The Polish Cook It Raw 2012 by Bruce Palling

The haute-cuisine world is overfed with endless festivals, workshops, food seminars, congresses and pop up happenings but none are quite as quirky as Cook It Raw (www.cookitraw.org). Evolving as an adjunct to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, the plan was for a dozen leading chefs to spend a day foraging and then contribute to a multi-course feast at Noma, the Scandinavian shrine to natural cuisine. (For my background, see my story posted in April 2011 http://www.gastroenophile.com/2011/04/cook-it-raw-by-bruce-palling.html).

The objective still remains the same – to create innovative dishes from local produce with the minimum of fuss and expenditure of energy. It is  raw in the sense of unadorned straightforward rather than a lack of flame. Earlier events were in northern Italy, north west Japan (a bit of a bummer apparently, because the Japanese insisted on knowing what the chefs were going to cook six months before they even went there)  and Finnish Lapland.  This most recent one in the Summer was at the Jaczno Lodge in north eastern Poland just a few miles from the Belorussian border.

Getting there provided quite a bit of the fun. 

There was a day in Warsaw, where we roamed around looking for somewhere decent to eat for lunch before a large feast that night at 

Atelier Amaro, an officially aspiring One Star Michelin place. The dishes were innovative but didn’t exactly pull it off regarding flavour impact. 

Then there was the thrill of dealing with an incredibly surly bus driver who was loath to subject his bus to any rough roads or overhanging tree branches. 

We then stopped off in Nowogrod, where a family of Tartars who have been in Poland for several centuries, prepared a rustic lunch for us.

Signor Porcelli

What makes this small gathering of chefs and food writers so special is that it has not snowballed in size or sponsorship but has remained as impromptu and chaotic as ever. It is the creation of Andrea Petrini and Allesandro Porcelli, two Italian food journalists who live respectively in Lyon and Copenhagen.

Signor Petrini attempting to direct operations in half of his remarkable carpet suit

Signor Petrini thinks Cook It Raw’s main achievement is the sense of camaraderie between all of the chefs and the opportunity to try things they are not able to do in their own restaurants. “It is also a zone where they can experiment and do something different. You can always see who is taking risks and the few guys who play it safe with ideas they have from previous dishes done at their restaurant.” The whole event is run on a shoestring with governments and airlines pressed into service to contribute to the cause. When I asked him if he made any money from it, he merely laughed. “If you think of all the time we spend putting it together, economically it is suicide. All the days arranging things, months of travel, our wives think we are crazy.”

The atmosphere during the five day event resembled something between the culinary equivalent of a mini-Davos summit to a boy scout camp, with everyone contributing – in my case, it meant shelling hundreds of sunflower seeds for Redzepi’s arresting dish of wild fruits and bayberries in a mushroom broth. 

 It was not all tedium though – the underdeveloped Suwalki region of Poland is dominated by a series of lakes in rolling hills, so it was an almost paradisiacal backdrop to forage for mushrooms, herbs and berries.

local produce

Local culture is not so harmonious – one agricultural establishment we lunched at had a painting of an 

What passes for a Polish good luck sign

upside down portrait of a Jewish money lender with gold coins stacked in front of him. When asked to explain what was the meaning of this, it was explained that this is a local  good luck sign.

There was also a certain amount of exposure to regional cuisine, ranging from


 cured freshwater whitefish, a rib-sticking lamb suet pudding,

Kindziuk tasted far better than its appearance might suggest

to a jumble of smoked meats inside a pigs stomach called kindziuk. 

René Redzepi, for three years voted the worlds number one chef in the Pellegrino Awards, said that for him, Cook It Raw “is to do with confidence - it is a very supportive environment where you can talk about issues and new ideas but mostly it is such a confidence booster to be with all these chefs from around the world at the same level – away from your restaurant without the comfort of your kitchen or your knives - so you are out of your comfort zone and that it is initially quite scary. 

We have actually managed to erase the sense of competition especially amongst the old guard. It means putting yourself out on a limb and allowing yourself to take it in and be humble about it. It is a place where you come to fail as well. I always return from this event a bit more focussed about my work and if I had any doubts about certain directions, things become clearer.”

Claude on the foraging trail

 Claude Bosi liked it because “I have had so many ideas in the past two days – the tartare was fantastic. Cook It Raw enables us to find something we would never have thought about – who would have thought of going to Poland for interesting food?”

Daniel Patterson

Daniel Patterson, who has been to most of the previous Cook It Raw events, thinks “the important thing is that it forces out of our comfort zones but we are not looking for complete dislocation. Because of our shared experiences, these are now my closest friends in the food world. We are frequently on the telephone to each other for ideas and help. In a very broad sense, it has made me even more focussed on pushing forward. In terms of the produce here, I love the fresh barberies and the calimus. I am going to check for wild watercress. and the buckwheat is also amazing.”

That is the paradox of the whole event as because there is this sense of togetherness amongst the chefs, they are prepared to take risks and not be deterred by failure.

The final menu

By the time of the final night’s feast, there were ample opportunities for lack of success, what with the late arrival of vital products and the paucity of sophisticated equipment in the resort’s kitchens. If I was to be brutally honest, the success and failure rate was precisely equal. However, you do not equate this intense experience utilising such a simplistic formula. First there is the excitement of knowing this combination of talent and ingredients will never be repeated – it truly is unique. And then there is the three day build up climaxing with all of the plates being prepared in front of you, most of which the audience has contributed to in some small part.

Cold Fish

The first dish of the night was Daniel Patterson’s “Cold Fish” which was covered in spicy gelatinous sauce. There was also some cabbage with a bit of lime and chilli to give it a kick. The buckwheat also had some fermented peas and a puree of ants. The overall taste was very fresh and interesting. Daniel confessed that he withheld the ant element until after everyone had eaten it: “That’s why I had to tell you after and not before.”

 The most perfectly executed dishes were Inalki Aizpitarte’s Le Canard à la Ficelle aux Saveurs Régionales – beautifully underdone wild ducks suspended over an open fire with twine. 

Perfect Gazpacho

Another stunning plate was a rendition of “Polish” Gazpacho by Albert Adrià (brother of el Bulli’s Ferran), with its intense clear tomato base with cucumber seeds.

Rene's perfect dish

The two stand out dishes though, were both of Scandinavian origin. Firstly, René  Redezepi’s harmonious dish of wild bayberries and fruits, with a perfectly integrated cep broth. He called it Piotr Trzopek after two of the Polish chefs who work at Noma.  This is where the small pile of sunflower seeds that it took four assistants and myself four hours to peel. “I’ve tried to capture all the flavors I’ve found in the last few days,” he said.

Magnus's Vagina

And lastly, the final dish of the night was from Magnus Nilsson, who runs Faviken, in northern Sweden, arguably the world’s most remote serious restaurant. Perhaps it was the partly to do with the name - Vagina Delices (the English pronunciation of the local village) – comprising preserved egg yolk with ice cream seasoned with meadowsweet herbs and flour made from pine bark.

And you seriously still want to know why chefs like attending Cook It Raw?

Given the ad hoc nature of Cook It Raw, no one is quite sure where the next event will be held, though there is vague talk about the Outback of Australia, the Amazon or even Patagonia. Regardless of the destination, there is something life-enhancing about knowing that an assortment of great chefs can conjure up extraordinary dishes from virtually any backdrop without a sous vide machine or nitrogen flask in sight.