Chefs Strip Their Art To Its Rawest Matter
【By JULIA MOSKIN／聯合報／王麗娟譯】
HARDEEVILLE, South Carolina — “I am sitting in the most amazing puddle of mire,” Matt Jennings, the chef at Farmstead in Providence, Rhode Island, announced into the dark from his perch atop a 3.5-meter-high hunting blind.
He had already been frogmarched deep into the forest by a local guide at dawn, had ripped open his hand sliding down a ladder and hauled his large frame up another ladder and into a rainfilled swivel chair.
But what was bothering him was not his damp jeans, bleeding finger or lack of sleep. It was that, with one shotgun shell and no hunting experience, he was poised to bring down a deer or wild pig that his guide said would surely cross through this particular stand of trees.
Mr. Jennings, along with 20 other chefs from around the world, was in th ese woods in October because of Cook It Raw, a prestigious and peculiar annual culinary gathering that has become one of the most coveted invitations in food.
The night before, he had butchered a freshly shot alligator with a Bowie knife.
But he was having doubts. “If a beautiful, innocent deer wanders in front of me, am I really going to blow its brains out?” he said.
Mr. Jennings never saw his prey. But this is precisely the kind of question that is supposed to arise during Cook It Raw, held in a different location every year since 2009.
Cook It Raw’s guiding idea is to strip cooking to its raw elements: foraging, hunting, fishing, farming, butcher ing and cooking over fire. A taste of the wild — hunting deer, gathering mushrooms, pulling wasabi from creek beds — is part of each program.
European luminaries like Pascal Barbot, Albert Adrià and Massimo Bottura have camped out with New World comers like David Chang, Sean Brock and Alex Atala. Acclaimed chefs from Asia like André Chiang and Yoshihiro Narisawa have yawned at predawn wake-up calls alongside Scandinavian influencers like Magnus Nilsson and René Redzepi.
“I just wanted to suck the marrow out of the experience,” said Mr. Jennings, at Cook It Raw for the first time and more than slightly cowed by the famous chefs. “But I made a strict rule for myself on the plane: you do not talk to Albert Adrià unless he talks to you first.”
Cook It Raw began in Copenhagen, an offshoot of the acclaimed restaurant Noma and the work of its chef, Mr. Redzepi, the face of the so-called New Nordic cooking style: hyperlocal, seasonal ingredients , with culinary innovation.
In Lapland, they witnessed the slaughter of a reindeer; on the west coast of Japan, they tried to catch ducks in midair, using nets strung on long poles; here , they foraged for yaopon, the only plant native to North America that contains caffeine. The final event: a grand dinner, with each chef improvising a course inspired by the terrain.
“The idea of chefs voluntarily sharing information and techniques with outsiders is still new,” said Daniel Patterson, the chef at Coi, in Northern California. But chefs who are combative in their restaurants become collegial at Cook It Raw. “It was magical,” he said .
This year’s event was the first held in the United States and the first to accept commercial sponsors. The gathering was based in Charleston, and the area of study was the Lowcountry, the coastal marshes and fertile barrier islands that stretch from North Carolina down to Georgia.
At Turnbridge, a former rice plantation here, the channels that once irrigated many hectares of plants hold shrimp, blue crabs and alligators. The estate also holds eight hectares of Carolina Gold rice, a rich and fluffy strain that died out in the 1920s but has been revived here.
Its red-gold stalks waved around the chef Dan Barber’s ears as Glenn Roberts, the owner of Anson Mills and the South’s premier expert on grains, taught the group the process of harvesting rice, from cutting, all the way through threshing, pounding and polishing.
“You become very connected to the ingredient when you’re literally standing in it,” said Mr. Barber, who owns the Blue Hill at Stone Barns farm-restaurant just north of New York City.
Mr. Jennings is the littleknown chef at a small restaurant in a small city. But his efforts to support New England farms and fisheries helped win him admission to Cook It Raw.
