My favourite flavour. By António Galapito

I don’t think I could really pick a favourite flavour. Ingredient yes, flavour no. I don’t like to think of food in terms of its specific flavours (acidic or salty, sweet, etc), but rather to think of it in terms of the ingredients – I believe that cooking like this is less two dimensional or formulaic, more interesting and complex.

Iberico pork smoked lardo with winter tomatoes on toast

So my favourite ingredient is: pork fat. I mean, you can just use it on anything and everything you like, it brings ‘flavours’ together, almost like salt, but in a way that adds a lot more depth. I don’t think you can use just any pork fat, I’m talking about high quality pork fat with a very clean palate. I prefer to use acorn fed Iberico  pigs – they probably provide some of the tastiest fat you can imagine. When you get that perfect pork fat,  it almost tastes milky and you can just salt it like lardo and eat it cold. You can roast it to enhance its nutty flavour profile, add it to vegetables, sauces, fish or even any meat you want to pull some character out of. For me, pork fat is liquid gold.

António Galapito, Taberna do Mercado (London, UK)

António Galapito. Photo: Katie Wilson

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