The Chef wrote this post. When I asked him about including a photo of the dish, he said, "People need to smell, taste, and feel it to really experience it. Seeing a one-dimensional picture of it isn't the same." I've had the pleasure of eating the dish. I couldn't agree more. Here are his words:
The
relationship between Love Apple Farm and Manresa Restaurant is very special.
Love Apple is not a show garden, nor does it exist for just PR purposes. It is
not just a seasonal garden; it’s where the bulk of the restaurant produce is
grown year round. It is a working farm, an integrated facet of the restaurant,
just as important as anything or anyone else. Its role is unique; not many
other restaurants have the opportunity to create an exclusive farm to table
relationship that has such an impact on a menu.
From the very beginning, we wanted to create a dish that celebrated the garden, that
showed the special nature of our relationship and how it constantly changes,
not only with the ephemeral changes of the seasons, but with the thoughts and
designs of the kitchen team.
It had to be a vegetable dish and the obvious choice was to create one in which
the complexities come from the abundance of the produce itself.
There is a reference point for a dish like this. Michel Bras in Lagioule, France is one of the most influential chefs of the last century and into this century. Ingredient obsessive, and a forager of forgotten
flavors, his food is unmistakably French. He nevertheless embraces, in fact,
helped create, the modernist aesthetic we see developing around the world. He
has a huge (and is perhaps the largest) influence on Ferran Adria and the other
Spanish vanguardists who garner a lot of current press. Bras’ dish was simple;
a “gargouillou” or a dish of vegetables (with a touch of ham). It contained
herbs and vegetables, cultivated and foraged, raw and cooked, grains, flowers,
etc. He wanted this melange to reflect the landscape and country that he
was in. The dish changed as the seasons did, a perfect reflection of that
seasonality. This dish has had enormous influence on a whole generation of
chefs around the world, many who took the idea and built their own theme into
it. Some, like Andoni Aduriz of Mugaritz, just outside of San Sebastian and one
of the world’s brilliant talents, has placed his own stamp on what has now
become a signature dish at his restaurant worthy of his name.
So how did we start? The only real rule for this dish was
that if it had arrived from the garden, then it had to be on the plate.
We
originally started with a dish called “Potato gnocchi and burrata cheese,
vegetables from the garden." After awhile the gnocchi became a superfluous
element, especially since Cynthia started harvesting fantastic varieties of
potatoes.
So it became “Potatoes and vegetables from the garden,
burrata cheese.”
But through the course of our first four full seasons we
wanted to go even more. We did not want it to be a collection, but a plate as
if we had held a mirror up to the garden and it showed an edible reflection.
The ephemeral nature of what the unfolding seasons show us, the daily nuanced
changes that only Cynthia and her team see must be present.
Over time we have learned how we can use different
elements of a plant at different times of its life: roots, stems, seed,
flowers, buds, leaves, shoots, etc. The possibilities are endless. This changed
things dramatically. We began to view the dish more as a concept, a mirror, and
not just as a plate of food. We wanted customers to step into the garden, to enter
it in their taste and in their minds when they ate the dish, to feel as if they
transported themselves to the garden of which we are so proud.
So we changed the name and called it “Vegetables from
the garden, their vegetable juices.”
We
then created an edible “dirt” based on roasted chicory root and dried
potatoes, which not only played its visual role but a superbly flavorful one,
contributing the slight bitter note that we had been searching for.
We
changed the name one more time. It became “Into the vegetable garden.”
This
concept of a sense of place on a plate, not just a reflection of the terroir,
but for the dish to actually represent the location is a big step. There are
some groundbreaking chefs who are taking these ideas to the next logical step
of what we are just touching on. It is fascinating.
We have a lot of visitors to the farm and the restaurant,
both customers and people in the industry. It is amazing the reaction that we
get from them when they have the dish after a visit to Cynthia’s special place.
It is interesting that almost all understand the idea, and some even take it
with them.
This dish has now been on our menu for two years and the
name never changes. But the dish does.
Everyday.
Like a day in the garden.
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