Fefo Nieves has spent 40 years rescuing traditional recipes from Lanzarote. The most humble ones, the ones that define the gastronomic culture of a people and are part of their identity.
In an interview with the radio program Más de Uno Gourmet of Radio Lanzarote, Nieves talks about the process of making the book and the history of the island's gastronomy.
“I have many notebooks with recipes that people have given me. I said, when I retire I will dedicate myself to the book, but then came the jams and the mojo”, referring to Mermeladas Lala and Mojos Fefo, which he makes with his wife.
Finally, he decided to focus on the project, which had had several attempts “with one foundation or another” in the past, and present it to the Cabildo de Lanzarote, which gave him its full support.
There are 164 recipes. “The most humble of the traditional gastronomy of Lanzarote. What is there is gastronomic culture. If you don't know what they eat, you don't know what a people is like”, he says.
“When you go to the archaeological sites of our aborigines, you find limpets, you find scales and spines of old fish. The old fish is the best fish to preserve in salt. That is culture”, he exemplifies.
“Twenty dishes every Monday”
“On Mondays, which is when my son, who is a professional cook, was off, we made 20 dishes”. Fran Belín was in charge of the literary part of the book and the photographer was Moises Acosta.
The first time, “Moisés arrives with a lot of spotlights, cameras… He sets up the whole stand where we pack the jams and mojos, I say, what a marvel, and when we start taking out dishes, he says no, I'm not doing anything here, to the street”.
“So, at home, which is a country house, we started taking dishes to various corners looking for the sun. Then we ate all that. There is nothing false about it. Everything is real. And that's what I like”.
Homages, forgotten ingredients and the nights of the Chiringuito Tropical
Nieves explains that the book includes elaborations with products that are no longer used in Lanzarote, “they have been forgotten”, such as mutton, “which is incredibly good”.
Many recipes include a small tribute to the people who gave him the recipes and bear their names, such as “Arroz con pollo Lola”.
Precisely that rice “is already on the menu of El Chiringuito Tropical in Playa Blanca”, explains Nieves, who anticipates that, in addition, the southern restaurant will dedicate its 'Dinners of a summer night' to rescuing and rethinking several recipes from the book.
“These recipes will be the basis on which to evolve. The book is for cooks, who are the ones who really know, to evolve the recipes and do what they have to do”, shares the author.
Innovation in the recent history of Lanzarote cuisine
The introduction of novelties in the traditional cuisine of Lanzarote is not new. Nieves relates that between the 50s and 70s of the last century the wealthiest ladies of Arrecife began to ask their cooks for what they saw in their trips to Las Palmas, Tenerife, the peninsula or what they learned in the magazines that arrived by boat to Arrecife.
“They asked them for fish soup, ‘but now you add a little pernod’, which is delicious, a marvel”. I have some recipes of that type. In Tinajo or in Femés, where I was born or in San Bartolomé, pernod, they didn't even know what it was”, exemplifies the author.
The connection of the Lanzarote sailors in the, at that time, “French part of Africa, which was the puddle, there was a lot of relationship and they began to bring French things like peaches in syrup”, which was not known on the island and that some islanders called at the beginning 'tin potatoes'.
“French cheeses were also starting to come, it was something else. That's where Lanzarote's cuisine began to evolve”.
