I created a culinary dining experiences for the wonderful guys from Slowfood UK.

A little journey into 2062 & A look back on how we used to eat in 2012.

 

 

 

On Tuesday 19 June I will be creating a Slow Food feast at the Rivington Grill Shoreditch, looking at the ritual of eating food, its traditions and how we prepare it. I am very excited to be working with Head Chef Simon Wadham .The event, entitled ‘2062’, will try to help us make sense of our world through the way we eat, BY RECONSTRUCTING A FAMILIAR MEAL OF NOW IN 2062. See you in the future!

http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/3642502824/eorg?ebtv=C

event is now sold out

 

 

How amazing to be allowed to do such a performance in Milan’s prime shopping locations where people lust after the most exquisite tableware. How powerful to deconstruct a whole dinner until the breakdown of all civilised behaviour. How fateful to find the perfect performers to act out the whole Culinary Dance Theater.

Here some still impressions:

click me for some moving images of the performance

Getting everything ready to go to Milan on Thursday to do my first Culinary Dance Performance. Very excited. Come and see and eat and dance if you are in town.

Friday  17:00-19:00

SLIP, SLURP, SLUMP, SPILL!

Food and performance artist Caroline Hobkinson shows the intimate space of the dining table laid bare, deconstructed and broken. Is it a wedding? Is it a funeral? That’s for you to decide.

I designed the table in collaboration with my friend Georg Kayser @Circular Studio Barcelona.

Cant wait to see the finished object.

Today is the 1st of April 2042- the year of the three headed horse. 30 years since the short nuclear war between Iran and Israel, that rendered the middle east a No-Go Zone. The power of the United States and Europe has waned, and since the great wars that followed, and China’s inevitable victory, the way we eat has changed beyond recognition.
As you know Knives and Forks have become a thing of the past, we consider them old fashioned, embarrassing, only used behind closed doors. Imagine once half the world ate with these dangerous eating instruments! Even in Euro-canteens there is very little sign of plates and cutlery. In these back-room establishments, the old stodgy cuisine is eaten with chopsticks.

Milk, and most dairy products, intolerable to our Chinese rulers have become a thing of the past, the decadence of our western food has been replaced by our quick-snack raw food culture.
Due to a total global wheat intolerance cereal are no longer grown on Planet Earth.
Private dining has become outdated. In the past-  everyone used to run their own kitchens. But running electricity, water and gas at home, is now an extravagance that none of us would ever dream of affording. Eating has become a public experience. In vast spelt noodle bars and karaoke canteens like the ones I’m sure you all ate your breakfast in. Only Brooklyn Beckham and Suri Cruise  are rumoured to have kitchens at home.
It’s strange to imagine that Ikea used to sell kitchens!
They discontinued them in 2019.
It’s weird to think there used to be a whole culture of cookery books, and even television chefs.
Our canteens now serve us food that is based on our facebook profile while in the past people where left to ponder helplessly over listings of food called menus.
Some of the older generation still remember fish.
What survived the over-fishing was destroyed by the great storms of radiation that followed the conflicts of the 2020s.
Some Shanghai restaurants serve 4 headed Atlantic Salmon, but this dish is more for show than anything.
In the decontaminated zones of Earth, food is only allowed to travel the usual 50 miles. Lack of fuel has created an almost medieval culture of local farmers markets.
What started out as a lifestyle choice at the turn of the century has become a neccesity.
In-Vetro meat laboratories and huge hydroponic fruit and vegetable farms produce our food.
Every cut of meat is now grown in a test-tube or petri-dish. The exact amount of fat, bone and gristle is controlled by our computer bio-engeneering programmes. Just imagine people used to eat meat that was once living animals.
All of you know your local hydroponic.
Inside, under intense light they produce radiation free vegetables like soy,
pink kale, turnips sprouting broccoli and heritage tomotoes that supply the huge canteens we all eat at.
Due to the acidic atmosphere on the planet -citrus fruits combust automatically before they reach ripeness. They are now produced in less acidic atmospheres and therefore very rare.
Only the oldest in the room will remember Christmas. At this  superstitious solstice festival, whole families would gather privately and eat huge amounts of food. Imagine – a WHOLE family of three, or even five, sitting around a table to eat in private, at home!
My great aunt told me about a drink called whiskey, the water of life made in land once known as Scotland. A place now with water so polluted – it can’t even be used for flushing the loo.
Our world used to be a strange old place then and we are definitely better off now. but in order to give you a  taste of the past I have reconstructed a familiar food 30 years ago. Smoked salmon with lemon and Whiskey.

In the Petri dish in front of you will find a piece specially commissioned fish . Now extinct -fish is a food that used to be consumed by many species on earth. The word “fish” refers to both the animal and to the food prepared from it. Fish had been  an important source of protein for humans throughout recorded history. A fish is an aquatic organism that lacks limbs with digits. This specimen here is called salmon,
this here is in it’s raw Sashimi form but people used to can salmon – smoke it or even cook it. (!)

in the Pipette you will find a portion of” I terrestial lemon juice”. Due to its high content in citric acid it’s impossible to be produced on earth. As you know most of our lemons now come from Mars but their taste is very different . These I terrestial lemons have a  distinctive sour taste that used to be a key ingrerdient in many dishes around the world.

