Spanish chef shares his recipe for life

Inigo Perez Urrechu

By Yun Suh-young

"Everything has to be in your head and everything has to be in your hands," said Inigo Perez Urrechu, during a cooking class held at the Kukje Culinary School in Seoul, Feb. 17.

"When using ingredients, use the best parts; you also need to know what they go well with."

The Spanish chef, who worked as the head chef of the Michelin three-star restaurant Martin Berastegui located in the Basque region of Spain, and who now owns two restaurants, visited Seoul for the first time upon the invitation of Interporc which promotes Spanish pork worldwide.

He was teaching a group of around 40 high school students who signed up for the special class organized by the school. It was the first time for him to teach in front of a group of students and share his cooking and career knowhow. The day before, he had performed a cooking exhibition in front of Korean importers of Spanish pork.

A dish using chorizo and spinach / Korea Times photos by Yun Suh-young

"There's nothing to throw out in a pig," he said when introducing the three dishes that he specially created upon coming to Korea using various parts of pig mixed with local ingredients available here.

"We can utilize a variety of parts of ingredients to make a variety of dishes. As aspiring chefs, you should know how to deal with all the parts of the meat as well as how to create dishes with them," he said, showing them the procedure for each of the dishes.

"Because there are so many recipes in the world, you can't memorize all of them, nor do you need to. You should practice over and over and have the recipes put in your head _ for instance, from how long you should boil fish stock or how long you should cook the meat in order for it to lose oil. The brain remembers taste,” he said.

"I remember eating really great dimsum at a restaurant. Ten years later, I ate a similar one elsewhere and remembered the taste. You should expose yourself to a lot of tastes. Then the brain will remember," said the chef, eager to deliver his experience.

Demonstrating the making of the chorizo and spinach dish

"Fusion is creation. And if you don't know the taste, you can't create. So please remember the tastes you encountered today."

When each of his dishes was finished and presented to the students, they had the opportunity to taste them and give him feedback as well as ask questions.

"Can we replace the chicharrones with some other meat since it's hard to find in Korea?" asked a student.

"Of course," said Urrechu. "You can replace it with whatever meat that tastes similar. Possibly the sausage-type would be best."

A student taking a cooking class tries placing the dish onto tasting spoons under the supervision of Inigo Perez Urrechu, center.

The three dishes he introduced were all a tapas menu which could be enjoyed in a single bite. They included a dish of chicharrones (finely chopped pig head) with garlic sauce, a vegetable pork soup, and a dish using chorizo and spinach.

"Chicharrone is one of the ingredients we use commonly in Spain but is rare in Korea. So I tried to introduce it as a fusion food using garlic that Koreans like," he said, while showing how to make the dish.

"As for the soup, I added Korean ingredients like tofu and ginseng. We don't eat tofu in our country."

Urrechu stressed that the dishes should all have a “reason for being.”

"Whenever you're cooking you need to have a reason why you cooked it and why you used those particular ingredients," he said.

Inigo Perez Urrechu cheers with students and cooking class organizers at the Kukje Culinary School in Seoul, Feb. 17.

"You should keep asking yourself whether the taste is balanced. Open yourself up to all possibilities and find the best balance you can. Smell it and see if it would go with another fragrance. Cooking is all about finding the balance."

The 45-year-old chef has been cooking for 28 years.

"I entered with my feet into the kitchen naturally since my parents loved cooking. My two brothers were seven and eight years older than me and wouldn't play with me. So naturally I spent time in the kitchen with my parents," he told The Korea Times following the cooking class.

"So I naturally came to like cooking. I received awards at a regional cooking competition at age 12 and again at age 14 and it was so exciting. The competitors were all adults. I then realized that cooking was universal and was not limited to age, status, or religion. It was solely based on taste and it was borderless," he said.

Urrechu received his first Michelin two-star at a restaurant when he was 23 years old. The media took interest on him as he was one of the youngest chefs to receive a star at the restaurant. He appeared on TV cooking shows and became a well-known chef in his country. It was a delight to share recipes and share his talent with the viewers, he said.

"My mother was a school teacher so I think I appreciated sharing knowledge with others. I appeared on shows not to promote myself but because I really wanted to share what I had. Most Michelin-awarded chefs don't. They want to keep the recipes to themselves. But I think sharing is important and it makes me happy," said the cheerful chef.

"Gastronomy, to me, is not an act of filling the stomach but to share love and happiness. That means the food should be based on honesty."

"We have 28 chefs in our restaurant. It's really important to maintain good relationships with them because we need to create new dishes. Communication is crucial because we have to give each other honest feedback after tasting. If we don't get along, dishonest and negative feedback will be exchanged. That isn't healthy," he said.

"Comradeship is so important in cooking. When we're happy in the process, our customers feel it in the dishes."

However, even the happy-go-lucky chef had hard times which taught him to become more generous and positive.

"Competition is immensely fierce in this industry. Chefs would copy each other's recipe and try to take another down. But I didn't care about competition because you never know who'll step over you tomorrow. That's the culinary world," Urrechu said.

His recipes are health-based and remind people of comfort food although they're categorized as fine dining. They're based on traditional Spanish cuisine but add modern techniques and inspiration.

"The reason why I pursue healthy food is because I encounter athletes a lot. I myself like sports. And when doing sports, eating healthy is important. So I tried to reflect that in my menu. I want my customers to feel like they are eating at home when eating at our restaurant," he said.

"People think healthy food is not delicious, but I wanted to change that perception. It can be done. I proved it because the Spain Gourmet Association gave me an award for my dishes being healthy and delicious at the same time."

When going back to his country, he plans to incorporate elements in his cuisine utilizing his experience in Korea.

"I realized that Korean food is faithful to the ingredients whereas other cultures often use them in grinded forms in sauces. Since I now have acquired a new taste during my visit here, I'll use it by adding tofu or ginseng to my new dishes when I go back," he said.