The taste of healthy home cooking, the Spanish way

Chef Ruben Lopez Mesa built his career working in some of Sydney’s best fine-dining restaurants, but ask him, and he’d rather be cooking the humble fare learnt in the family kitchen of his home in rural Spain.

Ruben believes this approach to food and cooking taught to him by his parents and grandparents, along with a few tips he’s picked up working as a professional chef, could be invaluable to people in Australia today given the skyrocketing cost of living.

Over the coming weeks, Ruben will be sharing his knowledge with Orange City Life readers, offering advice, recipes, and handy tips for creating tasty, filling meals all the while saving you money.

“I'm actually quite passionate about a type of cooking that my grandmother showed me, we call it comida de aprovechamiento, basically ‘zero-waste cooking’,” says Ruben.

“If you ask me what type of Spanish cooking you do, you can go ‘modern’ or comida de aprovechamiento — and we all love that one, for us that is home, that is Mum, it is eating with a spoon in the kitchen.”

But it is also a way of cooking that was born out of necessity. The decades following the Spanish Civil War under the fascist dictator Fransisco Franco, were a period of great hardship and are known as ‘the hunger years’, says Ruben.

“Spain, after the civil war and 30–40 years of really hard dictatorship — a lot of people starved. I'm talking about the generation of my grandparents, living in the countryside and in a war and not showing that you have anything or the government would come and take it from you,” he says.

It forced people to become creative, using and reusing whatever they had, stretching recipes with humble seasonal products, pulses and starches.

“The cocina de aprovechamiento, now a trend by many, was a way to survive for us. And it is without a doubt, the way we love cooking at home!” says Ruben.

“So you think about major, now super trendy tapas, they are only three or four ingredients. A Spanish omelette — potato, egg and onion. It’s just the way that we survived.”

Born into a restaurant family, it was only after moving to Australia in 2009, that Ruben undertook formal training as a chef.

After working in different restaurants in the Sutherland Shire, he moved on to The Morrison in Sydney’s CBD, the two-hatted Spanish restaurant MoVida Sydney in Surry Hills, and The Vanguard in Newtown.

“I was working, working, working — just to go up the ladder — until we had our baby and it was hard to work 16 hours and have a baby and we wanted to get out of the city,” says Ruben.

Looking first at places around Tasmania, it took only a weekend trip over the Blue Mountains to Orange in 2018 for Ruben and his family to find their new home.

“We came for a weekend, the Anzac long weekend and we bought a house!” says Ruben.

“My mum is from La Mancha and La Mancha is very similar to Orange — altitude-wise, volcanic soil, everything!”

It was at this time, that Ruben founded ‘Eat Spanish’, a not-for-profit organisation to support and promote Spanish chefs in Australia and make Australians more familiar with Spanish Cuisine.

His Orange-based business, “A Table of 10”, is also about sharing traditional Spanish cuisine through intimate dining experiences in people’s own homes or holiday stays.

“I want to make Spanish gastronomy popular from home,” he says. “My dream is to be able to see you cooking Spanish once per week, in the same week we cook Italian or Greek or Chinese or Japanese.”

But more importantly, Ruben believes it is the underlying ideas of Spanish home cooking that are invaluable and it is these that he wants to share.

“I believe the basics of Spanish gastronomy in planning, shopping, cooking, portioning food, storage, et cetera, can help many people in the years to come in Australia,” he says.

“The next year is going to be very tough on many. There are two main costs for everyone, one is housing and food. I am not going to be able to help with the cost of your house, but I'm going to be able to help a little bit with your budget for food if you want.

“We don’t need to change the way that you eat completely, but there's a couple of tips that, maybe, are going to help you.”

Eating more legumes and seasonal vegetables is one simple change everyone can make that will save money, says Ruben, as is embracing budget-friendly cuts of meat that can be turned into healthy, filling braises or stews.

“I don't want to tell people what to do, I just want to suggest options to help get your finances a little bit better, things going in with a shopping list, ticking boxes, don't get into the chocolates and things like that…

“For me, it seems a little bit like a ‘duty of care’ as a chef… I see how to be able to budget things and I know how to open the fridge and create things without following recipes because I understand the methods of cooking.

“So I just want to try to help people, even if you don't feel confident about cooking, I want to make it easier, I want to take you through what we can do at home without fancy equipment.”

Ruben’s first recipe (see Page 14 of this week’s OCLife) you'll notice, is a little different to what you find in your average recipe book as there’s no list of ingredients. Rather, the focus is on the method of cooking, which is the same regardless of what protein and vegetables you choose. 

“You see I’ve shown pictures of the process, rather than the perfect final photo, I'm not interested in that, I'm interested in you reading it, understanding it, seeing it and saying, I'm going to give that a try!”

And Ruben wants to hear from you. Any questions you have about any aspect of cooking, send them in to: reception@oclife.com.au and we’ll get you an answer.