Many chefs carry within them, as the spark that influences their path, the memory of their own past. For renowned Spanish chef José Pizzaro, for instance, it is the memories of cooking dishes with his family and friends, influenced by his mother’s cooking (see Spanish Gold).
For Jo Pearson, co-owner and chef of Auckland’s Alma restaurant, it all starts way before that, fuelled by the collective food memory of an entire region. Enamoured by the cuisine of Andalusia, she’s fascinated by the origins of food that began far from Spain’s borders and which has melded yet evolved into the distinctive dishes of the region that we see today.
“Andalusia is such a melting pot of cultures that you can be cooking Jewish dishes or African dishes or super-classic Spanish. I love the story and the journey of it – these ingredients that everyone thinks are just so at the heart of Spanish cookery, but actually they came with Muslim rule and just got blended and adopted,” she says. “Tracing food is just going back through history. It tells you what was happening and who was doing what and eating what, the influence that had on the country next to them, or who was in political power at the time. I find that incredibly fascinating.”
Not that Jo’s own experiences don’t have a role to play. She tells of her dad diving for crayfish then cooking them up at the bach in an old washing machine converted to a cray boiler; of an old man in the hills of Sacromonte who cracked open a couple of beers and picked some tomatoes from his garden to serve to her as the perfect snack; of her first trip to the south of Spain in 2006 and of travels in Andalusia and Morocco with Alma co-owner Natasha Parkinson, from where the idea of Alma was born.
With the food ideas for the future restaurant firmly established, the pair began imagining the personality of the place. “Open, not pretentious, kind and humble,” Jo says. “And everything had to be touched by fire.”
At Alma the open wood fire – which is never extinguished – is the centre and the heart of the restaurant and is the only cooking source during service. “Cooking over the fire is a masculine way of cooking, but then at the same time it’s very intuitive, which I think is more of a female trait,” says Jo. “It’s hot and it’s quite dirty. I think the food on the plate reflects a feminine aspect, but the way that we actually get there is probably quite rustic. It’s more challenging, but I think that challenge is so much fun.”
For Jo, the essence of Alma is summed up by the simplest dish on the menu – a humble piece of toast. It starts in the morning by baking sourdough bread. Then tomatoes that have been smoking over the fire for three to five days until shrivelled, smoky and concentrated are whipped into butter, slicked onto that sourdough toast and finished with a fresh tomato dressing and an amazing anchovy. That, for Jo, is what Alma is about.
“My biggest wish is that people will be open enough to try different Spanish food, or my interpretation of it, using New Zealand ingredients and taking inspiration from Andalusia. Though it’s not traditional Spanish, it’s great ingredients, it’s seasonal – it resonates and it just makes sense.”
All that culminates in Alma, where the Andalusian cultural and culinary influences of Spain meeting north Africa and Jewish mixing with Muslim now have a touch of New Zealand in the mix; the passion fuelled by a fire that’s always burning. TRACY WHITMEY
