Per capita rice consumption in Portugal is five times higher than in Spain. With this figure, Ana Moura (Lamelas, Porto Covo) made it clear that it is the national dish of the neighbouring country, and she made the case for preparing a recipe for rice with fish and seafood on the spot, which for her is "the only dish on my menu that doesn't change".

She did this in the Kursaal Auditorium in San Sebastian, which for her is "the best city in the world". Here, in the kitchens of Arzak and Astelena, she learnt the importance of tasting every recipe, as Elena Arzak insisted, but also the importance of relationships between people: with colleagues, with suppliers, with customers....

She also learnt the importance of the sofrito, which is what gives the recipe its flavour. Moura uses pepper, tomato and onion in the sofrito, but what about coriander? There is always a customer who asks me not to add it, but I try to convince them," she says. The fish stock is also very important, as is the cooking time of the rice, which is around twenty minutes. Moura usually uses John Dory and sole as the main fish and relies on prawns for the seafood. The most important thing about my rice is the taste," she sums up.

In her talk, entitled 'New cuisine in the rural world', she also shared a few tidbits about his project and Portuguese cuisine. Lamelas is her restaurant in Porto Covo, a town between the sea and the countryside, a fishing village on the Alentejo coast. There we practice coastal cuisine, 90% of my dishes are based on fish," he points out.

She chose Porto Covo because his family has lived there for three generations, but also because she wanted to show that it is possible to create a great restaurant far from the big cities that concentrate everything: "In my case, it is a way of giving back to the land where I used to go on holiday and where I have family what that land has given me," he confessed. And she does it by using local suppliers, "because that gives everything meaning".