Of good food, sustainable ingredients, and an earthquake
THIS YEAR’S Madrid Fusion Manila, the third in as many years, drew chefs and gourmets, restaurateurs and bloggers, farmers and wine makers for three days of talks and food tastings. Even an earthquake did not rattle the convention goers (well, not that much) who returned to their seats shortly after evacuating the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City.
Focusing on sustainability this year, the chefs discussed using local ingredients, planting gardens, banning bottled water, but still keeping things tasty.
DAY 1
In a talk called “From Trash to Treasures,” young chef Josh Boutwood showed that youth and freshness isn’t always the best; and some gains could be had from something that has a certain age.
As Corporate Executive Chef of The Bistro Group, Mr. Boutwood had been bypassed at the country’s first Madrid Fusion back in 2015 because he had no restaurant of his own, according to Asia’s Best Female Chef 2016 Margarita Fores. This year he found himself on the Madrid Fusion Manila stage as his newly opened restaurant, The Test Kitchen has already created a buzz for its ever-changing menu, and its unorthodox approach to food.
Mr. Boutwood gave a talk on using pickles and the literal odds and ends of fruits and vegetables. Just as well, for this year’s Madrid Fusion was centered on sustainability, and what we wouldn’t have consumed would have been thrown away, a sin in today’s world.
For his first dish, Mr. Boutwood used lettuce hearts along with wild cucumbers, which he had lightly poached in a mixture of butter, water and salt. According to him, only 70% of a lettuce is consumed, while 30% of it is discarded. As well, with this dish, he used the wild cucumbers as pickled in dill, and made a case for tomatoes in the restaurant: while he buys them fresh, he allows them to age for a while, “Until we feel that it’s at its ripest.”
It was all kind of fun and games with Mr. Boutwood on stage: while he plated meticulously with a pair of silver chopsticks, he said that his assistant would do all the cooking, saying, “I’m going to sit back and let him do everything.” Before he proceeded with his final dish, he announced that, “The next dish is going to be Jollibee fried chicken.”
His next dish was made with pork and fennel (a classic when you consider some varieties of sausage). While the licorice-like seeds are frequently used, Mr. Boutwood used the root, a hairy filthy mass that is usually thrown away, but when cleaned, has a clean flavor of its own, which Mr. Boutwood describes as being like parsley. Another course, beef, was seared in a pan with butter, the scent of which traveled to the seats close to the stage, and finally, for dessert, Mr. Boutwood used heirloom black rice for what could be considered a champorrado, made with sugar, IPA beer, making a porridge and topping it off with a vanilla bean custard.
He admitted that some of his ingredients are sourced overseas, therefore making his carbon footprint in the age of the search for true sustainability a bit of a sin. He did say, however, about saving the planet, “I’m not going to be the one to do it, and what our job is, as cooks, as people in our industry, is to set a standard for the next generation to continue and thrive and hopefully make something amazing in the future that is towards a more sustainable environment.”
DAY 2
The second day of Madrid Fusion Manila 2017 saw international chefs take on social responsibility and sustainability as the basis for their ventures — from creating a garden from which almost all produce of the restaurant is taken, to committing to use only local ingredients to create dishes.
One of them was Simon Rogan, founder of L’Enclume (french for The Anvil), rated as the top restaurant by the UK’s Good Food Guide for the fourth year in the row in 2016.
L’Enclume, is located in the northwest region of England, by the lake district. “It’s probably one of the most beautiful places to live and work in the UK,” said the chef. The restaurant opened in 2002, and earned its first Michelin star in 2005, and earning another in 2013.
L’Enclume is near Mr. Rogan’s farm, where he raises meat and vegetables for his dishes. In a talk called “The Great Food Conspiracy,” Mr. Rogan discussed the merits of his organic farm, while making the audience’s noses turn up at the excesses of modern agriculture.
