The mother of all KITCHENS

Joan Roca grew up among pots and pans. He can still re­call that aroma of onion slowly sautee­ing dur­ing the day so that the sofre­git sauce would be ready for the next day. Can Roca never closed. Not even for Christ­mas, when he and his broth­ers would cel­e­brate the tió – that Cata­lan tra­di­tion of hit­ting a log until it gives up its treats – along­side the din­ers in his par­ents’ restau­rant. “It was the most nat­ural thing in the world to us. Ours was a fam­ily restau­rant, lo­cated in a work­ing class neigh­bour­hood in the out­skirts of Girona, which was open all hours and to every­one. Our mother was our main source of knowl­edge, both in terms of recipes and val­ues, which were the most im­por­tant thing of all. They were val­ues such as hu­mil­ity, sol­i­dar­ity, ef­fort, hard work and au­then­tic­ity, among many oth­ers,” says the chef of El Celler de Can Roca, named the best restau­rant in the world on two oc­ca­sions.

Now, in trib­ute to this ma­ter­nal legacy, Roca has writ­ten, along with his fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor and friend Sal­vador Brugués, a book that has lit­tle to do with the tech­ni­cal as­pects of cook­ery, but that pays homage to their moth­ers – Montse and Maria, re­spec­tively – by bring­ing to­gether sim­ple and tra­di­tional recipes that they feel are es­sen­tial in trans­mit­ting what their moth­ers gifted them: “a love of cook­ing.”

Roca stresses that Cuina mare (Columna) is a book based on two basic pil­lars: fam­ily and joint ef­fort. It in­volved his mother, Montser­rat, her two grand­sons, Martí, Josep Roca’s son, and Marc, Joan’s son, as well as the book’s co-au­thors. The book of­fers some 80 recipes that are “free from com­pli­ca­tions or tech­ni­cal as­pects and re­spect the spirit of the orig­i­nals that in­spired them, so that any­one can cook them at home.”

Ac­cord­ing to Roca, the book’s recipes are those that the fam­ily cooks for it­self, both in the fam­ily restau­rant and at home, and also cover a wide ter­ri­to­r­ial area, from Guil­leries in the Llémena val­ley (where their moth­ers are from) to the Gironès and Em­pordà re­gions. “We re­pro­duced the dishes over the sum­mer and it pro­vided an op­por­tu­nity to show our chil­dren how to cook,” he says.