在生鲜美食节上领略原始风味

在生鲜美食节上领略原始风味

HARDEEVILLE, S.C. — “I am sitting in the most amazing puddle of mire,” Matt Jennings, the chef at Farmstead in Providence, R.I., announced into the dark from his perch atop a 12-foot-high hunting blind.

南卡罗来纳州哈迪维尔——“我坐在最惊艳的烂泥坑里，”罗德岛州普罗维登斯农庄餐厅(Farmstead)的主厨马特·詹宁斯(Matt Jennings)对着夜空说。此时，他正待在一个12英尺(约合3.7米)高的狩猎隐蔽所上面。

He had already been frog-marched deep into the forest by a local guide at dawn, ripped open his hand sliding down a ladder and hauled his large frame up another ladder and into a rain-filled swivel chair.

破晓时分，他已在一名当地向导的带领下顶着浓雾走进了丛林深处。沿着梯子往下滑的时候，他割破了一只手。最后，他拖着自己庞大的身躯爬上另一架梯子，坐到一把被雨水浸湿了的转椅上。

But it wasn’t his damp jeans, bleeding finger or lack of sleep that were bothering him. It was that, with one shotgun shell and no hunting experience, he was poised to bring down a deer or wild pig that his guide said would surely cross through this particular stand of trees, where the forest floor is thick with acorns.

让他心烦的，不是潮湿的牛仔裤、流血的手指或睡眠不足，而是没有打猎经验的他如何用一颗猎枪子弹放倒一头鹿或一头野猪。他的向导说，这两种动物肯定会穿过这排大树，因为林子的地上满是橡果。

Mr. Jennings, along with 20 other chefs from around the world, was in this neck of the woods in October because of Cook It Raw, a prestigious and peculiar annual culinary gathering that has become one of the most coveted invitations in food.

今年10月，詹宁斯和来自世界各地的其他20名厨师因为每年一度的生鲜烹制(Cook It Raw)活动聚集在这一带。这个鼎鼎有名的特殊烹饪集会已成为餐饮业最令人垂涎的活动之一。

The night before, he had butchered a freshly shot alligator with a Bowie knife by the headlights of a pickup truck, sawing off the arms while Jeremy Charles, a chef from Newfoundland, cut out the tongue. For dinner, he had deftly trimmed and then grilled a deer’s heart, lovingly cutting it into thin, tender slices.

前一天夜里，他就着皮卡的前灯，用博伊刀宰杀了一头刚刚击中的短吻鳄，锯下了它的脚。来自纽芬兰的厨师杰里米·查尔斯(Jeremy Charles)则切下了它的舌头。准备晚餐时，他轻车熟路地处理并烤熟了一颗鹿心，然后又细心地把它切成鲜嫩的薄片。

But he was having doubts. “If a beautiful, innocent deer wanders in front of me, am I really going to blow its brains out?” he said.

可是，他还是心存疑虑。“如果有一头漂亮又无辜的鹿在我面前游荡，我真的要打得它脑袋开花吗?”他问道。

In the end, Mr. Jennings never saw his prey. But this is precisely the kind of question that is supposed to arise during Cook It Raw, held in a different (and usually remote) location every year since 2009.

到最后，詹宁斯根本没看到猎物。这也正是生鲜烹制活动期间会出现的那种问题。从2009年开始，活动每年都会在不同(而且通常都很偏远)的地方举行。

Cook It Raw has nothing to do with raw food. Its guiding idea is to strip cooking to its raw elements: foraging, hunting, fishing, farming and low-tech skills like butchery and cooking over fire. A taste of the wild — hunting deer, gathering mushrooms, pulling wasabi from creek beds — is part of each carefully orchestrated and extensively documented program. (The first gathering, in Denmark, included 11 chefs and about 20 journalists.)

生鲜烹制活动和生食无关。它的指导思想是，让烹饪回归原始的方式：采集、打猎、捕鱼、耕种，以及屠宰和火上烹煮这种低技术含量的技巧。每次活动都经过精心策划并留下大量的纪录材料，其中均包含体验野外生活的部分，比如猎鹿、采蘑菇、从河床上拔山葵。(第一次活动在丹麦举行，有11位大厨和大约20名记者参加。)

Also, the chefs themselves are stripped raw: airlifted out of their restaurant kitchens and planted far away from their families and customers, their sous-chefs and sous-vide machines, for a week.

而且，厨师自己也身无旁物：他们乘坐飞机离开所在餐厅的厨房，被送到远离家人、顾客、助手和各种烹调机器的地方，在那里待一星期。

European luminaries like Pascal Barbot, Albert Adrià and Massimo Bottura have camped out with New World comers like David Chang, Sean Brock and Alex Atala. Acclaimed chefs from Asia like André Chiang and Yoshihiro Narisawa have yawned at predawn wake-up calls alongside Scandinavian influencers like Magnus Nilsson and René Redzepi.

