Celebrity chef José Pizarro carefully places his traditional Christmas centrepiece on the table at the Bermondsey home he shares with his psychotherapist husband Peter. You can forget about turkey, though – it’s a whole roasted sea bass stuffed with lemon and bay leaves sitting on saffron-infused potatoes.
And it’s not actually Christmas, of course, but a photoshoot held in October for Decanter’s Christmas food and drink feature. Nor does Pizarro spend Christmas in London, but in the beautiful village of Talaván in Cáceres, Extremadura – in Spain’s rural far west – where he grew up, and to where he returns every year.
It seems we can’t get enough of Pizarro’s cooking – he has just opened his seventh restaurant, Lolo in Bermondsey Street, south of the river near Tower Bridge (his third on the same street), and his cookbooks continue to fly off the shelves – six titles since 2009’s Seasonal Spanish Food (Kyle Books), including three available currently via his website: Basque: Spanish recipes from San Sebastian & beyond (£18 Hardie Grant, 2016); Recipes from Andalusia (£18.99 Hardie Grant, 2019; reprint 2023); and The Spanish Home Kitchen (£33 Hardie Grant, June 2022). So who can blame us for wanting a sneaky peek into the Pizarro family Christmas?
Rapid ascent
Often described as the Godfather of Spanish cooking, Pizarro has lived in London for more than 25 years, working in some of the capital’s most prestigious Spanish restaurants before opening his first solo venture in 2011: José Tapas Bar on Bermondsey Street. A Barcelona home away from home, it went down a storm, enabling him to open his more ambitious Pizarro restaurant further up the same street later that year, which won a slew of awards.
Pizarro then launched three further restaurants in the capital: by Liverpool Street station, José Pizarro Broadgate Circle (about to be renamed Bar Plaza – ‘The name references the beating heart of every Spanish town’); another hot ticket, José Pizarro at the Royal Academy of Arts; and The Swan Inn, a pub in Esher, in London’s suburban southwestern fringes – he had always wanted to open a country pub with a roaring fire.
And then there’s a growing consultancy with P&O Cruises, an Abu Dhabi restaurant and a swanky seaside villa in Andalusía, Iris Zahara, where you can get up close and personal during one of Pizarro’s cookery experiences. He’s busy, certainly, but never too busy to miss Christmas at home – in fact, he’s only ever missed one Christmas in Spain, when bad weather prevented the journey.
Credit: Catharine Lowe / Decanter
Festive fish
Unlike in the UK, Christmas Eve is the most important day in the festive calendar for the Spanish. And for the Pizarro family, fish is always on the menu, as it is in many other Spanish households on Christmas Eve, even in landlocked regions such as Extremadura.
‘We always cook a big fish for Christmas Eve. My mum might be 91 years old, but she still wants a little control in the kitchen. These days, though, it’s mainly me doing the cooking, with my sister helping. Yet my mum still looks at me occasionally, shaking her head, wondering what I’m doing. But I think she trusts me in the kitchen now,’ Pizarro says with a chuckle. ‘Normally we cook sea bass, but really it’s whatever we can get. I’m not fussy, as long as it’s a whole fish – the flavour is just so much better.’
The fish is stuffed with lemon and bay leaves, and placed on top of a tray of potatoes. ‘We slice waxy potatoes, add whole shallots, fat cloves of garlic, capers, saffron and white wine. We cook that in the oven for a bit first then lay the fish on top and cook it some more. It’s that simple,’ he explains. ‘We serve it with a salsa, which is usually made with parsley, oregano and roasted garlic.’ To drink with it? Always a red wine, declares Pizarro. ‘I’m often asked why I choose red with fish, but these are big flavours, which need a big…
Source : https://www.decanter.com.master.public.keystone-prod-eks-euw1.futureplc.engineering/wine/jose-pizarro-does-christmas-spanish-style-545191/
