QUALITALY 141

August /September 2024 XI MAGAZINE WE MUST NOT BECOME SLAVES TO ONE OF THE MANY EXTREMISMS THAT TAKE AWAY OUR FREEDOM AND PLEASURE IN LIFE. Every time we speak of vegetarian or vegan, we open the door of a ghetto in which we have locked up vegetables and culturally bullied them. Freeing them from this slavery also means using a new language that has not yet been undermined by the past. AT BEST, VEGETABLES ARE PRESENTED BECAUSE THEY ARE GOOD FOR OUR HEALTH OR THAT OF THE PLANET. This implies eating them for duty and not for pleasure. Vegetable cuisine must not be a cuisine of sacrifice or self-flagellation. It has its own identity, its own excellence of taste, its own autonomy. ‘VEGETARIAN’ DELIBERATELY OPENS UP NEW SEMANTIC CONTENT THAT CREATES A CLEAN BREAK WITH THE PAST. Which was needed because vegan and vegetarian imply, consciously or unconsciously, short-sighted visions, old practices, and meanings outdated by my idea of cooking. USING THE TERM VEGETABLE IS THEREFORE NOT MERELY A MARKETING GIMMICK BUT A METHOD CHOICE. It is certainly a less inflated term that generates different expectations and has its own beauty. But vegetable is the key to grasping the nodes around which the philosophical research of Cook more plants, the political manifesto of my cuisine , is focused . There are seven policy points that lead both today’s and tomorrow’s vegetable cuisine. The I Tenerumi restaurant was born from this train of thought that constitutes the underlying thread of all our activity in the kitchen. THE THIRD COMMANDMENT OF THE VEGETABLE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GUIDARA EXPLAINS HOW VEGETABLES GO FROM BEING SIDEKICKS TO PROTAGONISTS. I strongly believe that the technical background of a chef is crucial to ensure the maximum expression of the vegetable. Vegetables require in-depth scientific knowledge, long preparation times and a lot of precision. The rule ‘the less you process it the better’ isn’t applicable here. Vegetables have to be transformed and stressed. And a cook’s job is to process the raw material. VEGETABLE CUISINE IS LAZY It has its own form of laziness. It isn’t extrovert by nature. It must overcome an underlying expressionless apathy and overcome many preconceptions. While a well-roasted pigeon has its own innate sensory expression that everyone understands once it’s roasted, a head of lettuce is less easy to relate to. IT NEEDS A LITTLE PUSH... Driven by a technical hand, vegetables can surpass the taste intensity of foods rich in animal protein. Although they do not have a fat matrix, they are tasty in their own right. BUT IS TECHNIQUE THE ONLY TOOL YOU CAN USE TO GIVE SENSORY EXPRESSION TO VEGETABLES? This is crucial because it’s only through technique that vegetable cooking can take on various shades of the taste spectrum. TECHNIQUE OR ROMANCE IN THE KITCHEN? I do not believe much in romance within a professional kitchen. When I cook I am polite, precise, organised, strict, serious. I believe in standardisation and experience service as a form of responsibility towards guests. When the experimentation phase leading to the new menu begins in winter, I am much more humorous although study, planning and order are key words in my research. BUT ARE YOU A LICHEN CHEF? I CAN UNDERSTAND WHY A NORTHERN EUROPEAN CHEF WITH A LAND POOR IN INGREDIENTS WOULD GO AS FAR AS LICHEN. IN ITALY, PERHAPS IT WOULD BE ENOUGH TO MAKE A NICHE VARIETY OF A VEGETABLE KNOWN TO ALL THANKS TO ITS MORE COSMOPOLITAN VARIETIES BEFORE GOING THAT FAR. They have mosses, onions and potatoes. Nothing more. You cannot do without lichen if you have to ‘ bring out ’ a ten- course menu. In Italy we are fortunate to have an enormous biodiversity. Imagine then the potential and the exponential growth that the vegetables we are rich in could have if we used the right techniques to make them explode on the taste buds. Technique is an incredible taste multiplier. And at I Tenerumi we have decided to apply the technique. TECHNOLOGY OR SCIENCE, BECAUSE THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. SCIENCE IS A SEARCH FOR THE LAWS OF PHENOMENA. TECHNIQUE, ON THE OTHER HAND, SEEKS A MECHANISM CAPABLE OF RESOLVING AN ACTION. MORE SIMPLY, SCIENCE IS THE SEARCH FOR THE WHY WHILE TECHNIQUE IS THE SEARCH FOR THE HOW. PERHAPS THE CREATION OF A DISH INITIALLY REQUIRES SCIENCE AND THEN TECHNIQUE. In Italy, the vegetable is served fresh or with explicit processing of the material. I take it, I cook it, I serve it. Tenerumi radically changes this paradigm. We have the concept of fresh because we have the garden and local sourcing but we approach vegetables with absolute technique to enhance and extract the soul from a raw material. IN NORTHERN EUROPE, IT IS AN INESCAPABLE CHOICE TO MAKE INGREDIENTS THAT ARE THEMSELVES POORLY PRESENTABLE. In Italy, it is a free choice of thought that opens up a branch of exploration that is ten times, perhaps a hundred times, greater than in Northern Europe. And food writing expands like a river in flood. THE FRESHER THE FISH THE BETTER... THEN WE SEASON IT. A PARADOX OR A WAY OF EXPERIMENTATION CAPABLE OF UNLOCKING VEGETABLE HORIZONS? On certain types of products, seasoning is part of our tradition. Think of meats. Other trains of thought have proven, or are proving, to season well even though if they are not traditionally seasoned. And I am thinking of fish. Now it is the turn of vegetables. In our cuisine we use concepts of maceration, fermentation, drying and ripening that transform the raw vegetable ingredient