Almost all of my new friends already worked somewhere, did an internship or at least ate in “star” restaurants. Am I envying them? No. I am simply taking short steps in my target’s direction. Of course, sometimes I compare myself to others and with a flush on my cheeks I listen to my new friend’s stories. During one of our beer trips, everyone said something about himself, and when my turn came, a friend from Australia threw in saying that Poles are the friendliest people he has ever met. He said that on the Polish village, in spite of prevailing there poverty, he was treated there so wonderfully, he isn’t able to describe it. He spoke in superlatives about our heritage -that is – about the dumplings, about how beautiful and welcoming Poland is. I started wandering, why the heck, poles have so many complexes? This is most probably a good subject for another essay, but as for now, the stay induces me to search for positive features of my identity, and this affects the new culinary ideas bearing in my head.
It’s all because the Saturday Night Projects, i.e. Saturday meetings with the vigilant eye of René’s and our head chef -Dan- during which persons from individual sections are presenting something new. It can be a full dish, as well as a small snack, e.g. a week ago we had a of traditional Japanese tea brewing show. Since a few days René is already with us, so on the last Saturday evening there was a remarkable crowd. Try to imagine it – be ready to prepare your authorship dish and serve it to the best cook of world?!! I can already do it. I know, that even if something goes wrong, his invaluable remarks will motivate me for further actions. As for now, the Saturday projects are motivating me to think quite intensively about my final dish. An idea which I have in mind requires refining, conducting many attempts and using a laboratory of fermentations. At the moment, that is all I can reveal.
By the way, do you know what the koji is? It is a yellow aspergillus which, according to the wikipedia, is a fungi species from the trichocomaceae family, used for the fermentation of soya seeds during the miso production and soy sauce. When we use it to ferment the rice seeds, we can make the sake, in our fermentation laboratory we experiment on the pearl barley. Yet the greatest ferment takes place inside my head!
text: Maria Przybyszewska, photo: Magazyn USTA
The review sponsor from z Marii Przybyszewska Noma‘s stay is the HERMES, a producent of flavoured waters. www.hermes-amita.com.pl
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