Delicooks

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> www.lobstersquad.blogspot.com

You’re at home in the kitchen yet you’re an illustrator by profession. Many of your assignments are related to food. Pure coincidence or what you've always dreamed of?
It’s not so much a question of coincidence but rather, it’s a case of responding to the market. It is much cheaper to order an illustration than deal with an entire team of photographers and stylists. We never have problems finding the ingredients, and food is well suited to illustration. And since I love food, I’m so much happier doing this sort of work than I would be if I had to draw illustrations, say, for a first-aid manual.

You have a blog where you mix your two hobbies: cooking and illustration. Tell us how the blog came about.
After months reading other blogs and seeing the little tag from blogger saying "make your own blog”, I tried it out, and here I am.

How is it going?
I don’t give it as much time as I would like to, but I love it. It is a sort of extension of my portfolio and one that more people can see. It’s also a great way to share my enthusiasm and recipes without being a bore!

Why in English?
I became a fan of cooking blogs such as Chocolate & Zucchini, Delicious Days, Chubby Hubby or Nami-Nami, which are from France, Germany, Singapore and Estonia. If they weren’t in English, I’d never have been able to read them. When I started the blog it was the only one of it’s kind in English from Spain, and I thought that my gazpacho recipe would be more interesting for someone in Australia than for people in Spain who already know how to make it.

What other blogs you follow?
I love Smitten Kitchen, The Wednesday Chef, Whipped, The Perfect Pantry ... I have a list of twenty-plus blogs that I follow,  but I love getting lost for a while –  jumping from link to link if I have time.

Do you have any interesting anecdotes that came out of your blogging?
The best thing about doing the blog is the amount of different people who have contacted me since I started. Sometimes, it’s just to say “hello, I really like what you’re doing”, which is great. But the blog has also led to work. I’ve also made some good friends. I’ve been paid for some of the work in kind – and opening a parcel filled with goodies from some exotic place is fascinating.

Do you buy cookbooks or do you look up recipes on the internet?
I use the internet. I have a rather bulky digital file! But I am a real cookbook junkie and I tend to buy them online, almost all online. In Spain, nobody publishes books like How to Eat, by Nigella Lawson, or The improvisational Cook by Sally Schneider. They’re huge books, filled with text, information, anecdotes and recipes, of course. But mostly they are are books made by people who write well.

Two of your recent exhibitions are full of flavor. One was in Cuba featuring the drawings from the book Taste of Cuba and the one before that was Heinz and Company. Tell us about them.
The Cuba exhibition grew out of the book I did a few years ago with Macmillan Caribbean, which in turn was grew out of of a trip I made with my sketchbook under my arm.
We wanted to do a cookbook that reflected everyday Cuban experience regarding food, from agriculture to markets and kitchens. The Spanish embassy thought it was interesting and organized the exhibition.
The Heinz exhibition was my personal tribute to classic label design. A bit of research turned up some very amusing stories and anecdotes about the origin of products which I’d taken for granted all my life. I decided to draw the inventors and put the illustrations inside glass jars.

What is never missing from your fridge?
Pickles, Mexican wheat tortillas and an assortment of exotic sauces which I occasionally have to clear out, when things get out of hand!

Do you have any other projects?
For now I have an autumn full of storybooks, and the firm intention of learning to make Galician empanada.