig's trotter and vegetables. “I like to cook forcefully these days.” He closes the menu with some chocolate and cream cakes.
In Llucmajor (Mallorca), Andreu Genestra, who in November recovered the two stars, the red and the green, which he had lost due to the restaurant's transfer, makes a roast suckling pig marinated in lemon, salt and black pepper, which he accompanies with a roast potato and an endive salad. Before, he serves an almond soup with poultry broth and crushed unroasted almonds. For dessert, a burnt rum cremadillo with coffee, banana and almonds, in addition to nougat and marzipan. The 26th is also a holiday and he cooks cannelloni, and he warns that they are not leftovers from the previous days, but that he begins to make them 48 hours before: “On the 24th I make roast beef and pork with rancid wine, the next day I chop it and at night I roll it, on the 26th I cook it with the béchamel.” He also makes a vegetable coca, and tops it off with a stuffed ensaimada.
The Asturian Nacho Manzano, who this year added to the two stars a green one at Casa Marcial, in La Salgar, and a red one at the NM restaurant, in Oviedo, does not complicate things too much. “These are dates when you arrive saturated with food and what you want is to be with your family and eat something simple and delicious.” He explains that his table does not lack natural cockles, nor rock fish – mullet, goat or sole – which he flours and fries in sunflower oil, and which he accompanies with a garnish of white rice with lemon and parsley. He also cooks some tripe in the Asturian style, with a smaller cut than those from Madrid, and closes the menu with some empanadas made of cured meat and goat cheese, or bonito, and Christmas sweets.
Hand in hand with his grandmother, Elvira Abejón, Carlos Casillas, whose restaurant Barro, in Ávila, debuted this year among the stars, gets into the pout. And he does it to cook fish soup, suckling pig stuffed with Iberian pork tenderloin with jowls around it, truffle and spinach, served with a sauce beurre blanc —made with butter added to a white wine reduction with shallots—, as well as some clams with green sauce and cocochas al pilpil. For dessert, a strudel apple, “it is my weakness, hot, with ice cream, and a lot of bubbles to accompany it.”
In Bordeaux, his homeland, chef David Grussaute spends Christmas, who this year has achieved the first red glow for the Unic restaurant, in Sant Josep de sa Talaia (Ibiza). “We take something typical such as crepinettes of pork with truffle, which we drink with a dry white wine, in addition to the classic foie gras, which we prepare at home and which we serve with a Sauternes-type wine, and a leg of lamb or roast beef with Bordeaux mushrooms, green beans and potatoes ”, he details on the other end of the phone. They finish with a cheese board and a Christmas chocolate log. “Wines are very important in our food, and in addition to the whites, there is always a good red and champagne,” concludes Grussaute.
At the home of Juan Carlos García, another chef awarded this year with the star received at Vandelvira, in Baeza (Jaén), they eat, in honor of the family's Catalan origin, the classic cannelloni, in addition to seafood, in this case, shrimp white and trammel prawn from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, which is cooked in boiling water with salt (30 grams per liter of water, he warns), for 40 seconds. “Before it starts to float, I put it in cold water, because I like to serve it warm.” There is also no shortage of good sausages on the table, he points out, like the salchichón from Sendra, in Vic — “I put it in tacos, with anchovies and almonds” —, also a coppa and bacon with black truffle.
Another winner in this edition of the tire guide was José Luis Espino, from the Bevir restaurant, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, who this year will prepare a sea bass in salt, with green sauce, sweet potato puree and chestnuts. In addition, he will cook red cabbage with raisins, pine nuts and orange zest, as well as Galician-style prawns, “like octopus, with its paprika.” And he closes the meal with a puff pastry with pastry cream and fruit. In Víctor Suárez's kitchen, in La Orotava, where Haydée is located, also with an award this year, tribute is paid to the cook's grandmother, after whom the restaurant is named. “I make their muddy goat, which I prepare in brine, vacuum pack in lard, garlic, parsley, palm pepper and salt, and cook at a low temperature, to later give it a touch of roasting at 200 degrees with the pasta for on. I accompany it with baked potatoes.” Before the main course, he prepares chicken soup, some seafood starters and Iberian ham, and closes with Christmas sweets.
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