I interview Pep Salsetes, that is, Josep Lluís Sabatés Ibáñez (Barcelona, ​​1945), at the Documenta bookstore in Barcelona. We've arranged to meet a few hours before he presents his book to a loyal audience. Let's cook! Catalan cuisine for the whole family (Rosa dels Vents), where she explains recipes for young and old to cook together at home. Pep has driven from Ametlla del Vallès, where he livesHe's brought boxes of food because there will be refreshments after the presentation. He's even reproduced some pages of the book in color and attached the actual food he describes. Literally. He's a creative man who grows vegetables at home, then recycles them, as well as writes and cooks.

I 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.