The chef from Zamora expresses his “enormous concern” about the foreseeable disappearance of wild game, the basis of his cuisine
Barely 24 hours after receiving the Spanish Food Award at Madrid Fusión, Zamoran chef Luis Alberto Lera (1977) defended his hunting cuisine at the gastronomic summit and expressed his “enormous concern” at the foreseeable disappearance of wild game. A game that is the basis of his cuisine, to which he applies innovative methods in his restaurant Lera de Castroverde de Campos.
The very scarce wild partridge, the maid and the partridge released in hunting were the protagonists of his presentation. “In a time fraught with threats to hunting, with less field space, more pesticides and heavy machinery, small game is scarce and big game is growing to be a threat,” he said. “At worst, we are living the last years of wild hunting,” said Lera, who also cooks farmed species but who “undoubtedly” prefers wild ones. “They are very different. The wild partridge travels dozens of kilometers a day and eats insects: the loose partridge lives hardly moving and eats grain », she pointed out.
“If wild game ceased to exist it would be a catastrophe for me as a cook and as a hunter. It is a serious problem that is not reported because there are very few game consumers,” concluded Lera. «We would be stopping enjoying a unique animal. Hunting is something different. Nothing is repeated. Each piece is unique and we kill it to honor it by eating it », she argued.
To demonstrate the difference between one species and another, Lera cooked a larger, more muscular and aromatic wild partridge, and a loose partridge with the same complex traditional marinade: oil, carrot, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, celery and white wine in the one that keeps the bird “between 48 hours and ten days looking for the most primitive flavor”. “If we don’t improve the traditional technique, we’ll stay with the usual one,” says this chef from Tierra de Campos, who has a Michelin star and a green star for his commitment to sustainable development, and who claims “the fundamental role of hunting » in the development of the rural world, to which he dedicated his award. For him, hunting cuisine is “a tradition that encompasses all the gastronomic benefits that now prevail: healthy, local, zero kilometer, sustainable and that promotes the circular economy.”
The Lera hotel restaurant is one of the most prestigious specialized in hunting in Spain. With a menu of pure avant-garde disguised as tradition, it combines vacuum cooking, the siphon or oriental nuances that coexist with traditional preparations and flavors. As a result of the evolution of the restaurant that the Lera family founded in 1973, it has rediscovered traditional Castilian cuisine with a very personal style. With the generational change and Luis Alberto Lera in the management since 2008, he is committed “to keeping the culinary heritage alive” and to “enriching the recipe book with the application of new techniques”.
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