The sea arrives in the heart of Andorra with Catalan and French connotations

The combination of sea and mountain, essential for an understanding of Mediterranean cuisine, took the stage at Andorra Taste this afternoon alongside Marc Gascons, Juan Jiménez and Pascal Borrell, three acclaimed chefs who better than anyone else are able to put the best of both territories together in cutting-edge cookery with sturdy roots.

Marc is the third generation of a family of Girona restauranteurs, and learned his trade with greats such as Carme Ruscalleda and Martín Berasategui before returning to Els Tinars, the family restaurant where he won the first Michelin star in 2008. The owner of other leading establishments such as Bell-Lloc (Santa Cristina d’Aro, Girona) and Informal by Marc Gascons (Barcelona), in Andorra he runs the local high-mountain cuisine restaurant Bruna (Soldeu, Andorra) with Juan Jiménez who, after working the kitchen with Santi Santamaría and Martín Berasategui, is now executive chef of the luxury boutique hotel chain Serra Collection, of which the restaurant forms part.

At Andorra Taste, Gascons demonstrated three delicious sea/mountain creations inspired by Catalan traditions and crafted from local produce. He kicked off with a diamond "coca" bread with tomato spread, diced Jabugo ham, Jabugo mayonnaise and slivers of tuna loin, cured "for six hours with equal parts of fine salt and nitro salt. This gives us a very simple but very tasty appetiser for the sampling menu". Another of his creations combining flavours and territory was Duroc pig neck "cooked for twelve hours to keep it really sweet", along with his own version of a Gribiche sauce, caviar and cuttlefish tartare, and crunchy pig hoof with Palamós prawn tartare and mayonnaise with local herbs, "with boiled or half-boiled eggs for a more consistent texture". Finally, they served up sea cucumbers covered with ultra-thin slivers of "panceta" bacon, with delicious Ganxet beans in Iberian “pil-pil” sauce. “When the products are sublime, you have to give them the importance they deserve", he told the congress.

The eastern Pyrenees' Catalan inheritance

The first day of the congress was wound up by another leading expert in sea/mountain cuisine - Pascal Borrel, who runs the Le Fanal restaurant with his wife and children, in the French town of Banyuls-sur-Mer, where the Pyrenees die in the sea. With his Catalan origins, the chef admits that his cuisine "is inspired by my childhood in Santa Coloma, memories of the cooking of my paternal grandparents, with the obvious influence of France, the country I live in”. He also admits that he focuses on sea cuisine for reasons of proximity, "because I have a very close relationship with the fishermen who bring me fresh produce on a daily basis, and I also go out to sea with them to fish for oysters", he revealed.

Oysters, in fact, were the main attraction of his showcooking, with three recipes which also found room for dry-land ingredients. First up was a tartare of oysters and scallops "for better consistency", with radish shoots, a little lemon juice and some of the peel, olive oil and white pepper from Cameroon, in a wasabi cream to spice things up a little. This was followed by oyster jelly, using sea water in order to bring about a mixture of textures, setting the creaminess of the jelly against cucumber pearls, fresh caviar and lyophilised caviar. The final surprise was a stew of oysters, steam-cooked in their shells with oyster juice, sea water and wild herbs "to allow the flavours to impregnate the oyster as it opens", along with pieces of lightly fried bacon, freshly picked chanterelles and parsnip, and fish stock to remove the surface grease. An extraordinary menu this afternoon, definitely a good start to our appetite for a spectacular day tomorrow.