In addition to exotic spices, spicehunter Marcel Thiele is also exploring healthy cooking methods. Nutritious for us and healing for the earth.
Marcel Thiele lives for crazy ideas that actually work and perform beyond expectations. The cook packs small pieces of watermelon into a vacuum bag and marinates them with grape seed oil, a few flakes of salt, adds the juice of beetroot and aniseed and mint-scented atsina and melissa cress.
After two and a half hours at 82 degrees in the sous-vide oven, he freezes the melon pieces for two days. “When defrosted, they have the texture and taste of tuna.”
However, it’s not just about taste, it’s also about health. “We should think about ourselves and the planet,” says Marcel Thiele and calls cooking according to his “Mother Earth” principle an “ode to nature.” The concept, which recommends 80 percent plant-based ingredients and only 20 percent from the animal is tried and tested. Accordingly, dishes like the watermelon fish-style are up his alley. Thinking and cooking seasonally and regionally should become normal. Here, too, 80 percent fruit and vegetables that are ripe in the area are the recommendation, especially to shorten transport routes. There are very general criteria for what a kitchen should be. They do not preach abstention. “Cooking like this was quite normal in the past,” says Thiele, “there was the Sunday roast and vegetables during the week.”
There is a lot of talk about sustainability in the manufacturing industry, “but that also applies to restaurants, chefs and caterers.” The “top of the culinary pyramid” must lead the way.
The “Mother Earth principle” is a wonderful way of working variety into the top kitchen. Spring, summer, autumn and winter, there is always something different on the plate and you don’t have the same classic noble products such as lobster, foie gras or caviar on the menu all year round.
Thinking about the health of people and the earth leads to a rethinking of previously-held gastronomic certainties. Suddenly, ringed beetroot, purple carrots or red kale are considered classy and noble.
Picture: Marcel Thiele