Jordi Roca will travel to the Himalayas with the veteran mountaineer in spring

El Celler de Can Roca designs menus for Carlos Soria BBVA expedition to Annapurna
  • Jordi Roca, named the world's best pastry chef in 2014, will climb to the base camp on Annapurna at a height of 4,200 meters
  • From their restaurant in Girona, the Roca brothers have conducted an in-depth research process to design a complete and balanced diet for the BBVA Expedition, adapted to mountain conditions
  • The historical menu will include Catalan dishes like 'escudella' and cannelloni, which will be the gastronomic highlight of the ascent
  • Carlos Soria will teach Jordi Roca how to operate a kitchen at the base camp of an eight-thousander and will visit BBVA's solidarity project at the school of Sama, in the foothills of Manaslu, in Nepal

The owners of the El Celler de Can Roca restaurant, the Roca brothers, have designed the menu for the BBVA Expedition that the mountaineer Carlos Soria will take to the altitude camps of Annapurna (8,091 meters) in the Himalayan mountain range. Jordi Roca himself will be in charge of preparing the menu, as he will accompany the Expedition to the base camp of this eight-thousander. The 76 year-old climber faces one of the most ambitious challenges of his sporting career and will attempt to conquer the summits of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri this spring.

Carlos Soria and the BBVA Expedition 2015 will have an exceptional fellow traveler: Jordi Roca, who is responsible for the sweet recipes at the El Celler de Can Roca restaurant and was named the world's best pastry chef in 2014.

In addition to being global benchmarks in contemporary gastronomy of the highest level, the Roca brothers work in different and innovative lines of culinary research. One of them, freeze-drying, will be the main feature of a historic and cutting-edge menu, designed specially by Jordi Roca from his kitchen in Girona, which will be cooked for the BBVA Expedition en route to the Annapurna summit.



A high-altitude menu

The menu, varied and energy-giving from the nutritional point of view, will attempt -differences aside- to take the spirit and the dishes of El Celler de Can Roca to the Nepalese Himalayas. The menu will feature dishes deeply rooted in Catalan tradition, such as 'escudella' (meat and vegetable broth), eggplant cannelloni and crème brûlée custard.

Venison couscous, pumpkin cream with aniseed-flavored walnut, arepa with chicken tinga, eel rice, smoked pear and crystallized ginger are some of the dishes that the members of the BBVA will be able to sample. Jordi Roca, aware that garlic is one of Carlos Soria's favorite ingredients, wanted to pay tribute to this plant with a very special black garlic preserve.

Jordi Roca will accompany Carlos Soria and the rest of the expedition and will present them with his contributions. The Catalan pastry chef will take advantage of this trip to explore the world of Nepalese cuisine. Nathi Sherpa, who has cooked for the last BBVA Expeditions and appears in the book 'Recipes for extreme situations' will be the perfect host for the renowned chef.

Jordi Roca and Yunju Choi, a Korean cook from the research department of El Celler de Can Roca, have been working for months in the design and preparation of different freeze-dried foods. "For us it's been a real challenge to design products that preserve the level of our cuisine, despite the conditions at which they cook at such high altitudes", said Jordi Roca. "We're working on a line of freeze-dried menus that the expedition can take with them during the ascents. Carlos will be able to eat rice with partridge, garlic soup and cuttlefish with peas at a height of more than 7,000 meters. Last summer, also with BBVA, we took El Celler de Can Roca very far away on a tour that visited countries like Peru, Mexico, Colombia and the United States. Now we're going to take our cuisine as high as possible".

In recent months, the mountaineer Carlos Soria has visited El Celler de Can Roca in Girona to exchange impressions with Jordi Roca and his team. "It was important for Jordi to know about the real conditions of the base camp. Nathi, our cook, uses drums with ice to preserve the meat, makes ovens with pans and hot rocks… things they won't be used to at the world's best restaurant", explained Carlos Soria.

"When it comes to tackling a summit like Annapurna, feeding and hydration are fundamental", said Carlos Soria. "Until now, our cook looked after us and prepared delicious dishes, but having Jordi Roca on board will be a true luxury".

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