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.

Shiny green peas herald the end of winter. These delicious vegetables – especially those of the garrofal variety from Llavaneres, Barcelona – have a distinctive sweetness that one can seldom find in frozen peas. They can be cooked in a thousand ways – sautéed, stewed, pureed, boiled or just in an omelette.

The chill of early spring brought us artichokes, a vegetable I have a soft spot for: I love artichokes raw, cut into thin slices with the mandolin, baked or fried in chips or fritters. There can be few artichokes as tasty as those from the Vega Baja, near Alicante, or those from El Prat de Llobregat – you would never tell they are grown in the metropolitan area of Barcelona.

April showers bring May flowers… as well as one of the most highly-valued mushrooms: black morels, with their unmistakable looks. A morel omelette is a delicacy, but the classic morel recipe is à la crème, sautéed with a chopped shallot, some vegetable stock and a little (just a little!) cream. To find morels in the woods, my father told me to look for old charcoal clamps, because morel mycelia have a predilection for such an environment. But don’t get any high hopes – they have never been plentiful.

With the sacrifice of the Easter lamb, the symbolism of this wonderful meat becomes especially potent at this time of the year, while we can also enjoy a splendid suckling pig.

The lusty month of May is flaming red with cherries from the Jerte Valley in Extremadura or the Baix Llobregat near Barcelona. A handful of sweet cherries, simply rinsed, make for an excellent dessert, but they are also a perfect match for greasy meats like pork or duck.

Spring comes to an end with the arrival of sardines, mackerels, tuna and bonito, swimming along the Mediterranean coast in shoals in their yearly migration from June. They provide the final coda of colour and taste to the spring symphony we offer you every year at Can Fabes.

Make sure you don’t miss the gastronomic novelties we have in store for thecoming season:

1. Our new menu
2. Our Special Truffle Menu (until 20 March)
3. And our new Truffle special package (until 20 March)

And remember that you can make your reservations through this website.

Truffles are winter produce, ready to be eaten only after the first touch of frost hits the ground. They are a true gift to the palate, although every truffle smells and tastes different because of the differences in the soil where they have grown. Thus, truffles grown in soils affected by humidity excess  have a distinctive damp flavour, a lingering aftertaste which greatly diminishes their qualities, whereas other truffless are so aromatic and flavoursome that they could be compared even favourably to any other perfume.

Truffles are a mystery in themselves. André Malraux wrote in his Anti-Memoirs that “reflection is doubtless a way to delve into questions”. And just how many questions could one ask about truffles, a gift of nature that can only be understood with the passion of those who love the inimitable?

There is a huge number of recipes involving truffles. Some of this recipes have made culinary history, like the truffled pig’s trotters à la Sainte Menehould, which can be traced back to 1775. However, the best recipes with truffles tend to be also the simplest ones. I respect truffles too much to do some things with them. A  truffle wrapped up in paper and cooked in embers with a little bacon is simply glorious, whereas a whole truffle wrapped up in puff pastry or grated in a potato and cabbage soup can become a black pearl indeed. And this is why, to paraphrase Brillat-Savarin, after they have eaten some truffles with butter and wine, men become more pleasant and women become nicer.

This summer we enjoyed tomatoes, lettuces, string beans… Now we will gradually include in our dishes mushrooms, carrots and tubers. It is a warmer cuisine for a season, in the poet’s words, “of mists and mellow fruitfulness.”