FéminAs is back with its third congress from 24 to 26 April to pay homage to women working in catering, popular cuisine and the rural environment. On this occasion it will be visiting a number of mining basin locations around Mieres, Langreo, Laviana, Pola de Lena, Sobrescobio, the Redes Nature Park and Campo de Caso. A three-day event with talks, round tables, showcooking and gastronomic activities, for female chefs, floor managers, journalists and women working in the primary sector to share their professional experiences and discuss different ways of understanding gastronomy. Over the three days, chefs from Asturias of both sexes will be cooking alongside the female guest chefs. The objective of FéminAs, organised by Vocento's Gastronomy Division and promoted by the Subdepartment of Tourism in the Principality of Asturias, is to support activities that help showcase women in catering and the primary sector, along with social awareness to defend sustainability and rural communities.

Indigenous rural women

This year the FéminAs "Guardians of Tradition" award will go to Bolivia's "cholitas", mostly indigenous rural women who emigrated to the cities for years in search of a better life, cooking for tourists and mountain expeditions. They certainly made a name for themselves when they took the decision not just to cook or carry for climbers going up Bolivia's mountains, but to climb to the top as well. This group of indigenous Aymara women rejected the discrimination meted out to them by men, they climbed some of the highest peaks in the Americas, including the Aconcagua (6,960 metres), and dream of reaching the top of Everest. They have also won recognition from the UN's World Food Programme as high-level associates promoting better nutrition and the empowerment of women in Bolivia.

The colossal story of these women will be represented at FéminAs by Dora Magueño and Ana Lía Gonzáles. Mother and daughter, cooks and climbers. Their story, like their "cholita" colleagues', is a story of betterment, of tenacity and love for mountains, which has become a symbol of the fight for equality.

 
Asia's best chef 2022

The 3rd Congress of Gastronomy, Women and the Rural Milieu will again bring together a group of speakers from around the world, including Asia's Best Female Chef 2022 in The 50 Best Restaurants, Natsuko Shoji, from Japan, who owns one of Tokyo's most exclusive locales, Été. In 2014, aged only 25, Natsuko Shoji embarked on her own adventure with this small restaurant, with space for only six diners, and by 2020 she had already become Asia's Best Female Pastry Chef. Her restaurant is a symbiosis of cooking and fashion. Decorated with all manner of luxury brand items (Cartier, Franck Muller etc.), its sampling menu focuses on beauty and perfectionism. Shoji has perfected a technique inspired by French meticulousness, Japanese flavours, and a taste for haute couture. This year she notched up another major award, The Best Chef FoodArt.

FéminAs will also feature Isabella Potí, chef at Bros* (Lecce, Italy). She has a Polish mother and an Italian father, and accounts for 50% of Bros, the Michelin-starred restaurant she runs with her partner, Floriano Pellegrino. She started out in cookery in London with Claude Bosi, and continued her studies in Spain with Paco Torreblanca and Martín Berasategui; at Geranium (Copenhagen); and in Menton (France), with Mauro Colagreco. Her popularity rocketed in 2017 after working on the judging panel in Masterchef Italy. An acclaimed influencer and model, she also owns the Roots restaurant in Scorrano, a rugby team and her own T-shirt brand.

 The Manabí oven

Valentina Álvarez is the chef at Iche Restaurante (San Vicente, Manabí, Ecuador). Her great-grandmother taught her the techniques and secrets of the ancestral cookery of Manabí, a region with exuberant mountain range as the prelude to the plains running down to the Pacific Ocean, and the crucial role played by the special Manabí oven in local recipes. Álvarez is a research chef, and teaches at the Iche school-restaurant, a gastronomy lab in San Vicente where she also forges links with producers and farmers' associations to encourage the use of local produce. In Asturias she will be demonstrating the potential of the Manabí oven, expertly handled by empowered, extremely wise women with strong hands and full knowledge of more than 16 cooking techniques.

Danish chef Kamilla Seidler heads up Lola (Copenhagen, Denmark). She learned the trade in some of the world's leading kitchens, such as Mugaritz, Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons, Paustian and Geist, and in 2012 she was asked to join Melting Pot, a non-profitmaking project launched by a compatriot, Claus Meyer (co-founder of Noma), which seeks to improve opportunities and standards of living in vulnerable sectors of the population through food and enterprise. This produced Gustu, an innovative restaurant which set out to showcase the native produce of Bolivia by turning its ingredients into sophisticated recipes, and which now also operates as a school. The project, featuring Kamilla as executive chef, is held to be one of the 20 best restaurants on the continent, and the region's most progressive. And this won her a distinction in 2016 as Latin America's Best Female Chef.

OMT gastronomy ambassador

Although she was a late arrival to the world of gastronomy and her restaurant is located in a narrow rural valley in the Andes foothills, Chilean Pilar Rodríguez (Food&Wine Studio, Colchagua, Chile) has become one of Latin America's most respected chefs. Aged around 40, Pilar decided to take a year's sabbatical from her hectic life as head of marketing for Latin America and the Caribbean with fashion brand Tommy Hilfiger, and cookery crossed her path. In 2006 she opened her own restaurant, where she serves up her own interpretation of Chilean gastronomy - with links to this O’Higgins region - with a special focus on wine. Her work in enogastronomy led the World Tourism Organisation to declare her a world gastronomy ambassador in 2020. She is the first woman to win the award.

