Food is becoming an increasingly important element of Lanzarote’s appeal, and the launch of a new book, “Traditional Cookery of Lanzarote” is only likely to increase that importance.
Author José Nieves, known widely as Fefo, has collected 160 recipes directly from older people on the island. The contributors are, he says “Our mothers, our grandmothers, our peasants and fisherfolk whose knowledge has left us a living recipe book that forms part of our identity.”
Accompanied by splendid photos by Moisés Acosta, and published by the Cabildo, the book is another essential addition to any Lanzarote library, although it is currently only available in Spanish.
As well as recipes, the book also describes ingredients and cooking techniques but Fefo claims it is not a cookbook, but a starting point for cooks to work from. “I’m not going to teach anyone how to cook,” he says. For him, improvisation and adaptation are one of the key elements of cooking on Lanzarote. “If you don’t have pumpkin, use something else. You add your own twist” he says.
Fefo describes how, in the past, young women would often go from rural areas to “the Port” (Arrecife), where they would be employed as cooks in wealthy households. “They brought the cooking they’d learned at home but the lady of the house would have French or English magazines and tell them to add foreign ingredients. The results were delicious. Cooking is all to do with what’s available, and that’s why everyone thinks their mother’s stew is the best.”
The book contains recipes by men as well, but very few. “On this island, women were raised to cook, to wash clothes, do housework and raise children.” Men cooked when they had to, for example on board a fishing boat, and Fefo includes a simple potato and egg recipe that his father would prepare at sea.
Fefo was often amused by how the older people he spoke to “started getting fancy” when describing a recipe, talking about ingredients that they didn’t use, at least not back then.” This process shows how recipes are always changing, and also how the arrival of new ingredients and ideas changes traditional cookery.
As an example, he describes how a baking recipe simply wasn’t working for him until he realised that the locals would have used lard rather than butter. “If they had any goatmilk butter back then, it was used for spreading on bread, not for cooking. I substituted lard and the recipe turned out wonderfully.”
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