At the age of 23, Pepe learned to cook out of necessity, when his father unexpectedly fell ill. While his elder brother took over front-of-house duties at the family’s roadside restaurant, El Bohío, near Toledo, Pepe took the reigns of the kitchen. "I got the bug and thought, wow, there’s more to this than I realized," he remarks
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Fourteen years later, his cooking – bold and modern, with clear roots in local cooking and a down-to-earth instinct for good eating – has earned him a solid reputation. Most of his learning has been done in his own kitchen and via continuous reading. "I go to sleep and wake up reading cookbooks." Other input has come from courses with Spanish and French chefs and pâtissiers, and from early morning shopping trips to Madrid’s wholesale market. "I’m mainly self-taught," he explains, "but that does not mean you do not learn. You need to keep learning all the time."


He describes his cooking as "pretty simple." His seasonal dishes play restlessly with colour, flavour, and decorative ideas. Examples include a tomato gazpacho with a floating crunchy croquette of liquid-hot manchego cheese, a salad of green leaves bunched in a tubular wafer and a chunky fillet of salt-cod served with an earthy tripe sauce and a thin trail of plum compôte.


After expanding the kitchen, he has taken on board more complex, modern techniques. One of this his dishes, flashed briefly through a steam oven, is a mushroom-like capsule of morcilla (black sausage) and powdered egg white - a new Catalan product - with an egg yolk inside. It sits on a simple layer of potatoes fried in olive oil and dressed with a little vinegar.


"I love the apparent simplicity," says Pepe, "and the surprise element when people cut open the mushroom and find the runny, hot egg yolk".
 He has also been incorporating new flavours from outside the region. El Bohio serves salt-cod purée, originally developed entirely around local products, with an Andalusian garnish; chopped, fresh, bitter orange and bread toasts with olive oil, aromatized with truffle. "The meeting of flavours is wonderful," comments Pepe.


The key to his continuing development is, perhaps, his ability to go his own way, remaining true to the modest air of Manchegan cooking. "You have to be very self-critical, look at national and international standards, but at the same time do your own thing," he says. On the menu he invariably has a version of cocido, one of  Spain’s oldest dishes, an almost translucent chickpea purée with chopped-up pringada, and stock poured over the top at the table; a masterly homage to a poor man’s dish.

Favourite ingredients:

"I could pick one, but it wouldn’t be the truth. What I like about cooking is the idea that every kind of produce – fish, meat, vegetables – can be turned into something interesting."

Recommended recipe:
Salt cod ajo-arriero with Manchego, pine kernels & black olives
"I like dishes that have a renovated sense of tradition, a signature style of lightness combined with depth of flavor. This recipe is based on a very old regional dish traditionally made just with salt-cod, potato, olive oil and garlic. You need to start to make it one to two days ahead of eating."