One of the Spanish chefs who will be visiting the mining basins is Diana Díaz, head chef at El Invernadero* (Madrid, Spain), and right-hand woman to chef Rodrigo de la Calle, where she also manages the creative process and day-to-day administration of this restaurant, now considered as one of the world's most influential vegetable cuisine outlets. Diana forms part of the new generation of vegetable chefs who continue to showcase the colour green on diners' plates. Born in Toledo, Díaz fell under the culinary influence of her mother and grandmother, who not only taught her to cook, but also to learn the secrets of the plantation that kept her family supplied with food. She has won a large number of culinary awards, including the International "Jaén Paraíso Interior" Extra Virgin Olive Oil ("AOVE") Cookery Award at San Sebastian Gastronomika 2022.

The first female president of the Spanish Federation of Associations of Chefs and Cakemakers will also be a speaker at FéminAs. Pepa Muñoz (El Qüenco de Pepa) is a staunch supporter of produce and traditional cuisine. She was enthusiastic about cookery from a very early age - at nine years old she was washing squid and anchovies at the family business, and by the age of eleven she was already cooking alongside her father, whom she also accompanied to his catering events all over Spain. Her restaurant was one of the first to have its own vegetable plantation in Madrid.


The youngest Michelin star

FéminAs will also be graced by the presence of Vicky Sevilla, chef at Arrels* (Sagunto, Spain), the youngest chef to earn a Michelin star in Spain, aged only 29. After studying and working with Susi Díaz (La Finca), Vicente Patiño (Saiti) and Begoña Rodríguez (La Salita), at the age of only 25 she opened her own restaurant, located in the old Duques de Gaeta stables (16th century) in Sagunto. She has just been awarded the La Liste Mediterranean's New Talent of the Year Award in Monaco, for talented young chefs working in countries around the Mediterranean.

And María Cano, chef at Voro** (Canyamel, Majorca). Born in Córdoba, it was her grandmother who spiked her passion for cookery. Her restlessness led her to travel to Brazil before becoming the right-hand woman of Linares chef Álvaro Salazar, with whom she opened Voro in 2019 - the restaurant now has two Michelin stars and two Repsol "Sol" awards.

Cooking and teaching

Women with a focus on teaching at various training centres in the peninsula will also be at the FéminAs conference, such as Yolanda León (Cocinandos*, León), who for several years has divided her time between cooking and teaching at the Ciudad de León VET centre, where she instructs future chefs and pastrymakers in Castilla y León. And Galician Beatriz Sotelo, who is a chef at heart, and earned a Michelin star at A Estación (Cambre), but now shares all the cookery knowledge and experience she has gleaned over the years with the new generations at the Paseo das Pontes VET centre in A Coruña. They will be accompanied by Inés Butrón, gastronomy writer and lecturer in the History of Gastronomy at the Culinary Institute of Barcelona.

The sweet sector will be represented by Argentinian Lucila Canero, pastrymaker at La Luciérnaga (Castelldefels), who arrived in Spain in 2010 to continue her studies alongside leading professionals in the sector such as Raúl Bernal, Albert Roca and Takashi Ochiai. She now runs a vegan gluten-free pastrymaking outlet, and this year she was one of the guest speakers at Madrid Fusión Pastry.

Representatives of Asturias

The Asturias delegation at FéminAs will be headed up by some of the mining region's leading chefs, such as Adela Alonso (Casa Adela, Lada, Langreo) and Ana Fé Fernández (El Cenador del Azul, Mieres). Not to mention other grand chefs from other parts of Asturias, such as the 'Landscape Cookery' ambassadors Natalia Menéndez (Casa Chuchu, Turón) and Sara López (Casa Telva, Valdesoto); and Noelia García Valle (Los Pisones, Gijón). The event will also feature three of the most famous chefs in the Caudal basin, Xune Andrade (Monte*, San Feliz), Javier Álvarez (Casa Farpón, Mamorana), and Jairo Rodríguez, (Casa Roble, Lena), also a 'Landscape Cookery' ambassador.

Young promises in the primary sector

The primary sector will be represented at FéminAs by women who have gone to the very top with their projects, such as Irene Rodríguez from Cantabria, enologist and owner of Bodega Hortanza (Trebuesto, Cantabria). After studying Enology and working at a number of major wineries, this young lady went back to her village to make her dream come true: to give her own vines some TLC and make top-quality white wines. Her work won acclaim last year as Cantabria's best entrepreneurial project. And the young Galician María Maceiras, a shellfish gatherer in Muros, La Coruña, whose stand for the need to protect marine resources on social media won her the Alimentos de España National Young Talent Gastronomy Award. Also Judith Naves, from Asturias, heading up AsturSabor, a company which makes preserves from all the local varieties of Asturias: "gochu asturcelta" pork, "xaldu" lamb, "asturcón" colt, Asturias valley beef, "pito pinto" cockerel and "bermeyu" goat. Third generation of a family with ties to the catering business, at the age of only twenty she decided it was time for a turnaround and for the company to come up with a different kind of offer, which won her the Ministry of Agriculture's Excellence Award for Innovation by Rural Women. Or Natalí Lobeto and her mother Marigel Álvarez, owners of Quesería Redes (Campo de Caso), running a project to retrieve the award-winning "casín" cheese, along with a country hotel.

FéminAs will also feature Teresa López, an agricultural engineer from Cabanas (A Coruña), who has been president of the Federation of Associations of Rural Women since 2004, which fights for their rights and speaks out against the inequalities affecting women in the rural environment, totalling seven million women in Spain.

The congress will be open to the public until capacity has been completed for the Monday and Tuesday sessions, but it can also be viewed on the portal www.gastrofeminas.com.

Landscape Cookery

Integration of the surroundings, gastronomic produce and culinary talent in a single identity is the competitive edge of the slogan ‘Landscape Cookery’ used to promote Asturias as part of its plan to take up a position as a gastronomy destination. Support for FéminAs and attendance of specialist events such as Madrid Fusión and Alimentaria are just a few of the activities in the plan, launched by the Subdepartment of Tourism in autumn 2021.