APICIUS 47. Joan Roca, Nacho Manzano, Paco Morales, Lera, Cerdeño & Madres (eBook)

Format: eBook

Distribution: worldwide

Language: Spanish and English

Release: December 15, 2025

      Before the stars, the cameras, and the rankings, there were other hands. Hands that didn't measure or weigh, but knew. Hands that cooked by instinct, by love, by necessity, and by habit. Women's hands. Mothers' hands. They cooked long before their children dreamed of becoming chefs. Before there were menus, tasting menus, or avant-garde techniques. They were already cooking. They cooked to nourish, to care, to gather. To turn little into much. To make the table always a place to return to.

      This issue of Apicius is a tribute. To those who came before. To those who laid the foundations unknowingly. To those who cooked without signing dishes, but signed destinies. Joan Roca, Paco Morales, Nacho Manzano, Iván Cerdeño, and Luis Lera are, today, benchmarks of Spanish cuisine. But before becoming great chefs, they were attentive children. They were children who smelled of sofrito and bread with chocolate. They were silent apprentices of un-schooled teachers. They were witnesses to knowledge passed down with wooden spoons, in low voices and with fervent souls. From their mothers they learned to observe, to respect the product, to understand patience, to cook as one cares. To give without asking for anything in return. And also—though they didn't know it then—to move. Today, their cuisine has technique, recognition, and discourse. But when we scratch beneath the surface, when we get to the essential, what we find is still that legacy: a way of loving through fire. To speak of succession is not just to speak of generations. It is to speak of gratitude, memory, identity, and to recognize that the future is cooked with what has been inherited.

      Because they didn't appear on covers (until today), but they are in every dish. Because they didn't write recipes, but tattooed them in memory. Because they didn't have stars, but they were guides. This issue of Apicius is for them. For all the mothers who gave life and craft. For those who cooked before cooking was art. For those who continue to teach, unknowingly, through their children.

This edition features 29 traditional recipes prepared by Montserrat Fontané, Olga Sánchez, Nati Garcia, Minica Collantes, and Consuelo López.

And also 29 contemporary creations by El Celler de Can Roca, Casa Marcial, Noor, Lera, and Iván Cerdeño.

Montserrat Fontané (Joan Roca's mother)

• Roman-style Squid

• Montse's Cannelloni

• Baby broad beans with black sausage and mint

• Pig's trotters with turnips

• Beef shank with morels

• Traditional Catalan cream

  

Joan Roca (El Celler de Can Roca)

• Vegetable consommé

• Fresh and ripe. Beetroot and apple sorbet, grapefruit foam, salted zucchini and impregnated kohlrabi. Parsnip and mushroom purée, grapefruit reduction, pickled cauliflower and shallot

• Glazed eggplant, flame-roasted eggplant, pickled eggplant, creamy eggplant, peanut and tamarind sauce, fennel miso, citrus gel and buckwheat

• Grilled tear peas with sake lees and green curry, pickled wild garlic, kohlrabi flower, pea purée and pickled wasabi

• Guinea fowl with cabbage, cabbage demi-glace, fermented red cabbage, sautéed black cabbage with butter, Brussels sprouts with mustard beurre blanc and grilled Frisetta green

• Catalan cream with wild strawberries

 

Olga Sánchez (Nacho Manzano's mother)

• Corn tortos with fried egg

• Stewed moritos

• Fabada (bean stew)

• Roman-style hake

• Rice with Pitu de Caleya (local chicken)

• Rice pudding

  

• Torto, yolk, and salted sardine

• Cod skin, eggplant, and truffle

• Moros y Cristianos (rice and beans)

• Red beans, cranberries, and cured beef

• Hake in its essence, salad juice, and hollandaise

• Rice pudding, caramel crystal, and truffle

 

• Cordoban salmorejo

• Nati's Tripe

• Roasted peppers with crystal shrimp

• Sparragus swiss chard with fried egg

• Torrijas (French toast)

 

Paco Morales (Noor) 

• Chicken curd, saffron, egg yolk, date, and caviar

• Vegetable menestra with creamy corn and black mole

• Beluga lentil, Wagyu A5, and sheep butter

• Red shrimp with bisque emulsion, chocolate picada, and Iberian bacon

• Carob cake

Consuelo López (Iván Cerdeño's mother) 

• Friday Soups

• Manchego Pisto

• Stewed potato omelet

• Toledan Partridges

• Garlic Rabbit

• Cream-filled wind fritters

 

Iván Cerdeño (Iván Cerdeño) 

• Frozen cheese and onion slice

• Pickles, salted fish, and Cornicabra juice

• Cauliflower tart, pickled young walnuts, and truffle

• Wild boar and spices

• Hare sabayon al senador

• Pumpkin, yogurt, and tarragon

• Garlic soup in a pan

• Beans with hare

• Castilian menestra

• Stewed wild pigeon

• Stewed lamb's trotters

• Flavored sheep's milk

 

Luis Lera (Lera) 

• Entreasada lettuce with pigeon cachuelas

• Scallion in lard with wild pigeon and Zamorano cheese

• Partridge in pepitoria with chanterelles

• Crayfish and garlic rabbit

• Wild boar snout with tomato

• Barley, cocoa, and stout