Joan, how would you define your style of cooking ?
Semproniana offers a seasonal Catalan cuisine, with Mediterranean combinations.
Given this definition, legumes are a fundamental element in every season, because they form a part of tradition which is something we don't want to lose. At the same time, while we do prepare traditional dishes, it is important to us to innovate and surprise with new products. For example, while we do make the typical chickpea soup, we also prepare more adventurous dishes such as black sausage lasagna or octopus with pig's trotters and light red kidney beans. Legumes can also form the main ingredient of a dish, such as our duck confit with beans, or chickpea hummus.
Do you make use of American legumes ?
We are very keen on the traditional Spanish varieties but if we do want to surprise our customers we also need to try out new varieties and in this aspect the American market is very interesting. We recently tried out "Beluga" lentils and Small Red beans from a local cocedero, which gives us new possibilities of flavour and presentation.
Is your legume purchasing policy the same for all four restaurants ?
In all cases we use pre-cooked legumes so as to reduce working times and also for convenience and hygiene safety reasons.
If we buy our legumes from a local cocedero, we save on space that might otherwise be used to store dry legumes, we don't need to worry about soaking, we don't have to wait through the long cooking process and, above all, it means we can leave the selection and purchase of legumes to genuine experts in the field, so that we receive a high-quality product.
Obviously the price is higher, but it's worth it. I should also stress that this cocedero is knowledgeable enough to be able to give us advice on the latest innovations.
Tell us about the concept behind your Gastronomic Festival.
Every year we organise an "interactive" festival to which we invite customers and suppliers. The suppliers provide a product tasting and our customers can confirm for themselves the quality of these products. Last year, coinciding with the Josep Pla Year, we organised a buffet of Catalan dishes, during which we showed films on gastronomy together with Josep Pla's poems. We served legumes on that occasion, too, with a fabulous fresh salad of Light Red Kidney beans.
