Pairing is in ferment

From Gastronomika 2015, the Basque fine dining congress that ended little over a month ago in Donostia-San Sebastián, we told you about “The new frontiers in cooking” according to the Roca brothers, using these words: “Rotaval is the focus of the interest of los tres hermanos. Jordi the pastry chef extracts aromas for his desserts. Josep distillates alcohol, «we want to create all sorts of possible drinks», says Joan. The latter, instead, obtains impossible to imagine aromas, that open new frontiers for cooking, «we’re entering a beautiful world». (…) Using herbs and fruits to create new pairings with specific dishes, «we’re exploring the boundaries of maridaje as never done before»…”.

A few hours later, the most awaited guest from Singapore, André Chiang (Restaurant André), fifth place in the Asian top list and number 46 in the World 50 Best, proved he had caught the spirit of the time and the lesson given by the masters from Gerona. “Gastronomy, labyrinths and philosophy” was the title of his lecture: put it in these words, it could mean all sorts of things. In fact, it was an interesting journey in the world of what can substitute wine in food pairing. While the Roca brothers remain rather traditional in terms of alcoholic drinks, and in any case include them in an offer that has Bacchus as its protagonist (after all, they have 30K bottles in their cellar…), Chiang – born in Singapore where there are certainly no wine roots – turns every rule upside down: for him, food pairing is potentially only with “juices”.

It’s worth studying the idea of this chef born in 1976 and technically trained in France (Pierre Gagnaire, L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon and L’Astrance in Paris, La Maison Troisgros in Roanne and Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier), who shows Mediterranean touches on Asian foundations, "one of the 15 most influential chefs in the next decade" according to Elite Traveler (it was 2013, our Antonino Cannavacciuolo was also in the list), head of a restaurant the New York Times in 2011 included "among the 10 restaurants in the world worth a plane ride". He follows what he defines as the octaphilosophy, a cooking philosophy based on eight elements: uniqueness, memory, texture, pureness, terroir, salt, south, craftsmanship.

So what are these drinks that according to Chiang substitute wine? He calls them “juices of ideas”, that is to say mostly fermentations made with fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices. They’re meant to have four advantages: 1) they are focused on the ingredients used each time to prepare them, the chef says it’s «a close up on the product»; 2) for this reason, they would create the perfect climax with the food, «we create a blend of flavours»; 3) they can alternatively play in balance or in contrast; 4) as a consequence, while wine has more a limited capacity of being flexible, “juices of ideas” offer an infinite quantity, «they perfectly complete the taste range», because «one can calibrate the juice as he chooses».

He uses the word accuracy. It’s as if they were an essential part – though a drinkable one – of the dish, measured with the highest precision. They are not just something paired, but a crucial element in order to obtain the desired harmony. So much so, says Chiang, «it is possible to aromatise a product – he mentions squid for example – straight in the fermentation juice». A scientific pairing which doesn’t even require the client to make a choice, because what he’ll drink is pre-defined. It is part of the recipe, part of a whole turning the cellar into a desert.