NOUREDDINE LAMEGHAZAI: SALT COD WITH HONEY SAUCE
València
Chef-proprietor, Dukala
Dish: Salt Cod with Honey Sauce / Abadejo Frito con Miel
Noureddine’s refined cookery fuses the flavours of Moroccan home kitchens and Spanish culinary techniques to come up with Valencian restaurant Dukala’s unique hybrid style. Subtly spiced tagines and carefully folded miniature briks emerge from the kitchen here carrying the aromas of both the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. Nour quit computer science for the kitchen and his sense of precision, in both eye and palate, shows through in delicate sweet, sour and salt flavours that would have been familiar to Altamiras. Some of his influences come from the contemporary Spanish restaurant scene, but the cooking of Dukala and in particular his mother’s kitchen remain his most distinctive influences. For the book he picked two recipes, one a meat and almond costrada chosen because it reminded him of bstilla made for the Feast of the Lamb, and the other, this bacalao with honey sauce, which he redeveloped around the salt-and- sweet flavour match characteristic of al-Andalus and Moroccan cookery. The fish is steamed and the honey is separated out from the original frying batter to use as the basis for a subtle raisined and saffroned sauce, a brilliant example of a dish recreated around old flavours but enriched by new additions.