I interview the cook Ada Parellada (Granollers, 1967) one afternoon after she has finished recording recipe videos. She offers me a piece of a blueberry pie, delicious, which she has prepared with nine ingredients. Only nine ingredients, because that way everything is easier, she says. We start the interview by talking about the last one I did with her, in which she told me the story of her family, and how it was that she decided to open the restaurant Semproniana with her partner. Ada Parellada has just written the book Els plats del dia (Rosa dels Vents), in which she vindicates set menus, like the ones she prepares at her restaurant daily for 23 euros, and which are dishes made from start to finish, and elaborate Catalan cuisine.

Ten years ago, chef Ada Parellada decided to host a four-euro dinner at her restaurant, Semproniana, to raise awareness about food waste. On June 16, 2015, Parellada created a dinner with foods that had either not entered the food distribution system or had left, proving that they were good, very good. This Tuesday, the Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food launches the fourth edition of the campaignWe take advantage of food, which, of course, has the Semproniana chef as its driving force, and a total of seventy restaurants have joined the campaign. Until October 31, menus are available at very affordable prices (three dishes for around twenty euros) with the aim of raising awareness about the importance of making the most of food.

Ada Parellada (Granollers, 1967) comes from a family that has been serving food for seven generations and over 250 years and is a great advocate of recycled cooking. As a summer read, she recommends A life in the mountains (Now Books), by Abraham Orriols. The journalist and writer born in Berga in 1996 collects in this book the life of the Marina Vilalta, the oldest shepherdess in Catalonia. "Marina is almost 100 years old, and she goes out to graze the sheep every day," Parellada recalls.

At home, they always said that the best sauce is hunger and that water isn't tasteless if you're thirsty. We're so passionate that we needed to be gone to realize the value of what we had. That Paco was a unique character, a genius, an enlightened man, and a Renaissance man, is known by all of us who have enjoyed close contact with him and those of us who have met him occasionally. But aside from all his knowledge, which is already sufficiently important, Paco had flair, a particular style with a good patina of humor that made all this knowledge painful. One might think it was a technique acquired from so many years of teaching as a professor of economics at the School of Engineering, but in reality it was a mixture of innate aptitudes, others inherited, and the immense curiosity that made him wiser every day. He was interested in everything and everyone: technology, history, literature, painting, music (how we will long to hear him play) All of me by Ella Fitzgerald on the piano at 7 Portes), the country's economy, and, of course, the cuisine. Cuisine in capital letters, without exclusions or borders. However, since she took over at 7 Portes, she realized how fragile our Catalan cuisine is. Over all these decades, she has fought tirelessly, not only to showcase a coherent, sensible, and landscape-adapted culinary heritage, but also to delve into the roots of a precious legacy of rice dishes, fricandoso, and flans, which we have received for free and, ungratefully, have swept under the rug. Paco, we will miss you and mourn for you a lot. Rest assured, we will not stand idly by. We will not allow any of the work you have done to be lost, and we promise you that we will continue to be... the resistance from chicken to casserole!

Ada Parellada (Granollers, 1967) comes from a family that has been serving food for seven generations and more than 250 years. She learned the trade of cook and restaurateur at Fonda Europa in Granollers, the Parellada family's main house, "the university of hospitality," in her words. Since 1993, she has had her own restaurant in Barcelona, Semproniana, where every March 8th she brings together some of the most prominent Catalan women for the Festa del Davantal. In this interview, Ada Parellada explains why her restaurant doesn't have avocados and why sushi is a traditional dish for Catalan children.