NAVARRA GOURMET

Lettuce in the mist

Iñaki Rodaballo “Café Niza”, in Pamplona

“It's important to create dishes that surprise our customers”

Iñaki Rodaballo, chef at the Café Niza in Pamplona, opened the first day of the congress with a demonstration of three original recipes which are in line with his idea of "surprising customers". This chef from Pamplona explained that his cuisine "is based on inspiration, technique and respect for the product”.

“Why not bring a Churro (elongated sweet fritter) into our cuisine? Rodaballo wondered, and this led him to create some Navarre-grown asparagus-style Churros accompanied by a cream of green asparagus to replace the customary hot chocolate. "With this tapa, our aim is to bring some fun into our cuisine. We are researching into other culinary paths which also have their followers" he affirmed.

The Pamplona chef continued along these same lines to create some tricoloured potato flowers. "What better way to surprise someone with breakfast in bed! We generally put a flower on the tray, so we'll make some flowers with a well-known technique, namely dehydrated potato purée.", he indicated. This dish has been thought out right down to the smallest detail, and even uses organic oil.

His third dish, and which gave its name to the paper, arose out of a personal experience: the moment in which the mist rises off the fields of lettuces in the market gardens of La Magdalena, on the outskirts of Pamplona. "I wanted to transmit a sense of freshness through this dish, which uses César lettuces. It's a moist tapa, which offers the sensation of humidity with beetroot shoots, with connotations of freshly cut grass. The mist effect is obtained with dry, chopped ice". The final result is achieved by the customer, who waters the "plant" with a vinegar pipette, to taste.

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