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Noélia Jerónimo: 'I'm a simple person with my heart on the plate'
She is one of Portugal's best chefs, and in Féminas she reveals that the secret of her success is simply love.
She started working at the age of 14 and now, at 53, "I am still as passionate about cooking as I was on the first day. I try to learn every day in order to evolve", although she maintains her original philosophy of focusing on local products and traditional recipes "from an Algarve that gives us everything". Although she does not have a Michelin star, her restaurant Noélia e Jerónimo, 25 kilometres from the Spanish border, is frequented by many of Portugal's best chefs, who have succumbed to the mastery of this woman of strong character, who represents Portuguese Mediterranean gastronomy like no other.
So much so that she teaches at the Time Out Academy and is the visible face of the Portuguese Gastronomy and Wine Festival, as well as being the recipient of the Award for Merit in Gastronomy from the Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Europe/Africa. A true institution, who started her career as a pizza chef in the family business, until she created a more elaborate cuisine project, but who maintains her philosophy of "being generous in the kitchen to give people love and make them come home more often". Her proposal is based on tradition, as she is a firm believer in "returning to the old ways, to what our grandparents used to do", and invites young people to return to the markets "where they will always find the products that their environment has to offer".
And in the Féminas kitchen, he has prepared two exquisite examples of his "simple market cuisine with lots and lots of flavour". The first was a horse mackerel, 'because I love this poor man's fish', in tartar sauce with chives and coriander, blowtorched on a polenta omelette with chives. A dish full of umami," he described. The second dish brought the flavour and aroma of Portuguese stews to Asturias, in the form of a stew of tomatoes, onion, pepper, garlic, bay leaf and parsley, served in a deep dish under six sardine fillets and tomato halves, all previously fried. And with two dishes of extraordinary simplicity but great substance, he said goodbye to the cry of 'long live the women'.
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