An excellent way to celebrate a well-deserved second Michelin star, and a resounding support from both critics and the public, is to capture the reasons for that success in black on white. This is what the brilliant chef Paco Morales has done. His first book, in which he discovers the secrets of NOOR -a gastrocultural project that, far beyond its status as a restaurant, delves into the cuisine of al-Andalus- sees the light of day by Montagud Editores. Throughout 320 pages, the work not only includes 65 recipes that recreate Hispano-Muslim cuisine from a rabidly contemporary perspective... It also presents a detailed historical contextualization of what and how it was eaten at the time, as well as dozens of essential photographed techniques Step by Step.
 
On March 17, 2016, Paco Morales 'raised the blind' of NOOR Restaurant with several goals in mind. One of them was to build a gastrocultural project that, service by service, would reinterpret and pay homage to a crucial period in the history of Spain: the Andalusian period. Another is to turn his native Córdoba into a must-visit place for seasoned gourmands, gourmets with an inquiring mind and lovers of good food. Everything, with the highest excellence as the omnipresent watchword.
 
In less than four years, he has more than achieved them. This is endorsed almost unanimously by both its clients and gastronomic critics. “He has managed to create a kitchen, something that is within the reach of very few. A line of its own, personal, different from anything known, in which it combines avant-garde and tradition in equal parts”, says Carlos Maribona, gastronomic journalist for the ABC newspaper. And it is that his are “contemporary recipes in which he demonstrates his talent for combining flavor, creativity and aesthetics. In his very personal work, he is rigorous and transgressive at the same time”, asserts José Carlos Capel, gastronomic critic for El País. The inspectors of the Michelin Guide join in: in little more than three years, they have awarded two stars to the establishment,
 
The chef, rigorous and perfectionist like few others, celebrates this success as it deserves: expressing his reasons in black on white under the editorial direction of Jãvi Antoja de la Rosa. And he does it in a large-format work with 320 pages. In them, he presents 314 elaborations, 75 of them photographed step by step, in which recipes are rescued to reinterpret them, attention is drawn to distant ingredients only in appearance, and craftsmanship is restored to that preponderant position in haute cuisine that never should have to lose. Everything, with 140 images signed by Mikel Ponce and the historical advice of Rosa Tovar and Lúa Monasterio.
 
The 65 recipes in which these processes come together are accompanied by an exhaustive analysis by Paco Morales himself. In it, it is shown that they are the result of painstaking recovery work, on the one hand, and updating in a contemporary key, on the other, of what and how people ate in al-Andalus in the 10th century, with the splendid Caliphate of Córdoba; XI, with its fragmentation in the Taifa Kingdoms; and XII and XIII, with the hegemony of the Almoravid and Almohad empires. In this way, and in addition to a didactic glossary, the work includes a detailed historical and culinary contextualization of what reached the pantries, what was forged in the kitchens and what was served on the tables of the great houses of The time.
 
All in all, Jãvi Antoja de la Rosa, director of the work and of the centenary gastronomic publishing house, is not without reason, when he assures that “this book is an editorial boast that aims to be at the level of the Cordovan chef”. Nor when he raises a question that he has little rhetoric: “Montagud Editores and NOOR, hand in hand. What could go wrong?"