A word from our Mallorca chef
We work with some incredible chefs on our trips, to provide you with delicious meals to fuel your body. Our Event Manager, Leila Fitt, interviews Maira Petrella, from ‘Fork Seasons Mallorca’, who we worked with on our 2023 Mallorca training holiday.
Photos by Tyla Sullivan
LF: How did you become a private chef?
MP: I come from a family of chefs. I was born in Brazil, my dad and sister are both chefs and growing up I was cooking with my parents and helping them with the restaurants. So I started enjoying gastronomy from a very, very early age.
When I was 18 years old I started travelling and working in different restaurants around the globe. And I have a really, really big passion for travelling. Discovering new ingredients in different cultures and countries is just amazing.
In 2013, I became a yacht chef. I started cooking on private yachts and for several years I was sailing and cooking for private families. In my last job, I was cooking on a sailboat for a French family. They were based here in Mallorca and they had some properties in France and the UK as well. So I started travelling to cook in their houses as well, for Christmas and New Year's. So that's how I became a private chef.
Eventually I decided to settle down in Mallorca and open my own company, Fork Seasons Catering. It’s been five years now and I'm cooking for different clients on the island. It's lovely.
LF: What made you choose Mallorca?
MP: I came here to find new job opportunities. Because the yacht industry is very important for Europe. There are so many yachts that are based here in Mallorca during the winter for refitting. And when the Mediterranean season starts, they leave and cross over to the Caribbean and do the seasons.
LF: So it's very busy in Mallorca for you.
MP: Very, very busy. In the summer the yachts are quiet because everyone is sailing. Everyone is in Greece, Italy, and the Mediterranean, but they start coming back in September. We also have a lot of local yachts here that do just short trips to the Balearic Islands. So it's very interesting to work with those. Sometimes I still do chef work on short trips.
LF: Did you say you were born in Brazil?
MP: Yeah, I was born in Brazil, in an Italian family. So, I have both citizenships. And that's how I moved to Italy to look for my roots. To know the culture and to learn the language and also work in a few restaurants there. And it was great because I grew up in an Italian family, but in Brazil, so I didn't know Italian culture. So I went over there to learn.
LF: How nice and do you speak Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and English?
MP: Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, English and now French.
LF: That's amazing.
MP: Yeah it's been many years since I've been away from Brazil. I started travelling when I was 18 years old so it's already been 20 years that I've been away. I just love cultures and I was addicted to learning. It’s very natural to learn the languages when you live in a place and you have time and speak to the local people.
LF: And it must help with your cooking because you meet so many people and you can always speak that language.
MP: Yes, it's very good. Something that helps me a lot in Mallorca because it's a very international island. Everyone speaks English here. Sometimes we don't speak Spanish for several days. And we have a lot of Germans, French people, and also Italians coming. It's good.
LF: What inspires you in your cooking?
MP: The inspiration for my cooking is the places I have visited. When I try to reproduce a dish, I always get these memories from the local markets that I visited, the ingredients I bought there, and also the food I tasted in the restaurant and street markets. This is a very good way to understand the culture, and I try to reproduce all these in my food when I cook a different dish for another place.
Another big inspiration for my cooking is my family and the fact they are amazing chefs. My sister and dad are super passionate about food and when we cook together, I learnt a lot from them. We exchange recipes. We mix our styles and we create new dishes. From cooking together, we enjoy it, and we are very, very passionate chefs. So, they are my big inspiration.
LF: And your father and your sister? Where are they based?
MP: My father is based here, he lives in Mallorca and I'm very lucky he can cook with me sometimes. I can count on him to cook for big groups sometimes. He has so much experience in restaurants and hotels. And my sister is based in Barcelona, she's a private chef and she has her healthy catering business in Costa Brava north of Barcelona.
LF: It's nice that you all cooked together. I understand why you became a chef because they introduced it to you and you saw their love for cooking and food.
MP: My sister works at a cottage in Costa Brava and she does a lot of workshops on healthy cooking and yoga and other activities at her place. She's a super healthy chef and she has been doing some healing cooking also. She helps some people who have health problems. She works with a nutritionist and developed special menus for these dietary requirements. Amazingly, I learned a lot about healthy cooking from her recipes which I use when my guests need something healthier and maybe vegetarian or vegan as well.
LF: What would you say your favourite meals are?
MP: My favourite meals are Mediterranean food. Because I like using local products, and always try to use the freshest and the seasonal vegetables or Fish.
I love Thai food as well, it’s full of ingredients. One recipe takes so many ingredients and it's an explosion of flavours and I love it. I have been in Thailand and I trained myself in a very traditional cooking school there. So I love reproducing those traditional plates, but giving them a little bit of my touch and maybe mixing them with Mediterranean ingredients, Asian food is full of different techniques. So I use the techniques I learned in Thailand, but maybe using Mediterranean ingredients.
LF: Where do you source your ingredients?
MP: When I have a small group, I like going personally to do my selection in the local markets. We have very good, super high-quality markets. I have my favourite fishmonger, butcher, fruit and vegetable shop. So I just go and select my ingredients from them. But I also work with a cooperative of farmers of Mallorca. They can deliver to me when it's for a bigger group and I try to support them as much as I can. So I get from them the most amazing ingredients produced on the island and most of them are organic as well. So I get cheese from Mallorca, Sobrasada, olive oil, wine and fruit and vegetables from them. It depends on the event and the amount of people I'm serving.
