Full Text of "An Open Letter to the Chefs of Tomorrow" from Lima

Per many requests from our readers, here is the entire “Open Letter to the Chefs of Tomorrow’ signed in Lima, Peru on September 10, 2011 by Ferran Adriá, Yukkio Hattori, Massimo Bottura, Michel Bras, René Redzepi, Gastón Acurio, Alex Atala and Dan Barber at the 2nd Summit of the International Advisory Board of the Basque Culinary Center: 

Dear Chef,

In relation with nature

1. Our work depends on nature’s gifts. As a result we all have a responsibility to know and protect nature, to use our cooking and our voices as a tool for recovering heirloom and endangered varieties and species, and promoting new ones. In this way we can help protect the earth’s biodiversity, as well as preserve and create flavours and to elaborate culinary methods.

2. Over the course of thousands of years, the dialogue between humans and nature has created agriculture. We are all, in other words, part of an ecological system. To ensure that this ecology is as healthy as possible, let’s encourage and practice sustainable production in the field and in the kitchen. In this way, we can create authentic flavour.

In relation with society

3. As chefs, we are the product of our culture. Each of us is heir to a legacy of flavours, dining customs and cooking techniques. Yet we don’t have to be passive. Through our cooking, our ethics, and our aesthetics, we can contribute to the culture and identity of a people, a region, a country. We can also serve as an important bridge with other cultures.

4. We practice a profession that has the power to affect the socio-economic development of others. We can have a significant economic impact by encouraging the exportation of our own culinary culture and fomenting others’ interest in it. At the same time, by collaborating with local producers and employing fair economic practices, we can generate sustainable local wealth and financially strengthen our communities.

 

In relation with knowledge

5. Although a primary goal of our profession is to provide happiness and stir emotions, through our own work and by working with experts in the fields of health and education, we have a unique opportunity to transmit our knowledge to members of the public, helping them, for example, to acquire good cooking habits, and to learn to make healthy choices about the foods they eat.

6. Through our profession, we have the opportunity to generate new knowledge, whether it be something so simple as the development of a recipe or as complicated as an in-depth research project. And just as we have each benefited from the teaching of others, we have a responsibility, in turn, to share our learning.

In relation with values

7. We live in a time in which cooking can be a beautiful form of self-expression. Cooking today is a field in constant evolution that includes many different disciplines. For that reason, it’s important to carry out our quests and fulfill our dreams with authenticity, humility, and above all, passion. Ultimately, we are each guided by our own ethics and values.

Post Note, September 23, 2011: From the writers of Your Culinary World: Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011

Recent Culinary Trends Are Back to Basics from the Caveman Diet to Better Butter

The hottest new culinary trends now include both the very old to the newest of the new.  Just consider, for example, the newest dietary trend – the caveman diet. Yes, that’s right, the caveman diet.

Called the “Paleo Diet” by academics such as Loren Cordain of Colorado Sate Univeristy, it focuses on a return to the 10,000 year old diet of Stone Age hunters and gatherers. As a result, it is heavy on meat, restrictive of most modern grains and devoid of processed or cultivated foods.

Initial reports suggest the diet can assist in alleviating such modern health issues as obesity, Tyoe-2 diabetes and an assortment of coronary problems. But there’s just one problem – you have to have the physical activity level of a caveman to burn off the accumulated calories from so much protein.

Ouch! In our far more sedentary modern lifestyle, few of us have the time to equal the effort of a bison hunt via exercising at the gym.

In addition, few individuals from the Paleolithic era lived past 30 years of age. Maybe the short lifespan made eating all that very rare meat and gathered berries bareable.

Also making a return from the past is better butter.  For a long time the best butter came, like so many things culinary, from la belle France where it is revered like fine wine and cheese with its own AOC classification, based on region and butterfat content. 

Sadly, America has suffered through margarine and over-commercialized butter with reduced butterfat and added salt and water. The result was higher profits for the manufacturers and poorer pastries for the consumer.

If you doubt this is a serious matter on the food front, just consider that embattled US dairy farmers staged a “Margarine War” in a valiant effort to limit the sale of the butter substitute.  They gladly prosecuted and sent any bootleggers of fake butter that they encountered to jail!

But it’s the French who literally declared war on margarine. During World War I French soldiers were so enraged at supple officers, who forwarded margarine instead of real butter to the front lines, they loaded it into their 75mm howitzer cannons and shot it over to the Germans! (The famed 75 Champagne Cocktail was created in Paris to honor those very guns and was a favorite of the young American reporter Ernest Hemingway).

America, however, can now take heart. With the rise of artisan cheese has come the availability of better butters, many matching the famed butters on France in butterfat (83% and above) and flavor.

Hurray and congratulations to these fine producers.  All is not lost. But take heart, if you long for the modern. Jean-Louis Hecht, a baker from northeast France has invented and installed a 24-hour automated baguette dispenser.

Yes, yes, it does allow access to “fresh” bread during the evening, over a holiday or when many of France’s 33,000 bakeries take their August vacation. But is this really what we want? Bread from a machine, not a bakery – a place traditionally filled with the heavenly smell of all that’s best?

Perhaps absolutely ancient and equally so hip modern, are extremes too far.  Humanity has struggled for endless centuries to reach enjoyable cuisine.  Let’s not throw away the best for over simplification or excessive modernization.

Here’s to cheese, bread, butter and all at makes life enjoyable!

 Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2011