Would you eat wild salmon packed in moss that had been cooked underground? How about reindeer tongue that had been tenderized in some guy's bathroom? If you were part of the recent "Cook it Raw" event in Lapland, you certainly would.
For the third time in a year, 14 "of the world's most influential chefs" gathered together to make wild, delicate dishes from the natural bounty around them, leaving as little trace of their foraging as possible.
The first "Cook it Raw" event was held in honor of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, with organizers asking the chef participants to make a dish "using little or no conventional energy."
This time, the event was held all the way up in Lapland (look it up, it's pretty far up there) in early September, and the meals that came out of it were nothing short of beautiful…and super strange.
After watching the slaughter of a reindeer, one California chef prepared "roasted beets in the hearth until their skins were black, then served them with a sauce of beets, blueberries and blood." If that isn't weird enough for you, another chef, this one from Japan, "splattered white bowls with a lingonberry sauce that echoed the blood spurting from the reindeer's neck that morning. Nestled in the sauce were strips of meat from hare who might have fed on the berries. Over this, he poured a clear consomme made from wild hare, snow grouse and the leg of a bear."
I'm no foodie, so the idea of eating some of these dishes makes me want to throw up a little, but whether you're into reindeer blood or not, the thinking behind "Cook It Raw" is something everyone can get behind.
As "Cook It Raw" participant and famous Demark chef Rene Redzepi explained to MNN.com, "We are showing others how to harvest in nature, because the things you find there taste better than anything grown…Try one of those blueberries, then a stupid one grown in a greenhouse. Your reference point for what a blueberry tastes like has changed forever."
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