Creating means not copying

Eighty-five years old today, happy birthday Gualtiero. We at Identità are celebrating here on the website, with two articles, and online, with a special issue of the newsletter. Carlo Passera had the pleasure of speaking with the maestro, I have that of writing about the Decalogo del cuoco [the Decalogue of the cook, not of the chef) which Marchesi published early in March. The final exhortation is particularly important, it is basically rule number 11, the most important since Marchesi has changed Italian cuisine: “creating means: NOT COPYING”!.

An important statement since until recently the maestro was not of this opinion. Putting aside the beauty of a quote by Pablo Picasso that I like to recall (“Mediocre artists copy, a genius steals”), creativity meaning not copying brings us back to the late Eighties when, as Ferran Adrià recalls in Los Secretos de El Bulli: recetas, técnicas y reflexiones, the Catalan chef attended, in February 1987, a seminar held by Jacques Maximin, the chef, at the time, of Chantecler inside the Negresco hotel in Nice: “Being creative means not to copy”.

Interviewed by Gabriele Zanatta, in April 2012, upon this question, Jacques Maximin and Ferran Adrià agreed, saying that creativity is not copying, while Marchesi gave a different answer, based on another equally profound quote: “I don’t agree because nothing is created from nothing. I agree with Albert Einstein: the secret of creativity is knowing

A famous portrait of Albert Einstein

how to hide your sources. Besides, you can only be modern within the limits that allow us to be so: people still need to come and eat. And they firstly need to have a nice time in the dining room”. I believe the truth has to do with the quality of the ideas: if they are banal, a mighty pasta e fagioli would be better. Traditional dishes have this good thing about them: if they disappoint you, you can only complain with yourself for not having chosen anything better.

And here’s now Gualtiero Marchesi, the first Italian to we awarded with three stars by the Michelin Guide, in the 1986 edition.

1. Being a cook is a profession, or better still it is a service, a ministerium.
2. The uniform, which needs to be candid, indicates his essential characteristics: honesty, cleanliness, respect.
3. The law of the cook is the recipe of which he is the perpetrator, reminding that any good execution requires some interpretation, which needs to be carefully dosed, not too much nor too little, and introduced with respectful discretion. Composers are a level above.
4. Three figures represent the different levels of experience and knowledge: executor, interpreter and composer.
In order to reach these goals, the cook has to master the techniques and must gain experience in all the stations: starters, first courses, meat, fish and pastry, even though later he will decided to work in the best possible way in one of these.
5. One important element to enrich one’s gastronomic experiences is

Risotto with beetroots, Franciacorta and grana sauce (photo credits Michele Tabozzi 2008)

certainly understanding the places: water, earth, air, which preserve the memory of a territory giving substance and flavour to fruits and animals; inhabitants and climate, which they all need to face, inevitably.
6. The study of the food culture of other countries can contribute in forming a wider knowledge of the culinary art and its productions with different elements and content.
7. The skill of a cook is based on two pillars: understanding raw materials and the ways to process them, respecting their nature.
8. Technical solutions and virtuosos require technical and material knowledge, in terms of conception and execution. Technique is the appropriate, controlled and non-destructive use of the most suitable tools for the process one is conducting, without killing the raw materials.
9. With every preparation, a chef must know perfectly well what it is right to do: the cooking methods and timings, the exact temperature and, when necessary, the duration of the stabilization, as even rest is an important part of the procedure, just like a pause or silence in music partition. The final presentation depends on the choice of the most suitable container.
10. One of the tasks that do honour to the good cook is spreading and incrementing gastronomic culture, both teaching to eat well and in the correct way the food offered on the table, and training young people and passing the baton to those who deserve it, introducing them to gastronomic culture, which, when it is really the case, is an experience full of awareness, a research for constant enhancement and adaptation to life.

Gualtiero Marchesi with Identità Golose at Expo 2010 in Shanghai

And finally, “Creating means: NOT COPYING”!

Without chasing the novelty, the “never-seen” as an attribute that is qualifying by itself: we can recognise novelty both in what is known and in what is unknown, drawing from the truth is what is important.
Art is the manifestation of truth.

Gualtiero Marchesi