His line of work has been clear since setting up Aponiente and he won’t give up on this endeavour. The Cádiz Chef Ángel León has participated in San Sebastián Gastronomika on Monday to “keep talking about the sea, to continue discovering and tasting marine protein as if it were animal”. On this occasion, however, and although his presentation did not talk about textures, he has surprised everyone by stating he hopes that “next year Aponiente can be experienced from the sea”. He is not going to move the restaurant, “but I have a garden in the marshes that I must make the most of”, somehow anticipating new dining rooms in his mill. “We’ll have to see”. 

This was his answer to journalist Benjamín Lana, who moderated the talk sponsored by the Regional Government of Andalusia and which was held in Eneko Atxa’s Azurmendi*** restaurant in Vizcaya, “an ace chef who took me out to dinner yesterday”, affirmed León in jest. The added advantages of holding a congress in a new format, that among other things enables you to enter the kitchens of important chefs and create curious dancing partners.  
 
With the presence of the Basque Chef, tasting and certifying what León was explaining, the Chef from Cádiz focussed his talk on the textures he is seeking for now. “I want to show the sea’s endless range of products and properties”, he explained as he prepared his new dish: little sea ribs. In the latest edition of Encuentro de los Mares he presented popcorn from the sea, he now follows suit with the ribs, an evolution of other marine morsels that emulate meat and are now a part of him.

“We obtain them from the bellies of fatty fish such as sea bass or conger eels. We combine them and place them in a mould. Then they are vacuum-packed in the Roner and frozen. Once they are cold, we place them in the smoker to achieve the texture we are looking for”, he described. “It’s like a hot pork rind”, pointed out Lana. That was the idea. An end product that’s crunchy when you put it into your mouth, resembling meat, “a morsel of Omega3” which is finished off by brushing on tuna juice.

The Chef of Aponiente presented three more dishes “of a thousand and one textures”. The first part was the complete use of baby squid, “historically mistreated by deep frying””. León works on the body like a blood pudding, with its head grilled and a Hollandaise sauce made from the animal’s own ink. “A different dimension for a humble product”. One more in Aponiente’s universe. 

He followed the same logic with the moray eel, a fish already presented as sea piglet. He now presents it with a parfait of its innards, which are irrigated with a sauce made of its own blood and strips of skin of the sea piglet. “We have all the collagen of the moray eel and the crunchiness of its skin. We have all the depths of the moray eel”, he explained. 

León finished with a dish where the marshland plants that surround Aponiente call the shots, undertaking another new adventure. The halophytes give shape to the end of the preparation, added as ash dust once calcined after being in brine. “It’s a technique that Andoni taught me” (Andoni Luis Aduriz, Chef of Mugaritz), with which I complete a dish of spiny dye-murex, razor shells and a pilpil sauce of protein from the heads of the whiting”. Product, sustainability, innovation and surprise all in one. The stamp of Ángel León.