Visiting Asturias /1

Luxurious valleys, narrow canyons, impervious tops, woods that descend to the sea where the waves pour down on the irregular coast, sometimes steep but offering, here and there, small beaches of thin sand. The incredible landscape of Asturie, so little Spanish yet so fascinating, is the cover of a natural world that supplies excellent raw materials, from both sea and countryside. However – the same goes for Galicia and Cantabria, the two comunidades autónomas “sisters” – such an incredible, perhaps unique richness of gastronomic products has never produced any avantgarde cuisine, in comparison to that of Euskadi, the Basque region what is so similar from an environmental point of view; over here, good food is only a matter of tradition because it represents a simple occasion to share, and thus found (and still does) its acme in the meals based on Asturian fabada, a soup made with fabes, large white local beans with a thin skin and a buttery texture, in a tasty pork stock, paired with the three traditional local cuts: chorizo, morcilla and pancetta.

Something, however, is changing. Asturian cuisine is giving some strong signs that it wants to enter the third millennium as two top representatives seem to be chasing the kitchen superstars according to the top-list created by the guru of Iberian critique, namely Rafael García Santos, in Lo Mejor de la Gastronomía. Both Nacho Manzano of Casa Marcial and Marcos Morán of Casa Gerardo deserve a very high mark, 9: as much as Andoni Aduriz, that is to say, or as French chefs Bras and Ducasse, or again Cracco and Scabin.

Putting comparisons aside, our Asturian meals were transformed into as many extraordinary sensorial experiences: the chefs were at their best, at ease when using sublime raw materials – it’s impossible to find better pescados y mariscos than in the secluded North-western Spain, but even the meat was perfect: lamb and piglets, mountain roosters... However, they have two different styles because they have had two different experiences. Manzano is more mature, while 34-year-old Marcos Morán seems to be still «a volcano full of lava that breathes fire into his creations». Product is his dogma; his useful brake is represented by his father, 60-year-old Pedro Morán, the element of balance in this couple (Marcos represents the fifth generation), and remind of other senior-junior pairs, such as Vivalda, Santini... It’s a dialogue of generations: «Marcos wrestles with the devil inside him and the diplomatic wisdom of his father», writes Santos.

The result, however, is well defined: their cuisine is vivid, basic, powerful, using a limited number of elements that have an almost ancestral feeling. Pedro is very busy: the son holds in his hands the keys to his greatness and while he may sometimes exaggerate, and loose his balance, this is only because of an excessive personality. The tasting menu - which includes as the last savoury dish the famous fabada: for very strong stomachs, at that point of the comida – offers some notes of unquestionable excellence: the Smoked sardine on beer and tomato foam is perfect; the Cabeza del Pixin (monkfish with plankton cream in a fish and seaweed stock) is almost a iodic primordial soup; in the Bacalao blanco y negro the fish is paired with creamy pil pil, black garlic, a plankton wafer and a milk foam and results in the signature dish of this duo as in the place, just like in the kitchen, the opposite elements (black and white, sweet and savoury, iodium and garlic…) find a perfect balance. After that, it’s the turn of the Salmonete con coliflor picante, a mullet served with a spicy cauliflower cream and macadamia nuts, and you realise that Marcos Morán is already knocking on the door of the stars’ Olympus.

1. to be continued