A

fter yet another internship, Maca opened a bistro and started working on events, realising the importance of having different catering models. Today, the Maca de Castro group, which she runs with her brother, includes a gourmet restaurant, two bistros (one in Alcudia, one in Palma), a restaurant in Dusseldorf, an events service, the catering side of the Son Veri finca and, of course, Maca's passion, vegetable gardens.

It was in Uruguay, where this traveller at heart ran a restaurant for 5 years, that she connected with agriculture. “The restaurant had a small vegetable garden and I wanted to do the same thing in Mallorca”. As Alcudia is next to Sa Pobla, the most agricultural village on the island, it was easy to find the land. The rest is another story. “Growing your own vegetables is difficult,” explains Maca, “much more so than cooking. “Four people work full-time in the gardens that supply all the restaurants with fruit and vegetables. Every season, more than 20 varieties of vegetables, a dozen aromatic herbs and at least five fruits are grown." Some, like the peanuts that Maca uses in sauces or to make turrons, are extremely complicated to produce. “You have to remember”, says Maca, "that in the past Mallorca exported peanuts, and we produced more peanuts than potatoes. The peanut is a root that can rot, due to a kind of small worm that gets into the fruit. To get rid of it, you have to dig up the peanuts every 15 days, clean and dry them. The tomato, which seems so obvious, also gives us a hard time some years.

Once a week," explains Maca, “I go around to all of the kitchen gardens with Margalida, who manages the teams. We estimate what we'll be able to harvest in the next seven or even fifteen days, but everything can change in a week!  It's complicated but exciting."  Working in the vegetable garden changes the mentality around cooking. Maca works with the whole product. She uses fig leaves, for example, and comes up with some surprising but sensible combinations, such as a dessert based on onions – one of the sweetest vegetables – and fig leaves infused in milk. “I also like to work with tomato skins,” she continues, “as they are rich in pectin, making them ideal for gazpacho and avoiding the use of breadcrumbs and gluten”.