Piper, the man from Ondarroa who blows the cornucopia of the sea
In the definitive guide to Basque cuisine (yet to be written), Piper will occupy the chapter on the Hake Theme Park. Because the Biscayan chef Santi Ríos Urrutia (49) feels genuine devotion for this fish, which suffers the stigma of being a bland hospital meal and an obligatory companion during convalescence and Lent.
The kokotxas, for example, are enormous, Homeric, from fish weighing six kilos or more, and Piper bids high and low to snatch them away from the three-Michelin-starred restaurants and the big names in Spanish gastronomy. I measured the ones we were given, and none of the six were less than twelve centimeters long. Lightly seared on a griddle (without removing their deliciously crispy skin), with a drizzle of oil and a sprinkle of parsley on top, they make a dish that's hard to beat. Exceptional dishes exist, but only those with enough connections, deep pockets, and the right words to bid for delicacies in the seafood markets of Pasajes put them on the plate.
The same goes for the hake neck (a 1.6-kilo piece) from which the strong arms of the son of a sailor from Bueu, married to Pilar from Ondarroa, obtain a pil-pil sauce as dense and succulent as golden amber. Piper ("from Piperra, as my mother's family is called in Ondarroa") brings out some jarred baby squid caught in the bay of Mutriku, near Punta Alkolea and other seabeds we dived with the magician Javier Aguinaga. He pays €8 each, but they sparkle like living constellations when you run your finger over their skin and make their chromatophores shine. He also makes an unbeatable salad of Nájera tomatoes with egg, oil, vinegar, and salt.
"I eat it every day. For me, there's nothing like boiled hake with mayonnaise. It's a fish where you can use every part," she says, encouraging us to savor the juices and lick the gelatin, bones, spines, cheeks, skin, and heads. "And don't leave the eye!"
There's cured beef from León, abacanto salad, anchovy fillets aged for two years in barrels that are pure garum, lobster, red prawns, breaded monkfish, rice with cuttlefish and clams, and flan. Keep an eye out for the enormous catches (nine-kilo turbot, twelve-kilo grouper) that Piper occasionally offers at his Mutriku corner, opposite the statue of Don Cosme Damián de Churruca, as skilled with artillery as this port fox. And don't miss the champagnes ("wine gives me great pleasure," he says), that graveyard of labels that lines and decorates the bar and dining rooms of Piper, making the mouths of aspiring connoisseurs water.
PIPER
Telephone: 943603053.
Don't miss the hake fillet in Ondarresa style, homemade anchovies, kokotxas (hake cheeks), baby squid, hake neck in pil-pil sauce. Flan.
