Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Winter 2014 - (Page 126)

"I've always looked at the product wIth love In my eyes," he bashfully admIts. PreP school Above from top left: Newly arrived shrimp; mise en place for gnocchi; artfully sculpted squid. 126 w w w. r i t z c a r lt o n . c o m decided to spend a week cooking there at a seaside restaurant called Miramar - a mom-and-pop with plastic chairs that had been open since the war. That's where he met Montse, the daughter who ran the front of the house. Love hit hard, both for Montse, and for the singular products of the mountains and sea of the Costa Brava. Three years later they married, and some time after that, Miramar earned its first Michelin star - Pérez never did return to France, but he never needed to. Montse still runs the front of the house at Miramar, now a destination for foodies worldwide, and trained the staff here at Enoteca. Pérez, who wears chef whites with the Barcelonato-Llançà coastline embroidered on the arm, shoots his sous chef a long, intense look, which is transferred by eyes to the back of the kitchen. Eye communication is compulsory in a small kitchen, and the chef's giant brown ones give complicated, silent direction in a single glance. It's as though the kitchen is programmed to function telepathically, in a dance of trust and experience. A team member in a crisp, navy apron brings over a silica mold that looks to be lined with bright pink mushrooms: It's a tartare of shrimp, dotted with vermillion flecks of roe. Then comes another mold, a tray filled with tiny tan half-moons: They're pignoli cream emulsified with olive oil, essentially pine nuts deconstructed and reconstructed. Pérez stands before his plate of silver instruments, using tweezers and scissors to plate the tartare with slices of boletus mushrooms, and the pignoli creams with untouched pine nuts: mushrooms of the sea and the land, pine nuts of the tree and of virtual magic. Just as Pérez's langoustines come from an old friend on the coast, so does the produce, all sourced from three farmers who work the land about 50 kilometers northeast, in San Antoni de Vilamajor. "I've always looked at the product with love in my eyes," he bashfully admits, and you can see his deep relationship to the vegetables, and the family that coaxes them from the land, as he deglazes baby carrots and cauliflower florets with one spoonful of crab consommé at a time, singing in Spanish while he cooks. These tiny carrots and florets of broccoli and cauliflower will give flavor and color to his signature crab stew, which really comprises individual nuggets, each one a classic distillation of the crab: a barely cooked claw, a tempura of coral roe, a quenelle of simple meat. As Pérez points out, fish stew is typical of the region, but to focus on the crab and innovate such surprising forms and flavors is what makes it unusual, what makes it "ours," he says warmly, as he slices through a nugget of tempura to reveal the deep orange inside. Then he fills a large square of Italian cooking cellophane with mushroom, olive oil, salt and consommé, ties it with twine into a package and sets it gently into a small copper sauce pan. This package will be snipped open and poured tableside, the light, impeccable scent enveloping the plate. "The real grace of the dish is when you open it," he says conspiratorially of the papillote. Opening a stew? Such a simple surprise, such a refined and yet childlike pleasure. Slipping uncharacteristically into the first person for a brief moment he smiles, "I like to transgress the rules. This is where I find happiness." http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Winter 2014

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Winter 2014
Contents
Contributors
Editor’s Letter
President’s Letter
Falling in Love With ... Bangalore
Design
Shopping
Gifts
Beauty
Jewelry
Watches
Tradition
Behind the Scenes
Family
Local Knowledge
Outdoors

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Winter 2014