欧洲大陆的大师级人物帕斯卡尔·巴尔博(Pascal Barbot)、阿尔韦特·阿德里亚(Albert Adrià)和马西莫·博图拉(Massimo Bottura)，与来自新大陆的张锡镐(David Chang)、肖恩·布罗克(Sean Brock)和亚历克斯·阿塔拉(Alex Atala)等人一起露宿;亚洲名厨江振诚(André Chiang)和成泽由浩(Yoshihiro Narisawa)，也与来自斯堪的纳维亚的芒努斯·尼尔松(Magnus Nilsson)和勒内·雷哲皮(René Redzepi)等人听到黎明前的起床铃声后一齐呵欠连连。

“I just wanted to suck the marrow out of the experience,” said Mr. Jennings, who was at Cook It Raw for the first time and more than slightly cowed by all the world-famous chefs. “But I made a strict rule for myself on the plane: you do not talk to Albert Adrià unless he talks to you first.”

“我很想从这次经历中吸取精髓，”詹宁斯说。第一次参加生鲜烹制活动的他完全被那些世界名厨吓住了。“但是，我在飞机上给自己定了一条严格的规矩：不要和阿尔韦特·阿德里亚搭话，除非他主动找我。”

The chosen ones are considered kitchen innovators whose work displays a respect for agricultural tradition and a command of culinary technology. (And they are almost invariably men; the first woman included was Ana Ros, a Slovenian chef who attended the 2012 event in Suwalki in north Poland; this year, the British-American chef April Bloomfield made the cut, as well as Connie DeSousa of Calgary’s meat-focused restaurant Charcut Roast House.)

被选中的幸运儿被认为是厨房里的发明家，在工作中显示出了对农业传统的尊重及对烹饪技术的精通。(而且，他们几乎都是男厨师。该活动的首个女性参与者是来自斯洛维尼亚的大厨安娜·罗斯[Ana Ros]。她参加了2012年在波兰北部的苏瓦乌基举办的活动。今年，活跃在英美两国的大厨阿普丽尔·布卢姆菲尔德[April Bloomfield]，以及卡尔加里以肉类菜品为主的熟食烧烤屋[Charcut Roast House]的主厨康妮·德苏萨[Connie DeSousa]也入围了。)

In the same way an overnight hike at summer camp gives children a safe but exhilarating taste of the wild, Cook It Raw is an artificial, educational and highly enjoyable field trip into food.

就像夏令营里的通宵徒步会让孩子们安全却兴奋地体验野外环境一样，生鲜烹制活动也是一次以美食为主题的野外旅行，经人为安排、具有教育意义，并会带来非常愉悦的享受。

It began in Copenhagen, an offshoot of the acclaimed restaurant Noma and the work of its chef, Mr. Redzepi, the face of the so-called New Nordic cooking style: hyperlocal and seasonal ingredients (of course), with added layers of agricultural tradition, naturalistic presentation and high-minded culinary innovation.

活动发源于著名的Noma餐厅在哥本哈根的分店，以及餐厅的主厨雷哲皮。他是所谓的“新北欧烹饪风格”的代表人物，特点是：采用超级具有本地特色的原料和当季的食材(那是自然)，再加上农业传统、写实主义的呈现，以及高端的烹饪创新的层层内涵。

“It’s important to keep pushing yourself, to learn and stretch as a cook,” said Ms. Bloomfield, who has just opened Tosca Cafe, a restaurant in San Francisco, adding to the four kitchens she runs in New York. She is known for unfussy food, simply but expertly prepared.

布龙菲尔德说，“作为一名厨师，要不断地强迫自己学习和拓展，这很重要。”她名下的托斯卡餐厅(Tosca Café)刚刚在旧金山开张，同时还在纽约经营着四家饭馆。她去繁就简的菜品闻名遐迩，烹饪过程简单却不失专业。

But for the chefs’ dinner here, she composed a plate of seared rib-eye steaks of local beef, aged for 40 days and grilled over pecan wood; on top, roasted Tokyo turnips and a salad of raw turnips, grated turnips and turnip leaves, dressed with a sesame-miso-sorghum vinaigrette with fresh fennel seeds and pollen; and a shower of wood sorrel and peanut leaves. Oh, and there was a salty-sweet smoked-oyster ice cream on top. “I did it for the sheer joy of making myself uncomfortable,” she said. “You don’t get to do that in your own kitchen very often.”

