Pep Salsetes: “Our great tragedy is that we have seeds stored in banks but no farmers to grow them.”

Serrat de Ocata, Ametlla del VallèsI interview Josep Lluís Sabatés Ibáñez, known as Pep Salsetes (January 30, 1945), one Sunday morning at his farmhouse, located in the Ocata mountain range, on the outskirts of the Ametlla del Vallès area, on the way to the Sant Bartomeu hermitage, at an altitude of seven hundred meters. When I arrive, I find him at the exit, in front of the chicken coop, and he's very focused: he's planting seedlings of long lettuce from Can Güell de Serinyà, an ancient seed. Pep Salsetes talks to you about seeds and recipes (squid must first be thoroughly coated in flour; then, for the coating, it's best if it doesn't contain egg, oh! And the tender leaves of the lemon tree, coated without egg, are also very good), as well as the names of varieties. He has practiced so many jobs—like that of a cook—that all together they have given him a good understanding of the country. As coquesa –as he defines the work of a catering chef– traveled with his van loaded with food. The book that Rosa dels Vents publishing house reissued, From Garden to Plate: Or How to Eat Well Year-Round, is a compilation of "collective recipes," as he says, that he learned from talking to the neighbors in the towns where he worked. He first published it in 1991, but returned with the amendments and additions he'd wanted to make since it was first published. He's lived in L'Ametlla del Vallès for forty years, but he's "an urbanite," he says, born in the Sant Andreu neighborhood of Barcelona, ​​​​where his mother, Consell Ibáñez, owned a butcher shop. TV3 pays tribute to him with a Non-fiction, a documentary in which he explains his life and career. And he does so on the day Pep Salsetes turns 80.

If we have this, the future of the peasantry is assured.

— Conservation is then a trend – positive, but a trend – because the reality is that there is no one to plant them.

Why don't they stand up?

— Because farmers don't see any profitability, because the yields are short. Even farmers who practice organic farming don't do it. And I understand, but now we find ourselves with more than a hundred lettuce seeds saved, plus hundreds of beans, because legume seeds are much easier to conserve, and no one plants them. We have full seed banks, but there are only four of us who plant them, and we do it for our own consumption.

And can't there be a new path, a solution?

— I've proposed conducting studies on the nutritional properties of crops grown with ancient seeds, which should last three years. Okay, they're low-yielding, but when we've conducted studies, we've seen that they're more nutritious, that they have a greater capacity to nourish than commercial seeds. If these studies could be conducted, if investment in this field could be made, ancient seeds would no longer be stored in banks in the ground.

Meanwhile, a few control the seeds, the so-called commercial ones.

— And they're controlled by companies that are as involved in this as they are in the pharmaceutical industry. The American multinational Monsanto controls food and medicine, and we're stuck there. So our great tragedy is that we have seeds stored in local banks but no farmers to grow them. What's the point of all this?

In Vilanova i la Geltrú, where I was born and live, twenty years ago two peasant women and a cook got a specific type of cabbage, the sprouting cabbage, that of the espigalls, became fashionable, and the local recipe was cooked again. Since then, every winter has passed without grains of wheat at the market stalls. the chef Carme Ruscalleda, who then had the Sant Pau restaurant open, bought from the peasants of Vilanova to make dishes.

— I know the story, yes, and look, you mentioned a media personality, Carme Ruscalleda. If we had more like her, who were committed to old varieties, who could show that these varieties are very good, that they have flavor and are nutritious, perhaps the tables could turn. I know people would like it, because when I go to local fairs and we do tastings and people try a commercial lettuce and another grown with old seeds, the latter are the winners, because the flavor stands out. So, it's a matter of promoting these varieties, which we are committed to, so that farmers find them profitable (they should sell at a good price).

You just mentioned one of the issues that brought farmers to the streets to protest. The Unió de Pagesos (Farmers' Union) denounced, and still does, the falling prices at the farm gate, while their production costs are very high. In fact, they called for marches and highway blockades for February 6th of last year.

