Recovering Grandmothers’ Cooking (II)

Bep Al·lès / Ciutadella – One important aspect is that all the dishes we aim to recover from Menorcan cuisine should be prepared with products from Menorca. Together we must promote the consumption of local produce, what the great master of gastronomic writers, Josep Pla, called “little-travelled cuisine” and what today is known as “km 0 cuisine”.

Local cuisine must be made with local products so that it retains all its flavour and essence and remains faithful to its roots. For this reason, it is worth recovering the habit of our grandmothers and mothers of going to the market and buying from the small shops that still exist — those that sell fruit, vegetables, cheeses, cured meats, honey and oil from Menorca.

We must promote and educate people about our cuisine and the importance of preparing it with local products, not only because of their unique flavours, but also because this supports the primary sector: farmers and fishermen, market gardeners, artisan sausage and cheese makers, honey collectors and many others who keep the gears of our local economy moving.

Perhaps the time has come to call on public institutions to achieve something that seems quite simple but still does not exist in many bars and restaurants: within two years, at least 15% of the dishes on their menus or daily set menus should be Menorcan cuisine, and within five years this percentage should increase to at least 25%. Will we achieve it?

It is everyone’s task, and we must work together, because otherwise years will pass and we will still be discussing the same debate — a debate that already began in the 1980s. For now we settle for what that song by Ja t’ho diré says, with its “everything is fine”, while from one generation to the next almost 60% of the dishes cooked by previous generations are being lost. One only needs to look at old Menorcan recipe books to see dishes that were very common fifty years ago and that today have become relics of the past — something that is deeply worrying.