Spanish chef thinks 'nose to tail' for special dinner

Clockwise from left: Aitor Olabegoya preps a 'chorizo lollipop' appetizer to serve before the suckling pig entree and a blackpepper consomme. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Aitor Olabegoya, his "chef's whites" still crisp after an hour in the kitchen, is poised like an eagle over a steaming pan of soup.

"Black pepper consomme," he says, offering the hovering reporters spoons for tasting. It sounds simple enough, but the result of a long, slow simmer is so rich that we're scanning the counter around him to see where the magic came from.

The culinary director of Migas is not working in his own Sanlitun restaurant kitchen, but across town in Wanjing, mixing it up with his friend Rob Cunningham, executive chef at Feast in East Beijing hotel. Cunningham orchestrates what he calls the Carnivore Club every couple of months - a special dinner with a guest chef who joins him to make the most of every cut of meat from the animal of the day.

Today, the duo has pork in their sights. They're taking the Feast kitchen on a test run for a dinner that will be June 25.

The soup will be a companion to Olabegoya's house-made blood sausage - dark, cloying and eerily soft to the uninitiated. As we nibble and slurp, the voluble Spaniard has moved on to knead a stuffing for his roast suckling pig.

"This pork mince isn't from that pig," Olabegoya says as he mashes the meat with foie gras and chunks of apple, fennel and citrus. "Suckling pig is very lean, so you need this mince - which is two-thirds fat - to keep it from drying out during roasting." As he churns and chats, he's directing an assistant who's making chimichurri sauce with pistachios, olive powder and sweet chilies.