Bulrush stems and raw turnip on menu as top chefs look to raw future
June 3, 2009
By Carla Capalbo
Eleven of the world's most famous chefs gathered last month in Copenhagen to decide the future of gastronomy.
While business leaders and scientists met in the Danish capital on the weekend of May 24-26 to discuss global warming at the World Business Summit on Climate Change, a different summit took place at René Redzepi's Noma - recently ranked number 3 of the world's top 50 restaurants.
After a day spent tasting and foraging for wild herbs, flowers and plants – including bulrush stems, pine-tree shoots and seaweed pods – each chef set about creating a new dish that encapsulated rawness.
'Cook It Raw' was intended as a workshop where today's gastronomical thinkers could get together and explore how modern food can work within an ecological approach to living.
The chefs aimed to produce the finest dishes with limited electricity, playing with aspects of rawness with uncooked ingredients and wild and local foods.
'The results were amazing,' event organiser Alessandro Porcelli said. For Albert Adria, brother of Ferran and co-founder of El Bulli at Rosas on the French border, now running a tapas bar in Barcelona, that translated into a 40-second microwaved 'natural sponge' cake.
Pascal Barbot, of l'Astrance in Paris and another of the event's 3-Michelin-starred chefs, made his dish of marinated mackerel, nasturtium leaf, raw turnip and puréed angelica.
Davide Scabin of Turin's Combal.Zero used hours of manpower to turn the cheapest, hardest cut of beef shoulder into the costliest steak tartare.
Massimo Bottura, of Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy, produced an edible parable on the future fate of the seas in his dish, 'Pollution': a green sea of raw oysters and sea asparagus purée inhabited by squid and seaweed was topped with what looked like toxic foam - actually made from aromatic Amalfi lemon froth.
'Eating raw is less a trend than a politically correct approach to today's ecological dilemma,' he said. 'We have a responsibility to use wild and well-grown ingredients well, not to spoil them by bad cooking. Saving energy and appreciating the pure flavours of natural ingredients is an antidote to the disastrous effect we're having on our planet, and points a way forward.'
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Now, 100,000 years later, I 'd like to thank Guk and all the other good brothers and sisters who since then have tasted, explored, and experimented with the foods -- wild and non -- of this earth. They paved the way for a culinary world in which we're able to indulge in making great wines and fantastic food. And where some of us, luckily enough, can think of ways to stimulate the intellects of others to continue this wonderful and important gastronomic journey.
Nordic Gastronomical Services, my company, is a culinary organization dedicated to providing encounters between chefs and other food professionals and consumers, with Nordic cuisine.
Our objective is to share the excellence of Danish gastronomy through creative partnerships with leading Scandinavian organizations, international chefs and media communication channels. We want to help raise international awareness of Denmark as a great food destination, and consumer awareness of local Scandinavian ingredients grown in harmony with their unique Nordic environment.
Cook it Raw! opened the eyes of everyone who attended the event to the fact that Denmark has an incredible variety of local and distinctive foods, and a new generation of young, talented chefs able to interpret them in personal and significant ways, able to open a way forward for the future that is not dependent on imported, non-seasonal produce or cooking styles, but expresses the individual, unrepeatable character of what is local,
healthy, fresh and -- in many cases -- even free! Come up and taste them for yourself!.
Alessandro Porcelli, Copenhagen, Denmark
My name Guk. I am Neanderthal person. I live in Loire in cave --- high cave, because earth grows warm, and ice melts.I hunt food. I make drink. I make drink with clump of fruit berries from vine. I stomp fruit and put fruit in in hollow rock. It fizzes, then it goes still. It tastes good. It is white. I do red too. Then I get bag. I get club. I go into big forest with bag and club. I find oysters where long water meets big water. I put oysters in bag. I find mackerel in river. I club mackerel and put in bag. I find weeds in river. I put weeds in bag. I find leaf and turnip. I put leaf and turnip in bag. I spot panther, creep up on him, club him on head, put him in bag. I schlep bag back to cave. I build fire with two sticks, not three, to save energy. I make dinner. I club oysters open and eat oysters and mackerel with cold drink from hollow rock, I make weeds-leaf-turnip salad, and put Amalfi lemon froth on it; recipe comes from Neanderthal brother-in-law in far south. I make panther tartare and eat it with warm drink from hollow stone. I am ecologically responsible Neanderthal. I wish to save planet so that in one million years 11 chefs can gather in Copenhagen and spend day foraging for wild herbs, flowers, plants --- bullrush stems, pine-tree shoots, seaweed pods. One day Harvard scientist will go to Loire. He will find Guk's bones. He will find Guk's brain DNA. He will study DNA. He will call Guk first intelligent French chef to set culinary progress in motion.
Howard G Goldberg, New York City, USA
Unlike neanderthal man, I found this piece really interesting. My husband is a chef and I'm a sommelier and we have a small restaurant in southern Italy, in Nusco, Campania. It's important for us to find out what's happening with the top chefs as they often start trends and get us thinking about where food is going next. We cook with a lot of wild ingredients, but had not really taken on the concept of reducing electricity in the kitchen. That's a challenge!
Jenny Auriemma, Italy
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