"We are living in a very serious time. We have a huge problem with water and we chefs have to raise our voices". With these words, which could have been a slogan for the COP28 held in Dubai last December, Pedrito Sánchez, chef at Bagá* (Jaén), began his speech at the Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España.

"The fields are dying, there is no life without water, and every 15 or 20 years there is a drought, but we do nothing", he continued, as if he were a climate activist. But Pedrito acts like one in his kitchen, where he works more and more with vegetables, "looking for plants that do not need a lot of water to be prepared", he added, before talking about how he understands cooking.

"I use creativity in order not to increase the price of the menu (95 euros)", he said, being all the sincere and natural someone can be. "The process of creativity is to make us all happier, starting with me, my team, the producers, and the client", he added. Bagá is "an unusual restaurant", where it is normal to enjoy dishes made with only two ingredients "or even one", added José Carlos Capel, president of Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España. "The difficult thing is to think, otherwise we all end up doing the same thing. I can cook in a curious way, but otherwise you will end up seeing the same thing in all the dishes. We lose personality," he says.

And, in the kitchen of Bagá - a restaurant that seats eight, - less is more. Faced with the impossibility of preparing dishes that require long cooking times, frying or dressings that can give off odours, he works on preparations that do not involve the abusive use of water, in order to obtain the maximum flavour in the shortest period of time, making the most of the essence of the food, its natural water, to obtain the purest flavour, thus saving time, space and resources used in the preparation of dishes.

He presented simple dishes in which water is used without being used. A dish of prawns from Motril with shiitake water, because it is one of the mushrooms with the least amount of water. "We use the water from the mushroom and cook it in that water", he pointed out.

Another suggestion he made was to cook sugar snap peas in salad water at a low temperature so that they don't oxidise, and then filter them. "We do a lot of things with this water, but in the peas we manage to give them what the peas lack", Pedrito points out. And in this commitment to less is more and the responsible use of water, Pedrito spoke of octopus water, "from which we extract the water to osmotise you in this octopus water. The oyster is like a sponge that absorbs all the water we put in it, giving it a fantastic flavour". Another curious dish he presented, although Pedrito himself confessed that "I'm embarrassed to present my dishes here because they are so simple", was beetroot liquefied and cooked in its own liquefied form, until it becomes a glaze in its own juice. "Then we roast it and dehydrate it for two days until it's like a prune, then we put a seaweed emulsion on it. In other words, simplicity made delight.”

Pedrito wanted to treat the audience with one of his new dishes. "For the first time in Bagà we have cooked legumes", he confessed shyly. We cooked lentils with some vegetables and seasoned them with a caviar cream - which I won't tell you how to make," he said, provoking laughter from the audience. A simple dish "with a lot of flavour", said Capel, who was lucky enough to taste it. Finally, he presented fresh trout roe with tomato water, as if it were a soup. A real lesson in how to use water without wasting it.