Each one has their circles of opinion and their paths are inscrutable. In mine, I have often found myself defending Guillem Martínez, with a small mouth and with more intuition than rationality. I have deduced that what pulls back the
CTXT
columnist in my circles is articulated around two vectors. On the one hand, his leftist animosity against Catalan nationalism and his insistence on equating it with Spanish nationalism. On the other hand, his style, which combines geekiness and pedantry in an unmistakable hallmark. I make no effort to deny his colorful technical obsessions because not only do they not bother me, they amuse me. In any case, including the interested biases, it is fair to highlight his description of the grotesque years of the
process
as one of the most accurate to reality of all those that have been written in Spanish.
Since talking about Catalan politics is now like discussing the accounting of a grocery store, I point out to his detractors that they can ignore the main object of Guillem Martínez's chronicle and I recommend that they read, without prejudice, the extraordinary series of gastronomic articles which began in 2021 and which he named
Like the Greeks,
following Goethe's enthusiasms in his
Journey to Italy
. Eating like the Greeks is, succinctly, cooking with your own hands and ingesting in tribal apotheosis what has been cooked, in a kind of nutritional regression to the origin of everything worth eating and sharing. In these texts, the connection between the Martínez style and the food theme is substantial. Snobbery becomes endearing dissemination and linguistic pyrotechnics become an endless spice rack that spices up a subject that the journalist masters. Martínez is someone who knows how to communicate in the language of food, which is like that of butterflies but for people subjected to the carnal spirituality of bacon.
The articles pay tribute to the much maligned genre of the recipe book, which is one of the most classic, ancient and contrasted in our Greek culture.
Therefore, the book publication of the articles from
Like the Greeks
,
with the transparent subtitle
Thirty-three Homeric recipes to enjoy cooking in good company,
is a highly celebrated event. An ecumenical council in which personal memory, the history of food and the combative pamphlet come together and surrender to the much maligned genre of the recipe book, which is one of the most classic, ancient and proven in our Greek culture. In
Like the Greeks,
there is neither haute cuisine nor star chefs nor television shows. And the restaurant, that alienating space that separates the kitchen from the hands, is strictly dosed. It is the current trend in gastronomic writing: the recipe is once again placed at the center and the intimate reflection is structured on its flanks, following in the wake of MFK Fisher and not so much the Iberian tradition of the Pla, Luján, Perucho and Cunqueiro.
Gentlemen
gourmets who ate without cooking, breaking the sacred Homeric bond.
The book is accompanied by a juicy prologue by Germán Labrador, where he connects the author's demand for archaic culinary simplicity with his gastropolitical mythology. Although Martínez has anti-nationalist reservations about defining the framework of his tradition and must sometimes resort to the hackneyed “my homeland is my childhood”—he is forgiven—the truth is that his culinary map is precise. Labrador reproaches him for a complete Atlantic omission, because Martínez gastronation has three defined axes: Italy, Occitania and Catalonia, that western Mediterranean that, from the Greek point of view, is exactly the same. After all, cooking what was cooked and remembering what you ate together is the least cheesy way to love what you own.
like the greeks
Guillem Martínez
Contexto Magazine, 2023
220 pages. 27 euros
Look for it in your bookstore
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