CLEAN EATING
Healthy eating without the use of additives, preservatives, salt or sugar is indeed possible, all without compromising on taste too.
What if the future of fine dining lay in breaking down the ‘castes and classes of dining’, where it wasn’t defined by the traditional boundaries and trappings of fine or mass dining; but rather, the focus lay on the overall dining experience while showcasing the natural goodness of finely-curated, top-quality ingredients, all without the use of any preservatives, pre-mixes, artificial ingredients and excess salt or sugar?
Miso and caviar are used instead of salt for umami notes; the natural sweetness of ingredients provide the required sweet notes; and using seasonal produce from an informal network of friends and family suppliers in Europe and other parts of the world, ensure that only the best produce makes it on to your plate, while completely eliminating the use of middlemen and questionable quality sources.
Eric Chan, co-founder of Mad About Sucre, and his team have a special ethos for their restaurant-patisserie-chocolaterie since its inception in 2015: "If it's good for our families and loved ones, it's good for our guests". Originally having started out to cater to his young nephew’s 40+ allergies, Chan was on a mission to cook totally clean, letting the natural components shine. "We're always looking for new and unique flavours when we combine different ingredients, and that's what makes our dishes so natural yet rich in flavour, with our flavour pairings culminating in the natural ‘umami’ flavour profile,” he says.
Case in point, his signature four-hour Stew of Tomatoes, topped with Handpicked Crabmeat use fully ripened, sweet tomatoes from four different regions in France and Italy. “We stew them for 4 to 4.5 hours without any water, until everything is broken down. And the natural sweet notes of the tomatoes complement the extra burst of flavour from the crabmeat,” shares Chan.
Chan sources only the freshest and top-quality natural ingredients, clear of any chemical or growth hormone supplements. For instance, good-quality wild-caught salmon is one of the most popular ingredients on his menu, and is only available in the restaurant when it is in season to adhere to sustainable practices. In fact, it took a special salmon-sourcing dive trip in Nordic Europe and Iceland to help him better understand the process behind top-quality salmon production.
Likewise, his sister Lena’s (Patisserie chef & also co-founder) heavily reduced sugar creations (up to 90% for some) is made possible by the use of natural sweeteners such as honey and fruits, without the use of white sugar and other artificial sugars. Specially created for the Year of the Ox, her gold-leaf topped Golden Pineapple Tarts feature the most ripened pineapples flown in from Sarawak and the Caribbean Islands. A mix of 10 pineapples are cooked for 12 hours in a crockpot to break the pulp down to a puree, which then rests for 10 days so that the flavour can deepen and mature further. No artificial flavours and sweetners are added to the mix, nor to the tart base made using organic flour and French butter. Says Chan, “We’re championing a lifestyle of clean eating, because good and uncomplicated, delicious, natural food without compromising on flavours is what we are about.”