ZOUK MAGAZINE (English Edition) ISSUE 3 | Page 19

19 We return to Pelayo and advance a few years until the early 70. In the kitchen of the restaurant comes Fernando Martín, who later became one of the most Asturian cuisine revered chefs. He recovered and adapted the cachopo recipe. What it was served at the table weighed 1.5 kilograms, was stuffed with prosciutto, ham, cheese and asparagus, and served with a IN 1971, THE BOOK TYPICAL DISHES FROM ASTURIAS INCLUDES A CACHOPO’S RECIPE FOR THE FIRST TIME sauce made of chicken and rabbit. Those who tasted that pottage say that was spectacular. It did not take too long to become known for its size. And so was as the cachopo was introduced in contemporary restoration. The comparison is readymade: Pelayo in where the reconquest of Asturian cooking began. Pedro Morán, Casa Gerardo’s chef and president of the Association for Promoting the Asturian cuisine, says that his restaurant started offering cachopo in 1975 “stuffed with ham and cheese, and a large size to share.” Back in the seventies the plate was no more a single serving. And, furthermore, it was a high class cuisine proposal, what we can see by looking at the menus of that time, where it costs the same eating a cachopo than best fish. And the recipe starts to become popular, appearing in cookbooks. In 1971 María Luisa García publishes Typical dishes from Asturias, and includes a cachopo recipe, described as a “very thin and elongated” and stuffed with ham, asparagus, mushrooms and bell pepper steaks. No cheese. A few years later, in 1981, Magdalena Alperi mentioned cachopo in The Asturian cuisine guide: “It is a very popular dish in Asturias in recent years. It began to be served in the popular Oviedo’s restaurant Pelayo but had already found its place in Oviedo, Asturias and elsewhere”. There wre a some years where cachopo was still present in the Asturian cuisine, but without highlighting. There are small booms as the one described by Pedro Suárez, Casa Pedro owner, which has been open since 29 years ago in Oviedo. “In the late nineties business started to fail and it occurred to me to cook the largest and with more chese cachopo.” That corporate decision was a success and the popularity of the recipe led him to serve up to 200 cachopos a week. “And there was a few years of downturn, but now, for two or three years ago, I see that many tourists come out to eat cachopo”. At what point is the cachopo? We have already read earlier in this report the case of a restaurant and a butcher who have experienced firsthand the cachopo boom . The question is why now? The sage Paco Ignacio Taibo I, in 1981, in his Breviario de la fabada, accu rately described that “the fabada needed the union of circumstances such as prosperity, the bourgeois spirit, the possibility of a bed for a nap and the assurance that life is protected within the four walls.” Economic and social situation that occurred in Asturias in the early years of the twentieth century. The fabada was consolidated as well as a typical regional dish thanks to the emer- CA CHO CACHOPO IS THE ADAPTATION OF OUR MICRO-ECONOMIES TO OUR DINNING OUT HABITS gence of the bourgeoisie. In cachopo has happened exactly the opposite: it became popular, it was consolidated in gastronomy at the dawn of an economic crisis in which we are immersed, in which restoration habits have changed. It collects what customers of eateries, cider and restaurants now claim: it is cheap, has a good value, with a considerable size and promotes social interaction among people. The dish has expanded and few restaurant menus can resist it. Cachopo as adapting our micro-economies to our dinning out habits Méndez Riestra includes another factor