Mancebía Postigo: the recipe for the 'underground' fanzine applied to gastronomy

Last night was longer than they imagined.

“We had dinner at home and we got a bit upset, but this vermouth is going to cure us now”, they comment in unison while showing the etiquette.

“It is a wine macerated in herbs that they make in Priorat, it is called Les Cousins”.

Seeing them on the other side of the screen, it gives the impression that gastronomy randomly but continuously shapes the daily life of Oliver Mancebo and Marta Postigo (they both use their maternal surnames, a way of vindicating the women who have bred them).

Mancebía Postigo is the small publishing house that they have and where they somehow pour out all their culinary knowledge.

Through zines and collaborations they have been able to connect with many of their interests.

The neighborhood culture, the neighborhood atmosphere, the voice of women, the lost sound of the kitchens or the more lateral recipe books are just some of these.

"We started publishing in 2015. We both came from participating in the world of self-publishing and it was a way of marrying our different projects," recalls Oliver.

"From there things accelerated due to several residences to which we applied."

In the summer of that year they signed the

—published a year later—, held at the Espacio Matrioska, in Os Blancos (Ourense).

An atypical cooking audiobook, where much of Galician popular wisdom is collected through brief interviews.

There is talk of homemade brandy, honey production and octopus that are sold in town fairs.

"A hunt for grandmothers to slurp its sap, shake it well and prepare a synesthetic gastrosophical stew, which has as its object the most marginalized sense of cooking: hearing", they write against the publication.

Then would come

or

Each one offering an expanded vision of what gastronomy can give of itself, playing with definitions, literature, prison history or offal, which is so abundant in its markets and taverns.

“Most of the ideas come to us in bars or while we are eating,” they explain.

Neighbors of Gracia, the essence of the neighborhood is introduced into his works.

This is the case of

a gastronomic dictionary devised during a meal in La Taina, one of its reference bars.

In it they cite Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and give culinary examples of alliteration (allioli), antithesis (mar i muntanya), ellipsis (starred eggs), irony (peux de ministre), metaphors (trumpets of death) or paranomasias (lima- lemon).

Among their influences is the aforementioned Montalbán, MFK Fisher, Álvaro Cunqueiro, Antoni Miralda or Víctor Nubla, who invited them to one of his events.

“That was called the Agape and it consisted of bringing together a person who recited, another who cooked and a last one who made music.

Who cooks is who runs the baton.

came out of its first edition ,

which reviewed the

says Postigo.

Among their latest actions have been several workshops, such as the one they have given in the Modelo prison.

“Now it is a memory space.

How people ate in prisons and what role food played is something that interests me a lot”, describes Mancebo, who also delves into food as a form of protest, hunger strikes or those prisoners who swallowed anything to be able to go to the infirmary and pass a manifest.

“The subject is vast.

Now the idea is to make a book”, they say.

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