“At one point Albert Adrià was working on my right, Ben Shewry was to my left, and Dan Barber and April Bloomfield were behind me,” he said. “I thought, ‘O.K., I’m just going to go throw up, and then I’ll be fine.’ ”
中譯
「我坐在最恐怖的沼澤中。」黑暗中，羅得島普羅維登斯「農莊」的主廚詹寧斯宣布。他坐在高三點五公尺的狩獵偽裝物上方。
黎明時他已被嚮導架著走進森林深處，滑下梯子時劃破了手，接著他壯碩的體格被拉上另一梯子，送進積了雨水的轉椅。令他頭大的不是濕漉的牛仔褲，手指流血或睡眠不足。而是他只有一發獵槍子彈又毫無狩獵經驗，卻得撂倒導遊保證會行經林中這地點的鹿或野豬。
詹寧斯與20名全球名廚十月因「野地料理」來到這森林。「野地料理」是著名、特殊的年度烹飪聚會，已變成烹飪界最令人嚮往的邀請。
前一晚，他以鮑維獵刀支解了一隻剛被射殺的鱷魚。他有個疑問。他說：「一隻美麗、無辜的鹿漫步到面前，我真會開槍轟牠腦袋？」
獵物雖未出現，這卻是參加「野地料理」必有的疑問。「野地料理」2009年開辦，年年易地舉行。主導概念是讓烹飪回歸原始元素：覓食、狩獵、捕撈、種植、屠宰，在火上烹調。品嘗野生生活─獵鹿、採菇，從溪床拔山葵，是每次聚會的一部分。
歐洲名廚巴波特、阿德里亞、波杜拉和來自新世界的韓裔名廚張大衛、布洛克、艾塔拉一起露營。亞洲名廚江振誠及成澤由浩天未亮即被叫起床而哈欠連連，一旁是北歐名廚尼爾森和瑞澤比。
詹寧斯說：「我只想充分吸收這項經驗的精髓。」他是首次參加，對那些名廚可是敬畏三分。他說：「我在飛機上嚴格規定自己，除非艾伯特‧阿德里亞先開口，否則不可以和他說話。」
「野地料理」始於哥本哈根，出自夙負盛名的「諾瑪」餐廳和其主廚瑞澤比，瑞澤比是所謂新北歐烹飪風格的代表人物，主張料理創新與使用超在地的時令食材。
在拉普蘭，他們目擊宰殺一隻馴鹿，在日本西海岸，他們以繫在長桿上的網子試圖半空中捕捉鴨子。在這裡，他們採集北美州唯一含咖啡因的原生植物代茶冬青。最後大事：一頓豐盛的晚宴，由每位名廚以當地地形為靈感，即興做一道菜。北加州科伊餐廳主廚派特森說：「主廚主動與外人分享資訊與技術的想法仍很新鮮。」在餐廳，他們是好鬥的主廚，在「野地料理」卻樂於分享。他說：「這不可思議。」
今年是這個活動首次在美國舉行，也是首度接受商業贊助。聚會以查爾斯頓為主，研究的地區是「低地」，從北卡羅來納州的城鎮延伸至喬治亞州的沿海沼澤和肥沃的障壁島。
特恩布里奇過去是種稻的農場，從前用來灌溉許多公頃植物的渠道，現在水流中有蝦、藍蟹、鱷魚。這地區還有八公頃的卡羅來納黃金米，是一種營養豐富、蓬鬆的稻米，於一九二○年代滅絕，但已在這裡成功復育。
紅金色稻梗在主廚巴伯周圍起伏，「安森磨坊」老闆與美南首席穀物專家羅伯茲正對一群人講解稻米收割過程，從收割一路說到打穀、撞擊、磨米。
巴伯說：「真的站在這裡時，你變得和食材關係非常密切。」巴伯是紐約市以北史東巴恩斯藍丘農場餐廳的主人。
詹寧斯只是一個小城裡一家小餐廳籍籍無名的主廚。他支持新英格蘭農場和漁業的努力，為他贏得「野地料理」的入場券。他說：「有一次，我的右邊是艾伯特‧阿德里亞，左邊是班‧修瑞，丹‧巴伯和艾普‧布倫菲德在我背後，我心想，好吧，我待會要去嘔吐一下，然後就會沒事了。」
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