While most of us are aware of (and willing to consume) problematic pesticide-ridden vegetables, Mr. Rogan said: “The quest for cheap food and high profits is creating a world where anything is possible,” and we don’t think he meant that in a good way. For example, he talked about the livestock industry, the carbon emissions of which are larger than that of the collective transportation industry. He said that the much- needed resource of water goes into raising animals (instead of humans) in many different ways: not just for drinking, and cleaning, of course, but the grains used to feed animals do consume a lot of water. He presented that while humans as a whole consume about 13.6 billion liters of water, cows alone consume 170.3 billion liters of it.
In the rush for sustainability then, Mr. Rogan encourages people to eat more vegetables, and during the talk, said that in his restaurant, vegetables are treated as meat. As he raises meat himself, he is not a vegetarian, but in raising his own meat, he achieves a certain balance. And this isn’t bland rabbit food he’s serving either: the sizzle of fat on that cabbage he prepared on stage was probably problematic for most dieticians, and probably not boring for that matter.
For his talk, Mr. Rogan had potted plants onstage, one of which was moringa ( locally known as malunggay) which he intends to raise back in the UK. All of his ingredients he used in his demonstration were sourced from the Philippines, including a disc of cabbage he fried in butter, plated with hemp leaves, sprinkled with hemp oil, and plated with moringa leaves. His other dishes also used ingredients such as aratilis (a red cherry-like fruit), pili nuts, and soursop (guyabano) which he froze in liquid nitrogen, then paired with santan flowers.
Mr. Rogan gave some very simple tips to promote sustainability: for example, reading labels (to know where your food comes from and how it is made) and buying local. “That’s [ a] way to send help with what’s going on at the moment.”
He also heavily promotes small-scale farming ( but he isn’t quite on board with some methods of modern urban farming, noting that sometimes these are still aided by chemicals). When asked about the quality of produce in the country, he said that our vegetables should say more about how they’re grown and where they were sourced.
His team member Daniel Cox, meanwhile, was more succinct in his advice for a more sustainable lifestyle leading to a more sustainable planet. About buying food that isn’t always good for you and the planet, he said, “Don’t buy that bullshit.”
STAYING LOCAL
Despite not having a seambursting culinary scene like its neighbors Brazil and Peru, the landlocked South American country of Bolivia is home to a restaurant known for its flavor as much as its socially focused mind-set.
Restaurant Gustu in La Paz, whose kitchen is headed by Danish chef Kamilla Sedler and business partner, Venezuelan Michelangelo Cestari, has gained popularity for being able to introduce a multi-course fine-dining menu using only Bolivian ingredients, as well as training and hiring locals in the kitchen.
“It’s a challenge but the commitment was to use local producers [ because] Bolivia is not really competitive with its neighbors,” said Mr. Cestari after their presentation on April 7.
Mr. Cest ari added that what they wanted was to present a “100% Bolivian experience.”
Many of the restaurant’s clientele are foreigners, he said, since they “appreciate the Bolivian experience [as they aim] to be a little `closer to local people.”
GARDENING
Another chef went even more local, demonstrating how vegetables grown from one’s garden can elevate the dining experience.
“Two years ago when we first started, I was frustrated with the quality of the produce found in the market,” chef Gert de Mangeleer of the Belgian three Michelin star restaurant Hertog Jan, told BusinessWorld in an interview shortly before his presentation.
By creating two gardens, totaling three hectares, Mr. De Mangeleer said they are able to grow produce to their specifications — from miniature cucumbers to a hundred varieties of tomatoes.
Because of the gardens, which produce over 600 varieties of fruits and vegetables, Hertog Jan is 95% self-sufficient, a feat very few restaurants can claim.
Mr. De Mangeleer then went on the Madrid Fusion stage to present nine dishes made with ingredients sourced from his garden, including a Snickersinspired dessert created with local chocolate, peanuts, and caramel as its base and “A walk through the gardens of Manila” — a flowery dish which saw him tweaking one of his signature dishes, “A sweet walk through the garden” to include local flavors.