Mountain Gastronomy (2): Let food be Earth's medicine
Last time, we spoke extensively of the growing divide between a mountain that is anthropic and one that is not centred around the whims of us people, and we explored three types of mountain gastronomies.
This time, we explore the fourth mountain gastronomy.
FOUR
This is the gastronomy of #2 that could exist with some effort. It is the gastronomy we could have if we would remove all of #1. It is what more experienced cooks than #3 are doing.
It is rethinking what goes into a plate in a mountain environment made by chefs, nutritionists, and doctors.
It creates a short and vertical chain of custody between cherished producers in the valleys around the mountain and efficiently transports atop said mountains without resorting to industrial and mass-market products from the industrial cities in the valleys.
Little production, little transport, and little consumption: only a few will reach the mountain tops (by foot, ski, or snowshoes), so only a few products must be transported without diluting the price by engaging with large corporations and producers.
Small for small, at a fair price.
Fair for the producer and the mountain cook, the environment, and the final consumer.
Fair all around and sustainable - building bridges and ladders between consumers - that will then go back to the villages after the climb and can engage with the producers to bring home some delicacy they had the chance to taste in the mountains.
It is not revolutionary: it is what is now fashionably called “homesteading” of some sort, where territories are inhabited and small productions are encouraged.
And what about eating sushi and sashimi atop a mountain and drinking Champagne - you may ask.
At this point, I challenge you to climb a real mountain and ask what you will crave at the end of the journey.
You will have breathed, inhaled, and lived in that territory so much that you will crave the food that grows there, almost viscerally.
In a perfect communion of humans and nature.
This means that perhaps you’ll end up craving Japanese food when climbing mountains in Japan and Indian, Nepalese, and Pakistani food when around the Himalayas.
But it is very likely that the food you crave will be specific to the place, and would not “work” elsewhere - differently from the category #1 food we discussed last time.
Over the last few years, I have developed a sense of the need to balance sustainability with heritage, and this balance is challenging.
So I went to Alessandro Gilmozzi’s El Molin restaurant in Cavalese, Italy.
I know Chef Alessandro as one of the most attentive human beings to sustainability, to eating the mountain (and the fields, and the rivers) with care and a love for territory akin to the one I imagine Native Americans have.
Everything on the menus at El Molin is seasonal and ideally in tune with the environment and the earth.
Also, the “off the menu” dish is the one I would like to discuss with you.
Black grouse is quite a rare sight on a menu. Lyrurus tetrix, also rare in Europe, mainly found its habitat in the Alps and the Baltics until Russia and the infinite Siberian plans.
They are pretty gourmet animals themselves: they look for delicacies like leaves, buds, berries, seeds and insects. During the summer, they pick raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries; in winter, they pick juniper berries and the seeds of heather, birch, alder, and beech. In addition to vegetables, as we have mentioned, they feed on snails, worms, ant larvae, flies and the like, and the little ones, in particular, are fed almost exclusively on tender insects.
Eating a whole animal, well prepared and within the boundaries of sustainability and repopulation is a luxury we can and should afford. Especially when the rest of the menu is basically local-seasonal-vegetable based.
Next up, a mid-mountain gem.
Forgotten in those hills that elevate from the Pianura Padana, just a couple of km from Brescia and the Garda Lake, is Trattoria La Madia, which is defined as “innovative traditional cuisine” - just like this fried and rehydrated aubergine of the picture above, something that made me think of the possibilities of having a parmigiana di melanzane at 3000 metres. Freeze-dry, dehydrate, transform, pickle: all tools in the hands of the next generation of mountain cooks to expand their possibilities beyond what is available now.
Maybe cold, consumed in a sandwich - but still, with a sustainable and intelligent process behind it.
Then, the issue of bringing up the food is followed swiftly by the thought of lowering all the waste. And what about investing innovation in thinking of culinary processes that could limit waste production to, let’s say, one bucket of compostable materials per week, like Fava Tonka near Porto in Portugal tells us?
Next, I bring you to a mountain that is becoming sexy—just a couple of km away, there is Ferdy Wild, an alpine project that is also gaining renown through the wise use of social media, storytelling, and the creation of a strong narrative.
But you do not need a narrative when the story holds itself, as in the case of Trattoria delle Miniere, in Lenna (BG), where there is no need to reinvent the wheel: the mid-mountain, this marvellous and accessible to all environment that is anthropic-with-a-sense as has been in the past 2000 years.
Take a traditional recipe - in this cake, an apple cake that is the postcard of the valley - but make it perfect, using prime materials and prime techniques.
Lined up next is a syncretism.
If you want to go above and beyond, and after experimenting with all manners of transforming, using, and rethinking your local sources, you find yourself short, go bold. Go big. Do not go for the glamour of it; go for the sake of it. Go with a punk attitude of I Don't Care About Convention like Gareth of Ynnyshir in Wales, and yes, serve us caviar at 3000 metres.
But be intelligent, be irreverent, and do not be a tool in the hands of fools: serve it in the face of the customers alongside a log and make them wonder what it means to cook and thrive in a non-anthropic mountain.
And finally, to the place where a book called Cook the Mountain was born: Chef Norbert Niederkoefler’s kitchen.
In its Manifesto, Cook the Mountain is a way of living and being:
To rethink the economic-social development by investigating the relationships between production, product, territory and consumption. The starting point for this change must be cooking, intended as a "catalyst for cultural processes" for the diffusion of a model of sustainable development. With this in mind, the chef must take on the role of "emotional educator", capable of promoting a new lifestyle.
So he can come up with a zero waste, full flavour, proximity food such as “Pomodoro”, the opening snack of his menu I tasted back in St Hubertus in August 2020, which is fermented plum compote that becomes a true bruschetta with tomato, without having to resort to products coming from afar, but just having to invest hours of research and time to cure a plum compote.
”In the winter, as I was in my office, Michele arrives with a jar and passes me a spoon full of purple fermented plum. He adds a leaf of basil and a few sour-bread crumbs on top. “Close your eyes, what do you taste?” He said. I could not believe it, the plums had given us the exact taste and acidity of a tomato but with Michele’s additions, it tasted like Bruschetta with tomatoes. A taste of Tuscany in the Dolomites without ordering the ingredients from 1000km away. We quickly turned it into a restaurant dish with basil oil to bring the flavours together in a more elegant fashion.
”The dish called “Pomodoro?” is on the menu today and I like to serve it at the start of the tasting menu. It proves you can achieve anything in the kitchen if you have a solid base in classic cooking, combined with a natural, creative approach. There is no such thing as a limited larder. We look at what mother nature has provided to us and we think about how to use 100% of the ingredient.1
From Stone Journal interview to NN: https://www.stonejournal.co/norbert-niederkofler-listen-this-is-what-it-takes-to-cook-on-a-mountain/#