It is 10:30am at the Mercat of Santa Eulària and the children from the summer school of the Peña Deportiva sit on the stairs waiting for a cooking masterclass to prepare salad pagesa with the chefs Cristina Serra, of the Restaurant Rincón de Pepe, and Matthieu Savariaud of Es Terral Restaurant. A cooking activity within a new season of ‘Tasta Sabors al Mercat’, organized by Pimeef, the Consell de Ibiza and the City Council of Santa Eulària.
The products used in cooking “this salad that we used to make with our grandparents and parents”, Serra explains to the children, are: potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, oil and salt, although “each house has its own way of doing things”. Next, Serra details the preparation process: boil the potato and the egg; roast in the oven or on the fire the bell pepper, tomato and onion; peel them; mash the potato with a fork; break up the vegetables with your hands and the help of a knife to mix them; add olives “to give it a little color and flavor”, emphasizes the chef; and, finally, add chopped garlic, oil and sea salt from the island. “Apart from cooking the food, if we put it on a nice plate, it brightens up the table a little more”, says the chef.
In the middle of July on Ibiza temperatures rise and “as you know it’s very hot”, says Savariaud to his young audience. For this reason, after the masterclass the young people were able to taste the watermelon gazpacho with cucumber and Ibizan goat cheese cooked by this chef and also skewers of this Ibizan fruit. The fruit is what the children liked the most. Some of them, such as Iker, Álvaro, Bautista or Clara confirm that the watermelon has been “refreshing”, but the gazpacho, on the contrary, “had a strange taste, it tasted a lot like garlic”.
The two professionals qualify the experience of the masterclass with the children as “super fun” and “great”.
Cooking can be educational
Pimeef’s technician, Eva Cano, stresses the importance of the “educational part” in teenagers to “promote local products in a fun way, outside of the school environment”. Savariaud recalls that “in summer the land gives us things to hydrate us” and encourages the youngest to go to the market and ask the vendors for local seasonal products.
In addition to the Pagosa salad or the watermelon gazpacho, the chefs recommend a melon soup or any fruit, in the case of Serra, and a vegetable ratatouille in the case of Savariaud, for summer nourishment.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.