Summer has come, and it is the time for a lighter cuisine, to harvest the treasures of the sea and of our orchards: princely lobsters next to humble (and delicious!) mackerels and sardines, peppers, tomatoes and aubergines at their sweetest and tastiest, cherries, apricots, peaches… Some people “discover” the Mediterranean at this time of the year; at Can Fabes, we plunge into its depths to bring you the best it has to offer. And this, of course, reflects in our menus. There are also some new developments: we have given the menu a new structure, allowing our customers to create a customised tasting menu, with several servings for every dish; and our new wine list, where there is only room for excellence. It is a notebook full of indispensable references, so that choosing the right wines, with its assistence and a little help from the sommelier, becomes a pleasure, a prelude to the further pleasures awaiting our customers.
When the heat becomes painfully intense, we appreciate a lighter, fresher, mouth-watering kind of cuisine. The flavours of salted fishes, such as anchovies and cod, are just as welcome as some grilled vegetables seasoned with herbs and olive oil. Typical Catalan summer dishes include escalivada (grilled peppers, aubergine and onions), esqueixada (salted cod and tomato salad) and empedrat (bean, tomato and salted cod salad).
Fruits are essential in the summer and they can be starters as well as desserts. A fruit salad is always refreshing, a Cantaloup melon with sweet Banyuls wine or port or the universally-acclaimed melon with Parma ham are all delicious, but a chilled melon eaten by the spoonful is a superb starter.
Summer cuisine tends to be less solid – literally: a gazpacho, a jellied consommé or a vichyssoise are perfect examples of the liquid cuisine of summer, although they lack the forcefulness of some other summer dishes, liquid – like bouillabaisse – or solid, such as Mediterranean spiny lobster with potatoes.
If we associate bouillabaisse and spiny lobsters with the summer it’s because this is the season of seafood cuisine, of sophisticated fish casseroles that express our culinary identity – I find them as ravishing, magical and seductive as the bonfires of Saint John’s eve.
The renewal of the menus will continue in the autumn, when one of the gastronomic events of the year is scheduled to take place at Can Fabes: Xavier Pellicer will join our team as chef and joint director. He will contribute to increase the level of excellence in our culinary offer – the whole will be far more than the sum of its parts. And this will also mean that there will always be a great cook present at Can Fabes, be it Santamaria or Pellicer, leading a great team.
