The Gastronomy of Mallorca.
Mallorca, the nerve center of the Balearic Islands, captivates both residents and visitors through the different senses, but if there is one in common for all who know it, it is taste through its extensive gastronomy.
Its raw materials and its dishes can fall in love more than its landscapes. The island’s Mediterranean gastronomy is unique, and has a multitude of products that you can hardly resist.
There are many who affirm that the gastronomy of Mallorca is one of those that best represents Mediterranean cuisine, including myself.
A little history.
How could it be otherwise, thanks to the number of different cultures and civilizations that have inhabited this wonderful Mediterranean island, Mallorcan gastronomy is influenced by the Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Jews and Christians, all of whom drink from the source of the most exquisite gastronomic resources in the world, the Mediterranean, its coasts and islands.
As historical references in the fifteenth century, the Archduke Luis Salvador of Austria in his work “Die Balearen” was the first person to refer to the kitchen on the island, its products and who and how they consumed it, but let’s talk about the present Well, that’s what we’re interested in.
The Mallorcan pantry, its raw material.
A festival of vegetables, fish and meat are part of the great Majorcan pantry, and these foods are the true protagonists in the great classics of Mallorcan cuisine.
It is so difficult for me to talk about all the products that this wonderful land produces and grows, since they are so wide and varied, that perhaps more than a post, I could need a book.
But to begin to tell you, as a product of the land we can perhaps highlight the well-known potatoes from Sa Pobla, the Mallorcan tomato or the purple carrot. The olives and their oils, the red peppers, and the hundreds of aromatic plants that, wild or cultivated, form part of the Mallorcan landscape.
As for its meat and fish, pork and lobster occupy privileged positions on an extensive list that begins with them, but we would not know where it would end.
Typical dishes of the Gastronomy of Mallorca.
Next, I am going to name some of the dishes and products made with the best raw materials on the island, to start opening your mouth and for you to realize the variety of native products from the islands that I never tire of using, preparing and reinventing. as a private chef in the Balearic Islands.
Sausages and Meats
La Sobrasada, the best known and undoubtedly the star sausage of the islands. Made with different pork meats, carefully selected and seasoned with paprika, black pepper and salt. This delicacy can be cooked as a single dish or as an accompaniment to a multitude of recipes, I particularly like both, which is your favorite?
The Mallorcan sausage or butifarrón, made with Mallorcan pork meat, seasoned and boiled, characteristic for its light color and its ability to be eaten raw or roasted. Another of the delicacies of Mallorcan sausages, for me always the favorite sausage of Spanish gastronomy
And that Mallorcan sausage, a delight that is made with the same dough as the sobrassada, longer and finer, being able to find it sweet or spicy.
I also love Camallot, which together with sobrassada is one of the best-known products of the Balearic Islands, made with products from the black pig of Mallorca and seasoned with salt, aniseed, pepper and black pepper. If you have never tried it, you are missing out. a very special sausage.
Regarding the use of meat in the dishes, we find spectacular recipes that leave no one indifferent to any of my privileged guests who hire my chef service at home, such as cooking with poultry with partridges, quail and thrushes stewed, or hares and rabbits, that give rise to dishes as exquisite as brut rice.
And of course the almost ubiquitous pork, whose lard sometimes seasons more typical Mallorcan dishes than olive oil itself. The pork together with the lamb are the protagonists of the famous “frits” mixing meat and offal with vegetables and greens.
Very famous lately “Les Pilotes”, homemade meatballs to lick your fingers
Fish .
Fish soups and broths, (such as backgammon jonquillo) of fish with more than 60 types of native fish, Majorcan-style fish is another of the most typical recipes, made with various types of fish such as grouper or sea bream , which sit on a layer of potatoes and vegetables and to which, as a final touch, pine nuts and raisins are added.
Vegetables and cereals
The use of vegetables in the Balearic Islands throughout its history provides us with delicacies such as trempats, drowned carrots and the well-known stuffed aubergines
Surely you will be surprised, the quality of Majorcan rice dishes, we could say unparalleled because not only for the quality, taste and presentation of a rice with lobster, it is the global experience that only the island of Mallorca allows you, Imagine in a villa on the seafront of the Mediterranean, together with the most important people in your life where the colors and smells are the purest you can ever perceive, this, I can assure you, is an experience that is not forgotten in life .
And now we go to the sweet moment…
Everyone knows the Mallorcan ensaimadas, but this time we are not going to put them first, putting Cocas in the first place, both sweet and salty as it is another of the delicacies of the island of Mallorca. The sweet ones for me are the best from Valldemossa, I include it in many of my desserts and of the salty ones my favorite is coca de trampó. An exquisite and healthy appetizer or entrée, made with flour, oil, water and salt, imitating a kind of pizza base to which the best vegetables from the Mallorcan garden are added.
A special section deserves the soft Majorcan Cuartos and delicious sponge cakes that accompanied with vanilla ice cream generate a gastronomic pleasure for the sweetest sweet tooth.
And finally, we cannot forget one of the most traditional and well-known desserts, the Mallorcan ensaimada. It is made with basic ingredients such as water, flour, sourdough, eggs, yeast, sugar and lard. These can be classic or filled with various flavors. The truth is that it is the perfect accompaniment for any kind of breakfast or snack, and they go really well with almost any type of filling.
The chef of the Mediterranean
This unconditional love for Majorca and its gastronomy and my Italian origins made my cooking based on the gastronomy of this small paradise bathed by the Mediterranean, because by introducing its products and recipes , in my services you experience the explosion of the fusion of the most traditional and characteristic flavors of the island with the newest.
I could give you a thousand reasons to make you see that Mallorcan gastronomy has an incomparable flavor, but the best way to understand it is by trying it. I wait for you on the island.
