OP: La Cocina de Santi Santamaria and El Gusto de la Diversidad (2 vols)
Everest, Spain, 2000, 2001. Hardcover. Very Good.
In the early 2000s, Spain exploded onto the global scene as an epicenter of creative culinary foment. Among those leading the charge was Santi Santamaria (1957–2011), the first Catalan chef to earn three Michelin stars at his restaurant Can Fabes.
While his contemporaries Ferran Adria and Juan Mari Arzak pushed Spanish cuisine into the avant garde, developing molecular gastronomy techniques which were soon imitated in seemingly every fine dining restaurant in the world and now exist comfortably in the vernacular, Santamaria staunchly championed tradition.
Santimaria’s La Cocina de Santi Santamaria (2000), first and foremost, is an ode to Catalan ingredients and culture with over half the content devoted to descriptions and histories of the region and its offerings. The latter portion comprises the dishes from Can Fabes which celebrate the bounty of Catalan’s waters and fields. His follow up book, El Gusto de la Diversidad (2001), highlights the chef’s developing interest in culinary influences beyond Spain, first from among other Mediterranean traditions, then from farther beyond, particularly from Asia.
