Formentera’s cooking comes out of two constraints: little water and little of everything. On an island like this, the art is not in adding but in preserving.
Peix sec
This is the dish to understand. Fish — traditionally ray and similar — split, salted and dried in the sun and wind on cane racks. Before refrigeration, it was how fish lasted the winter.
Today it is used mostly flaked into the ensalada payesa, the other half of the pair: potato, tomato, pepper, onion, olives and that dried fish on top. It sounds austere and it is exactly the opposite: a dish with a great deal of flavour, because dried fish concentrates everything the fresh one has spread thin.
The rest of the table
Fresh fish, obviously, in the coastal and harbour places. Rice dishes, often soupy or with rockfish. And, shared with Ibiza, flaó, the fresh cheese tart with mint, which here too is the dessert of always.
Where and when
On the coast, the beach places of the south and the Migjorn stretch, which is where they have always been. Inland, in Sant Francesc and Sant Ferran, the places that work all year with island people.
People eat late, as everywhere in the Balearics. And in high season it is worth booking: Formentera has few tables and many people in August — that is arithmetic, not exclusivity.
Out of season
From November to March the choice narrows a great deal, and what stays open is in the villages. That is not a drawback: it is the most honest way to eat here, because whoever is cooking is cooking for their neighbours.
