00:00Here we are at a meal at almost 4,000 meters above sea level, which is a lot.
00:08This is a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, in the Andes of Peru,
00:15where you can find ingredients you've never seen before, which for me is the restaurant of the
00:21future. Something unique that is happening in one specific location. Then you start to see
00:27all these different shapes like this, and this, and then like this. For us, this is a potato, but
00:33this could be the real potato. This is a black mashua. Look like a purple carrot, but it's not.
00:44It's like got radish, got spicy, anise as a natural dye. You can see here. These mashas are endemic to
00:54this area. That's why they grow big, full of colors and flavors and aromas. We have also a yellow one,
01:02like this. It's milder.
01:08Yeah, super good. What is the most interesting about mashas is that they give us a sense of place.
01:13When they put this in a plate, it means that we are in Moray. These are okas, and look at
01:19these
01:19beautiful colors. Yeah, if we compare an oka with a mashua, this is a way milder, also softer,
01:28super, super good. And then we also use this in the kitchen. We have this kind of dough. A mix
01:34of
01:34salt, clay, called chaco, chaco clay. Some of the juices of the oka, that's why we have this color. It
01:42becomes this mix to produce an interpretation of the huatia.
01:53What is a huatia? It's a way of eating the harvest, fresh ingredients. You harvest potatoes,
02:00then you start to build this kind of oven. You set the fire with the plants, pour all these
02:07vegetable roots and potatoes, okas, mashas. And then you just break the whole oven and you start
02:18to see tubers and vegetable roots already cooked. And that was for me like a whole concept, you know,
02:26doing something like this in the kitchen. We have purple mashua, yellow mashua,
02:33oka, another kind of oka. We have this red potato. We're going to cover the whole thing like this,
02:42but we need to add a bit more of clay, even more flavor for the huatia, some more of the
02:49salt.
02:50And once we have the huatia in our hands, they're going to be cooked in about, let's say 20 minutes.
03:00So this is the huatia that we think is already cooked. And you see the heat, you see the smoke,
03:06it's going to be amazing. So just with my hands like this, these roots, clean them with our fingers.
03:13The first time I learned about this technique, it was the first time I participate on the harvest
03:18of potatoes. It was a ceremony. It was a sense of gratitude to Mother Earth. It was a sense of
03:24community,
03:24people just laying down in the soil and laughing, singing, eating with your fingers. We don't have
03:30to be scared about dirty soil, clay. I mean, it is actually flavor.
03:37Yeah. One of the sauces made with these local herbs.
03:44Beautiful.
03:46I consider this a blessing for a cook to get to understand the ingredient from the soil.
03:51Once it goes to the kitchen, I think it's too late. Creativity happens in the soil,
03:56creativity happens in this extreme multitude. And I had to meet people up in the mountains,
04:01in the Andes of Peru, to understand, you know, the importance of one potato, one sugar,
04:05because they know the soils and all these ancestral knowledge and techniques and technologies.
04:15Our goal was to grow our own corn. It took us a while, you know, to develop this idea where
04:23we can work together with the farmer. Now we're sharing this into a 50-50 situation. They produce
04:2950 percent of the farm for the homes and the other 50 for the restaurants.
04:42Yeah. Fantastic. How can we do attribute of the color, the flavor, the taste? We cooked this corn and then
04:50we puree. It's a mix of black mashua and corn and we end up having something like this. And now
04:57we're
04:58going to add this to the corn puree. It looks like quite blue. And after a few minutes, this is
05:06going to set.
05:07We take red corn, then we make a puree, dry dehydrate the whole puree. Once it's dry like this,
05:14I'm going to use the fire puff a bit. Super crispy.
05:21Same with the yellow corn. We're doing the same process. So I want to showcase all these different
05:26colors. Here we have the chopped corn and I'm going to add the juices from the red corn.
05:33Yellow chili pepper paste. Trying to play with all these different colors and flavors.
05:38So the presentation goes like crispy corn, purple corn, and then we do this kind of sandwich like this.
05:45The kind of blue corn with red corn, yellow corn, dry corn like this. Crispy, fresh corn.
05:53This is one course, which is part of the tasting menu and immersion into the corn fields.
06:02So this is called kabuya. This is what we call the heart of the kabuya.
06:06That meal is surrounded by these plants. They are everywhere. This is one of the best examples of
06:11these amazing ancient techniques that are getting lost. They go to get this piece. You see here,
06:18we have the part of the roots. This is a long process to get the sweetness out of this. And
06:26now
06:26we're going to get this to the fire. We need the exposure, maybe like 15 hours.
06:34So now this is the kabuya heart. It burned a bit the skin. It's not easy to get sweetness out
06:41of this.
06:42These juices start to caramelize and they end up being something very similar to honey. And after a
06:50long process, we're having this syrup. So it's quite smoky because of the exposure to the smokiness and to
06:56the fire. Anyway, it's pure sweetness and the texture is amazing. So we have more than 20 varieties of quinoa
07:04here in our farm. We're trying to preserve the ones that are not that common. It's quite hard,
07:10you know, because we do everything by hand. Now we need to remove the leaves. We need to remove this
07:17tiny skin that the quinoa has. Doing this by hand is the next level of craft. You end up with
07:26your
07:26hands like this for a week. This is the land of quinoa. Black quinoa, green quinoa, caniwa.
07:32What we prepare is a tasting. This is just white quinoa. Try to make a hole. There it is. I'm
07:39going to go with the kabuya syrup.
07:45Cover with this red one and the yellow one, purple one. And now we're going to add the green one.
07:54Black quinoa and caniwa. Normally people think that quinoa is good for salads and so many other
08:00preparations, but we want to put two things that grow together. The quinoa and the kabuya and make
08:06a dessert. This is quite like a surprise for the guests. They don't know that there's this kabuya
08:12sweetness coming. This idea of becoming number one restaurant in the world. I mean, it's fantastic.
08:21It's good for exposure, but that's not the purpose of what we do. Astronomy is evolving. When you're here,
08:27you start to notice, you know, how important it is to maintain another sense of purpose in life
08:33when you cook. Think again about what's the meaning of fine dining. Maybe the future of the fine dining
08:39is here. For me, you know, returning to Peru has changed the way I see food now.
08:47I'll see you next time.
08:47Bye-bye.
08:48Bye-bye.
08:48Bye-bye.
08:48Bye-bye.
08:49Bye-bye.
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