LF: That's really good to hear. It's also good that you pick things based on the season. Because things vary so much in quality.
MP: Exactly. I always create my menus based on the seasonal ingredients and I try to bring to the table what was grown yesterday and if possible locally. I have so many choices here in Mallorca, so many farmers and farms, that I try to offer local food. We even have plantations of passion fruit and other tropical ingredients that are starting to grow here. So we don't need to import anything.
LF: That's really good. And what percentage would you say your ingredients are found locally?
MP: I can say about 70-80%. Because the recipes have so many other ingredients. It's not only about the fish, the fruit, and the meat. For example, sometimes I prefer to buy Spanish meat from other places in Spain, because in Mallorca we don't have the best quality of meat. So I buy from Galicia.
LF: Okay, that’s not too far, it's not being shipped from the other side of the world.
MP: Exactly. Yeah.
LF: Why is it important to you to use organic produce?
MP: Organic food has become very popular and I'm very happy about that because it's not as expensive as before. I think it's very important for the environment, it’s better for us and for the animals. It's always good to buy produce free from hormones or antibiotics, modified organisms, and chemicals. It's good for our kids as well.
I think it's just a question of time that everyone will be changing their habits from buying from the super big supermarkets now to buying from organic or local shops. Today it's easier to buy it from the internet and get it delivered to your house. So I think it's the future. We have to do it for our health and the environment as well.
LF: And when you have leftovers, what do you do with them?
MP: This is a very controversial topic. As chefs we have a big responsibility for the amount of food we produce. I always try to calculate the quantities to avoid having too many leftovers. It’s true that when we do bigger events and we cook for more people, especially when we do buffet style, in these situations we have to deal with some leftovers.
Most of the time, I first give it to the people who have been working with me, the chefs, the waiters, I'll give it to them to take home. But when we have a bigger amount of this food, I always try to support a foundation. I work with a foundation here in Mallorca called Yachting Gives Back, they support some homeless shelters on the island and they work very hard against poverty and hunger in Mallorca. So they collect the food from me and all the other catering companies and some supermarkets, hotels, and restaurants and they deliver it to one of the shelters we have been helping. They are in Palma and they give accommodation and food to the poor people on the island. I met them during the lockdown when I was working on yachts based here and together with the other chefs and the Yachting Gives Back, we cooked and delivered more than 3,000 meals during that year. It was an amazing job and we felt better doing it, especially because we work in a luxury industry. You see, at that time, there were so many people looking for jobs. Homelessness and poverty increased a lot everywhere. So when we gave them a little bit of our food and our love as well, it was lovely to be involved with that. I try to do this as much as I can when I have leftovers.
LF: That's really nice to hear. I hate seeing food go in the bin. I used to work in a catering company myself so when there were leftovers, they'd give it to all the staff first, and then if there was more, we would take it ourselves and give it to the homeless on our way home, so I hate food going in the bin. It’s sometimes hard for you to do it, so it's good that they come and collect from you. That's very good.
MP: Exactly. These guys are veterans from the yacht industry and they know we have a social responsibility. If they couldn't collect it, I wouldn't have time, or I wouldn't have fridges to keep all this food. So I just call them after I finish the event and say, ‘look, I'm preparing the containers, can you come and collect the food’ and they come that day or day after. So it's nice and I love taking part in it. We work together and we make it happen. .
LF: Are there any favourite memories of cooking for guests? Is there an event in particular that was your favourite?
MP: It's always lovely. Private cooking is very rewarding because you create a special experience serving the food. Telling the stories about the places you've been, and where each dish is from. So many memories are cooking. But I have a favourite one for sure. It was when I was sailing in the French Polynesia cooking on a private yacht. So, the owners are from Mallorca and they loved going scuba diving and surfing with the crew. It was a big yacht. I was cooking for 20 people for almost two months in a row. So I didn't have time to go surfing with them and diving. I was down below in the galley, all the time, making ice cream, and bread every day because the French Polynesian islands are very remote places. It was very difficult, I didn't have a place to buy bread or ice cream. So, I was producing these on board for 20 people every day. I didn't have time for much else but I was watching them surf. I had the opportunity to go out and swim with sharks and we watched the whales every day. It's an amazing place, very natural. And at the end of the trip, they rewarded me by offering me a scuba diving course! I had the opportunity to dive with the whales, the sharks, and the stingrays. It was amazing. I will never forget that experience. I will remember that forever.
LF: That sounds like a very big gift, but they really appreciated your help for two months!
MP: Yes: Sometimes sailing and cooking is not easy. We are cooking sometimes, and the waves come and then everything falls like the food sometimes, off the shelves, we get some water coming inside the galley as well. So it's hard work. But it's good when you finish and everyone is happy with the food! You feel like, okay I did my job and everyone is happy!
LF: It sounds like they were more than happy!
Chef Maira runs Fork Seasons Mallorca. She cooked for us on our Mallorca Training Holiday in July 2023 and our guests loved her food.
If you’d like to join us on a fitness holiday next season, get in touch with us at hello@morelifeadventures.com.