— I understand them. The peasantry is under stress for many reasons, including the change in planting methods, which have changed so much that it's no longer manual; everything is done by machines, and the peasantry has had to adapt. Young people fold and change branches because the numbers don't add up. And those who remain specialize in products that sell. Here in the Vallès, calçots and crocheted beans: they don't do anything else. For all these reasons, we peasants shouldn't haggle over prices. We eat food grown near our homes; let's buy it from local farmers, and don't tell them to give us a better price. A lettuce takes three good months to grow; the farmer must water it, take care of it, and make sure it's not eaten by wild boars or insects, which have come in large numbers with globalization. If we then say that lettuce costs a lot, we think about all the work that goes into it. By the way, I'll show you later an escarole lettuce, typical of Vallès, with seeds from a Republican mayor, which is very different from the rest of the country.

In France, farmers also demonstrated last year, blocking access to Paris with their tractors.

— It's a country with a historical cushion of demands. It's not the same here. But we even have expressions, which I never like to use, but which are very popular: "play the peasant" and "play the clown." I've always told Tortell Poltrona that I don't like to use the expression "play the clown," because I admire his work. That's why I always say that if we go to the market, if we buy a product from a farmer that we really like, we should go back to him afterwards and tell him about it, because the farmer's self-esteem will grow, because the farmer will find his work useful.

Changing the subject. When did you first become interested in cooking?

— It all started at my mother's butcher shop, called María del Bon Consell, in the Sant Andreu neighborhood. We ate the usual stuff there: not many ribs, but a lot of necks. One year, when I went on a scout, I was very hungry. I was 14, and in two weeks, I lost five kilos. Plus, I realized, while scouting, that everyone's mood changed depending on whether we ate well or not, so when I got back, I asked my mother at the butcher shop to teach me how to cook. That's how it all began. Since then, I've done everything. I've had many jobs. I also had a restaurant in Santa Eulalia de Ronçana.

Tell me what the restaurant was like.

— Everyone knew it as Cal Salsetes, and we had it open for five years. To enter the dining room, you had to go through the restaurant's kitchen. It wasn't that I specifically wanted to do it, but that was how everything was set up. I opened it in 1979 and closed it in 1984. It was a very intensive five years, because Franco's regime, the dictatorship, had ended, and everyone was eager to go out, to go to restaurants. For the closing, we had a party that lasted twelve hours, and we even wrote a will.

Why do you think cooking and gastronomy are two such different concepts?

— Because gastronomy can spend hours arguing about which wines go best with oysters, that is, because gastronomy distances itself from people, from the world, which is what cooks. However, cooking can have gastronomic moments, which are festive meals, those of celebration.

Why you don't like the concept signature cuisine?

— Because it's an invented concept, because in the kitchen everything is invented. Home cooking is a collective creation, while signature cuisine has ambitions, which is to fill their restaurant, and I understand them, because in the end, everyone has to make a living. But to think that an author invents nothing is difficult because everything is invented. And when it happens, When there is an invention, like the one made by the Tatin sistersThe story is connected to a mistake. I get very angry when I feel the Tatin sisters made a mistake. I took a sprig of thyme to their grave in France.

Pep, I have two more questions and a compliment to ask you. The first, the reason for the reason SaltsSecond, do you cook often? And the compliment: the farmhouse and the restaurant are beautiful. You can see the sea from here. Well, not today, it's foggy, but you can sense it.

— To begin with, I don't like being called Lluís, even though my name is Josep Lluís. Everyone has always known me as José. From José, well, Pep. And Salsetes came from a biker festival, because I also rode a motorcycle, around the 1970s, where I made a lot of sauces, and at the celebration someone started mixing the sauces with wine, something that happens at group festivals. And that's where it all started. And you ask me if I cook: yes, of course. If I don't cook, it's because I'm not well. My wife, who was a math teacher in Barcelona and La Garriga, cooks on Thursdays, which is the day her sister comes to eat at home. I always have someone at home to watch me, and then we go to the garden, and we pick what's ready and we make it. I often test recipes that I think of as I go along. Last year, when the Candlemas Festival of Molins de Rei arrived, I made onion soup with some delicious vegetable juice I had, and an artichoke omelet, with homemade eggs, of course. Simple cooking. And about the farmhouse, I have to tell you that it's actually called Cal Joanet, even though everyone knows it as Cal Salsetes, and in the novel The wild potholes appears within the plot of the action of the work written by Raimon Casellas in 1901.