From home-style recipes to the haute cuisine of the Cantabrian coast: two books for cooking, learning, finding inspiration and giving as gifts.
There are cookbooks that you consult and others that stay at home. They get stained, opened over and over again, given as gifts and end up becoming part of the cook's memory. Jesús Sánchez's two books belong to this second category, even though they stem from different places.
Homemade. Recetas con la gorra is born from everyday cooking, the flavours that accompany a lifetime and the conviction that eating well can also be simple. Amos's arbour, for its part, opens the door to avant-garde cuisine of Jesus Sanchez and there is a way of understanding the Cantabrian Sea through the technique, the territory, the produce and the evolution of a project built over more than three decades.
One invites you to put on an apron. The other invites you to look at the kitchen with fresh eyes.
Together they explain something essential about Jesús Sánchez: behind haute cuisine, there is always an essential cuisine. Before technique comes the product; before creativity, memory; before the restaurant, the home. That is why these two books also function as two entry points into the universe of Cenador de Amós and as two gastronomic gifts capable of appealing to very different audiences.
Homemade: the food you feel like cooking
Casero has a virtue that appears right from its subtitle: «recipes on the house» [recetas con la gorra]. The expression sums up a clear intention. Jesús Sánchez brings his cooking to anyone who enjoys preparing a meal for their family, whipping up a seasonal dish or bringing back flavours they recognise because, in some way, they were already in their memory.
The book brings together 75 recipes and is designed for real cooking. It features 288 full-colour pages, complete with step-by-step photographs and personal anecdotes. The hardback edition makes the volume a keepsake, but its true value lies in how it invites you to open it in the kitchen and get started.
Within its pages live the origins of Jesús, his influences, the Cantabrian larder and the perspective of a chef who knows that the best technique is the one that helps the produce express itself. There are seasonal recipes, from spring asparagus to embers-roasted peppers, and a way of cooking that proves simplicity can be full of knowledge.
That is one of Casero's greatest assets. It allows you to learn from a chef with three MICHELIN stars without turning home cooking into an exam. It doesn't force you to recreate the complexity of a fine dining restaurant. It teaches you to look closer at ingredients, respect timings and rediscover the pleasure of making something delicious with your own hands.
Why homemade is a great gift
Giving a cookbook as a gift has a unique quality: the gift continues after opening the package. It can turn into a meal, a Sunday recipe, a dinner among friends or a family tradition that doesn't yet exist.
Mate, multiply that value because the copies bought at the Cenador de Amós shop can be ordered dedicated and signed by Jesús Sánchez. The dedication transforms a recipe book into a personal item. It is no longer just a book being handed over: an invitation to cook is being handed over with a written message for the person receiving it.
Its current price in the official store is 24.95 euros. It offers a carefully produced edition, the authorship of one of Spain's great chefs and, at the same time, real practicality. It is easy to picture it as a birthday or Christmas gift, for someone moving into a new home, or simply for someone who enjoys gathering loved ones around the table.
Cenador de Amós: Cantabrian haute cuisine in a book
The second book occupies another territory. Cenador de Amós is a large-format work for understanding Jesús Sánchez’s cuisine from a deeper perspective. Across 256 pages, it brings together 63 creations and 350 culinary preparations, and documents the evolution of a house whose identity has been built from Cantabria with the kitchen, the dining room, hospitality and the territory walking hand in hand.
Here the reader enters haute cuisine.
The interest does not lie solely in discovering recipes or techniques. It is in understanding how a chef thinks.
How a memory is transformed into a dish. How product and creativity converse. How contemporary cuisine can move forward without breaking the bond with the place it is born from.
Jesús Sánchez’s cuisine is one of the Cantabrian region because it finds its larder, its landscape and an essential part of its language in this territory. The sea, the market garden and the produce of the north are the starting point for a cuisine that seeks the essence and has evolved without losing that sense of belonging.
That is why this book can be read in several ways. As a gastronomic work, it provides an insight into the creative process and a high-level technical repertoire. As a record of a career, it charts the building of Cenador de Amós over more than three decades. And as a book of inspiration, it demonstrates just how far a product can go when backed by knowledge, sensitivity and a constant search.
For those who want to go beyond the recipe
Cenador de Amós is of particular interest to chefs, culinary students, hospitality professionals, advanced amateurs and people who enjoy understanding haute cuisine beyond just sitting at the table.
A professional recipe can teach you about ingredients and steps. A work of this kind can teach you how to think.
That nuance changes the reading experience. Whoever opens the book is not necessarily looking to prepare one of its 350 creations the next day. They might want to understand a combination, discover a technique, analyse the relationship between territory and creativity, or get closer to the way in which a restaurant with three MICHELIN Stars builds its identity.
Therein lies part of its value as a gift. It does not compete with an ephemeral object. It delivers knowledge, inspiration and an author's perspective. Its current price in the Online shop of Cenador de Amós is €68.40, consistent with a large-format edition designed for those who value haute cuisine and culinary books as keeper pieces.
Two books, the same way of understanding cooking
At first glance, Casero and Cenador de Amós might seem opposites. One speaks of accessible recipes and the other of haute cuisine. One invites you to cook a familiar dish; the other allows you to enter a more complex creative universe.
However, they are better understood when read together.
In both, there is the same importance given to the product. The same memory. The same respect for the seasons. The same idea that cooking consists of transforming without erasing the origin. The scale changes, the technique changes and the reader changes, but a way of looking remains.
Casero demonstrates that a great chef's knowledge can also improve the everyday. Cenador de Amós shows how that very foundation can evolve into a recognisable signature cuisine.
One answers the question: «What can I cook at home today?». The other opens another: «How do you build your own kitchen?».
Between the two responses, the complete Jesús Sánchez appears: the cook who remembers the family stove and the chef who has turned the Cantabrian Sea into a gastronomic language.
Which one to choose?
The choice depends less on the recipient's cooking ability than on what we want to gift them.
Casero is the choice for anyone who enjoys making. For those who want useful, approachable recipes full of flavour; for anyone who finds happiness preparing a table and sharing it. It is the book that can end up open next to a casserole dish and that, over time, keeps the marks of having been used.
Cenador de Amós is the choice for those who enjoy discovering. For those who view haute cuisine as culture, technique and creativity; for those who appreciate a large-format gastronomic edition and want to experience Jesús Sánchez's Cantabrian cuisine from the inside.
And there is a third option: to give both away.
A gift that doesn't end when it's given
There are gifts that are enjoyed upon receiving them. Cookbooks can begin again every time they are opened.
A recipe becomes a meal. A technique sparks an idea. A photograph brings back memories of an experience. A dedication takes you back to the person who chose the gift.
That is why Casero and Cenador de Amós are two especially valuable ways of gifting gastronomy. They work for those who love to cook, for those who love to eat and for those who understand that some of the most important things in life happen around a table.
Both are available in the Cenador de Amós online store. Casero can also be requested personally dedicated and signed by Jesús Sánchez, a detail that turns each copy into a specially personal piece.
Choosing between the two means deciding which door we want to open.
Home brings it to the home kitchen: lighting the fire, choosing the produce and enjoying preparing something for others.
Cenador de Amós leads towards the haute cuisine of Cantabria: to the thought, technique, creativity and history of a gastronomic house built over more than three decades.
Two different reads. Two gifts with their own value. And the very same conviction on every page: good cooking begins long before the dish reaches the table and stays long after you have finished it.