不过，在为这些主厨烹饪晚餐时，她做了一盘烤肋眼牛排，把准备了40天的本地牛肉在山核桃木上烤制;配菜是烤日本小萝卜和一份由生萝卜、萝卜丝和萝卜叶做成的沙拉，浇上芝麻味增高粱油醋汁，以及新鲜的茴香粒和花粉;最后再撒上酢浆草和花生叶。噢，最上面还有甜咸口味的烟熏牡蛎冰激凌。她说，“我这么做完全是为了让我自己打破常规，这能给我带来纯粹的快乐。在自家餐厅的厨房里，你可不会有机会经常这么做。”

This year’s gathering was based in Charleston, and the area of study was the Lowcountry, the coastal marshes and fertile barrier islands that stretch from North Carolina down to Georgia.

今年聚会的大本营在查尔斯顿，学习的地点则是低地地区，也就是从北卡罗来纳州绵延到佐治亚州的海边湿地和肥沃的堰洲岛。

At Turnbridge, a former rice plantation here, the channels that once irrigated many acres of plants hold shrimp, blue crabs and alligators; its old-growth trees are home to bald eagles, flocks of doves and sometimes pink flamingoes. The estate also holds 20 acres of Carolina Gold rice, a rich and fluffy strain that died out in the 1920s but has been revived here by multiple twists of fate (and the persistence of Dr. Richard and Patricia Schulze, who bought the land in the 1970s).

特恩布里奇曾经是水稻种植区，一度灌溉大片庄稼的水沟里养了虾、蓝蟹和鳄鱼;这里的老树是白头鹰和鸽群的家，有时也有火烈鸟来栖息。这些地方还有 20英亩的卡罗莱纳金色水稻，一个口感丰富而松软的品种，上世纪20年代曾经消失，但是在一番曲折的经历之后在这里重现于世(也是因为理查德 (Richard) 博士和帕特丽夏·舒尔茨(Patricia Schulze)博士的坚持，他们上世纪70年代购买了这片土地。)

Its red-gold stalks waved around the chef Dan Barber’s ears as Glenn Roberts, the owner of Anson Mills and the South’s premier expert on grains, taught the group the multistep process of harvesting rice, from cutting all the way through threshing, pounding and polishing.

赤金色的稻杆在主厨丹的耳朵旁摇曳，安森磨坊(Anson Mills)的所有者、南卡罗来纳州著名的谷物专家格莱恩·罗伯茨(Glenn Roberts)向这群人讲授了收水稻的多个步骤的程序，从收割到脱粒、捣米和抛光。

“You become very connected to the ingredient when you’re literally standing in it,” said Mr. Barber, who is deep into a study of heirloom and hybrid grains at his famous, idyllic farm-restaurant just north of New York City, Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

巴伯说，当你站在它们中间的时候，你就好像和这些食材产生了关联。巴伯正在深入地研究古老谷物和杂交谷物，他那如诗如画的农庄餐馆、著名的谷仓蓝山餐厅(Blue Hill at Stone Barns)就在纽约市的北面。

Mr. Jennings, by contrast, is the little-known chef at a small restaurant in a small city. Providence diners like their food recognizable and hearty, and he cooks accordingly: bowls of mussels, boards of local cheese and the charcuterie he makes by hand, and an exceptional grilled cheese sandwich with strawberry jam. He is thickly tattooed with the names of pig parts, and doesn’t look like a member of any elite group. But his efforts to support New England farms and fisheries, and to organize a Northern Alliance of chefs in Canada and New England to celebrate mussels, maple syrup, potatoes and other cold-weather staples, won him admission to the magic circle of Cook It Raw chefs.

相比之下，詹宁斯是个小城市里一个小餐馆的不知名的厨师。那里的食客们喜欢他们食物一目了然，实实在在，而这正是他的食物的特点：一碗碗的河蚌，当地的奶酪和他亲手做的熟肉，以及非同寻常的烤奶酪三明治配草莓酱。他身上有许多纹身，都是猪身上部位的名字，看起来一点也不像精英。但是他支持新英格兰的农场和渔业，组织了一个由加拿大和新英格兰主厨组成的北部联盟，目的是推广河蚌、枫树糖浆、土豆和其他冷天气的主食，这为他赢得了进入生鲜烹制这个神奇圈子的入场券。

While there, he said a week later, there were only a few moments when he went cold with fear.

一个星期之后他说，在那儿的时候，有几个时刻，他紧张得身体发僵。

“At one point Albert Adrià was working on my right, Ben Shewry was to my left, and Dan Barber and April Bloomfield were behind me,” he said. “I thought, ‘O.K., I’m just going to go throw up, and then I’ll be fine.’ ”

“有一次，阿尔韦特·阿德里亚在我右边制作食物，本·舒利(Ben Shewry)在我左边，丹·巴伯和阿普丽尔·布龙菲尔德站在我后面，”他说。“我当时想，‘好吧，我要吐了，然后就会没事了。’”