for sale tuna skins, orange peel cream, mussel broth…

“We have the right and the obligation to be profitable if we want this to have a run,” the two Michelin star Ricard Camarena commented during his presentation at Madrid Fusion. The statement, contextualized, has to do with the use of a kitchen that, to be sustainable and last, must be profitable.

Nothing that can be blamed on the Valencian chefwhich for two decades has advocated making use of the orchard in which it has even ended up resorting to its own orchard or to something as obvious as recovering orange rinds.

“Up to date in one of our restaurants we took 50 kilos of orange peels and we believe that every product is valid until proven otherwise”, he assumes. A reality that seeks utility in everything they do and that, for example, gives new life to those orange and lemon rinds.

“After going through a enzymatic fermentation and vacuum cooking process we are looking for a second life for these products”, he commented. In this case, the puree is used to make Valencia water and also a dessert based on a lemon curd with which they fill a brioche.

A second life that they produce for many other elements such as juice of one fried eggplant which is then used as a sauce; whole cooked artichokes or recover the oxalis and eucalyptus branches to make an ice cream that brings back those citrus rinds.

“The one that marks the exit and entrance of product in the restaurant is the one of operations. We are not going to put the price if it goes up and it has to be passed on to the customer. If that happens, we look for another dish or another product because we don’t want the client to pay more money for something that he is not willing to pay for,” he alludes.

A reality that also later appears with the Letern brand, which Camarena started a decade ago taking advantage of the anchovy strain and that it now also uses part of those surpluses to sell, which, he comments, “what came out as a by-product now becomes the product itself.”

“The important thing is to be useful to something or someone”, he confessed and, furthermore, demonstrating that “it is convenient that we begin to see our actions of the return of the intention so that the client feels involved of a movement because an act of purchase is more than going to vote, which then serves what it serves”, he indicated.

“With this I am not going to get rich, but it is convenient that we see that part of this recycling is a leap of faith. We started with the anchovies, but then the tomatoes arrived, which we preserved to take advantage of the freshness and now the by-product is the product”, he assured.

A reality that also translates to market the Letern brand in the restaurant with orange peel cream, mussel broth or tuna skins with ratatouille.

Images | Madrid Fusion

In DAP | Ricard Camarena demonstrates what true “product cooking” is, playing with humidity in his reinvention of the most traditional flavors
In DAP | In the garden with Ricard Camarena: “With organic farming it has happened as with creative cuisine, we have abused it”