The Green Revolution

Tired of longing for the real flavor of a juicy tomato, chefs have placed themselves at the forefront of the fruit and vegetable revolution that is taking place in Spain, looking to the past to secure the future.

In a country that is awash with plastic greenhouses, and is the world's largest exporter of fruits and vegetables, more and more people are putting quality before quantity and attempting to bring back some of the native species that once featured in Spanish meals.

Heading up the project is Eneko Atxa, who embarked on a quest to recover plant species that are native to the Basque Country, such as the Zalla red onion and Derio dwarf chard. He has worked closely with neighboring producers and Neiker-Tecnalia, a state-owned company that shares his objectives.

His main investment for the future is a seed bank in which he has collected 400 varieties of local vegetables in order to research their use in cooking. He is demonstrating the importance of preserving this diversity, which can transform a kitchen into a place with its own identity, and something worthy of a visit in a globalized world.

Azurmendi's vegetable gardens present its guests with the work of the small-scale producers who are also its suppliers. They provide a platform for acknowledging the work of those who are committed both to the environment and to a local history that accompanies the restaurant's meat, fish, seafood, and dairy dishes in the form of fruit and vegetables.

In the garden of the Hilton hotel, where Sollo is located, an aquaponic greenhouse has been installed for cultivating freshwater fish and plants that feature on the restaurant's menu. This ensures seasonal offerings of select vegetables, guaranteeing their origin, quality, and traceability.

The plants are watered using water from the tanks of the only restaurant in Spain that specializes in freshwater fish. The plants act as a biological filter, purifying the water and then returning it to the fish and crustacean hatcheries.

As a result of this foray into gastro-aquaponics, which began in 2016, they now cultivate tilapia, catfish, pacu, tench, and Australian red claw crayfish, as well as 31 varieties of vegetable that they supply to the restaurant.

The chef—a Brazilian by birth who now lives in Málaga—argues that the seas are becoming depleted and it is time to explore the rivers. He is an advocate for gastro-aquaponics as a means of counteracting the exhaustion of natural resources and loss of biodiversity.

They did some research with tomato seeds and cultivated the most appetizing varieties, with the emphasis on rustic seeds that would give customers back original local flavors that have since been masked by genetic modifications. However, they found that the market did not respond well to produce that had a short shelf life as a result of not being used to cold storage.

But they persisted, taking their boxes of tomatoes to haute-cuisine establishments like Santceloni, a restaurant in Madrid with 2 Michelin stars. This proved to be a springboard to supplying others and even to opening their own place, championing the "farm to table" concept. The vegetable garden takes center stage with the support of a growing number of guests who are demanding healthy food, and embracing traditional vegetables as being synonymous with a diet that reflects their way of life.

Out of respect for the environment, only 30 or 40 of the 100 hectares of their vegetable garden are in use at any one time, since they use traditional crop-rotation methods to avoid depletion of the soil.

Their entirely traditional working methods in the field go hand in hand with their R&D attempts to recover the genetic material of Spanish vegetables, and restore them to their former glory.

Using seeds imported from Mexico, they have created an organic vegetable garden in Navas de Oro (Segovia) that houses varieties never before grown in Europe, such as the "hoja santa" (Mexican pepperleaf) and "huauzontle" herbs, and "chiltepín" chile peppers. "We are planting a little piece of Mexico among the pine trees," says Ruiz, who has succeeded in overcoming the differences in climate between the 2 sides of the Atlantic.

Green tomatillos (an essential ingredient in lots of sauces); chilies including habanero, serrano, jalapeño, chipotle, "chile de arbol," and "chilhuacle negro" (almost extinct in Mexico); Mexican white corn; herbs such as "verdolagas" (Mexican parsley)—these ingredients give the dishes served by the first Mexican restaurant in Europe to receive a Michelin star the authentic flavor of their native land.

The vegetable garden has meant that not only Punto MX, but the group's other spots in Madrid (Salón Cascabel and Mezcal Lab), are now self-sufficient when it comes to their supply of fruit and vegetables.

They have also created the first chili smoker in Europe, enabling them to make and sell their La Chipotlera sauces using surplus chilies, with varying degrees of spice. They also have 65 varieties of chilies in a gene bank, as well as corn recovered from Tlaxcala.

This was to be the first seed of "gastrobotanics," a concept he developed with biologist Santiago Orts and coined in 2000, and which he now works on with farmer Héctor Molina. Through it, he has researched new varieties of plants and mushrooms, and recovered neglected produce.

The tasting menu at El Invernadero ("The Greenhouse") in Madrid "is decided by the farmers."

This is because they are 50% of what gastrobotanics is all about, according to the concept's creator, who is supported by a network of micro-gardens scattered throughout Spain. They share his concerns about respecting nature and reclaiming produce that makes for interesting cuisine, or that has never been used before, giving it prime position on the plate.

What began with an orchard of date palms has grown over the years into an enterprise that has managed to recover varieties of citrus that had almost died out, such as the citron, as well as tomatoes, lettuces, zucchini, and fruits that were no longer grown. They have also studied desert vegetables (such as "hierba del hielo" and land algae), ancestral vegetable gardens and seaweed, the use of lichens and superfoods in cooking, and fermentation—just some of the different branches of gastrobotanics.

His struggle to create plant-based haute cuisine has not been easy, and at one point, he was ready to throw in the towel.

But Rodrigo de la Calle is reassured by the growing number of farmers who are looking to the past to determine the future, and by the fact that he manages to excite even his meat-eating guests with dishes that do not contain meat or fish.

"It was a journey through the wilderness, but you reap what you sow, as my father used to say."