Learning to Cook with What You Have, Not What You Want

There comes a moment when you stop fighting against what's in front of you.

And you finally start working with it.

For me, that moment came in Lanzarote.

After months of trying to recreate the cooking I knew, I realised something simple:

I couldn't carry on like that.

It wasn't a question of technique.

It was a question of approach.

Until then, I had always started cooking with a clear idea in mind.

I knew what I wanted to achieve, and I looked for the ingredients to make it happen.

Here, that doesn't work.

Here, you have to do the opposite.

Start with what you can find.

Understand what it could become.

And only then build the dish.

At first, it feels like a limitation.

Because you lose control.

You're forced to keep changing things.

You have to adapt.

But eventually, it becomes a strength.

Because you begin to work in a more direct way.

More simply.

More in harmony with the place you're in.

You stop trying to impose an idea.

Instead, you create something that makes sense right there, at that particular mom