Seal sausages
What would you do if you were served a seal meat sausage? Or its salt-cured jowl? Or its heart, with a flavor similar to liver? Or simply some croquettes where the main ingredient is that meat cured in koji, the Japanese rice ferment?
If you're a curious person, you'd definitely try them. And you'd probably like them, because they're delicious. What would surely surprise you most is that the mastermind behind all these creations is a chef who left his native Albacete for the Arctic to open a restaurant.
And there, in Norway, in the Svalbard archipelago, in the closest inhabited city to the North Pole, with temperatures as low as thirty degrees below zero and winds exceeding one hundred kilometers per hour, Alberto Lozano launched Huset, a restaurant whose customers include documentary filmmakers, scientists, adventurers, and even members of the Norwegian royal family or actors like Tom Cruise when they have filmed in the area.
After a thirty-hour flight, Lozano was in Tenerife, at the sixth edition of the Meeting of the Seas, the best of all those held so far, to passionately and enthusiastically explain his work and the difficulties he faces due to the change in currents and animal migrations that are taking place there.
Speaking of seals, if you're one of those who have seen those terrible documentaries in which ruthless people hunt seals with clubs, know that the ones Alberto Lozano uses come from a sustainable hunt in which authorized hunters shoot them with rifles, one by one, only when needed.
In his presentation, the chef from Albacete asserted that seals are "the pigs of the Arctic" because, as with our pigs, every part of them is used. I also had the opportunity to taste the garum he makes with them—pure potency.
In a blind taste test, I would have sworn it was soy sauce. Lozano also uses other local animals, including marine species, from reindeer to king crab.
An example of how to make the most of a hostile environment and that a good cook can shine in any corner of the world.
There were many things at this Meeting of the Seas, but above all one conclusion: we need to eat more fish because it is essential for health.