In the test tubes you will find the remains of the last bottles of whiskey on this planet. A 55 year old single malt whiskey known as Talisker. It was from the now flooded isle of skye.

Its a shame I cant give you forks – i just coudn’t risk it.
Squeeze the lemon onto your salmon. Place the salmon into your mouth & swallow. Open the test tube to drink the whiskey and savour the flavours of the past.

I was asked by Husk magazine to contribute to their Conflict issue. So I created Macaroons topped with Bacon. I love the strong symbolism that Bacon holds both in Judaism and Islam. The fact that it is literally a sin to eat a certain food, that it is forbidden by a holy law seems incredulous yet dignified. I have always been intrigued by religious restrictions of the consumption of food. It plays towards my love of the symbolism of food and the ritual of the way we eat it. We often refer to a little indulgence like a macaroon as having sinned. Macaroons stand for Marie Antoinette style flamboyance. The sweet  delicacy combines sublime ganache filling between two macaroon shells. I love the contrast of the daintily textured macaroons against the hearty fatty bacon. I covered them in tiny poppy seed, a staple of the Jewish diet.

They stand in conflict with each other. Traditionally, Jews have always viewed the pig as the epitome of non kosher food. And the Quran says “He has made unlawful for you only that which dies of itself and blood and the flesh of swine and that on which the name of any other than Allah has been invoked.” Eating pork is the strongest culinary taboo. By being abstinent from eating pork you attain purity of soul. By being abstinent from a macaroon we can attain purity of body. Being aware of those dilemmas makes them taste twice as good.

By eating the food of a place we become part of it.

These Holiskes would make my Jewish Grandmother proud.

Really busy getting everything together for my next culinary adventure at Dan Cruickshank’s house in Spitalfields.

Today I am making the Pheasant Terrine with Calvados and sauteed Apples. It smells delicious.

here a little taster:

 

The culinary evocation of 15 Elder Street, Spitalfields
A gastrogeographical journey in 7 courses
Tonight we dine with the ghosts hidden in the layers of history.
By eating the food of this place we connect with it on the most intimate level.
We become part of it.

Roman Spitalfields
A Raw Estuary Oyster served with pickled Shallots, Ale and Pepper
Dickens’ Sam Weller remarks, ‘Poverty and oysters always seem to go together’.
Hungry Spitalfields
A Dish of Nothing
A large disaster cemetery was built at the end of the road in 1120.

Ambergris and Angelica Root incense is lit.
Monastic Spitalfields
Warm Winter Pears and Goatscurd with local Honey from Steve Benbow.
He used to sell his honey in Spitalfields Market,
where in 1197 St. Mary’s Priory is built.
Pears picked fresh from the orchard. We sit in the prior’s orchard garden.
Tudor Spitalfields
Freshly Shot Pheasant Terrine with Calvados and Apple
served with freshly baked St. John’s bread.
The Honourable Artillery Company take over much of the ground. Mind the lead shots.
Huguenot Spitalfields
Burgundy braised Beef Cheeks with Baby Leeks and Horseradish Cream
1727. The House was built. French calvanistic culture takes hold. Silk weaving is the main industry.
Unfold your napkin with drawings by Marenka Gabeler, the current female inhabitant of the house.

A Menorah is lit.
Jewish Spitalfields
Geshmack Holishkes are served
Just as the Eskimos have nurmerous words for snow so do the Jews of eastern europe for stuffed cabbage …
Interlude Vesta Tilly. The greatest male impersonator of the Music Halls.
Who is believed to be related to the former inhabitants and may have stayed here.
Blitz Spitalfields
Beetroot Cake served with German late Harvest Riesling Icewine “ frozen while still on the vine.”
The Ministry of Food’s leaflet No. 40 “use the sweetness of beetroot to make a pudding with little sugar”.
Dan’s Spitalfields
A glass of Single Malt Whisky served by Dan Cruickshank
Raise a glass to Dan Cruickshank,the current inhabitant of the house.

a little culinary history devised by Caroline Hobkinson
London, Spitalfields 30th of January 2012

 

I was very honoured to be invited to participate at Glenfiddich’s One Day You Will  First Ever Pioneering Summit up in beautiful Scotland, particularly at this time of year.

They asked me to choreograph an entire Eating Experience for both nights of the summit. A challenge that I happily accepted.

These are some impressions of the Initiation Dinner.

 

The most tender venison I’ve ever tasted – it should be – it’s from the “valley of the deers” -Glenfiddich in Gaelic. Eaten with Wooden sticks – one end had two prongs hand carved into them like a chipfork.

 

Initiation Dinner Tuesday 18th October 2011

Menu

Find yourself.

Break your bread and eat it. Leave yourself behind.

Put on a mask. Become someone new.

Introduction from Caroline Hobkinson.
—
Wild Mushroom and Whiskey Soup
served in test tubes Warm yourself with a secret portion.

—

Smoked Herring served on lemon grass skewers Add old tradition to new flavours

—
Hendricks,Tonic and Cucumber sorbet popsicle

clean your palate

—

Saddle of venison

meet the mythical creature with candied and golden beetroot, purple and white carrot, onion squash and curly kale
Dig up the past and discover new flavours
Extend your arms with the branched of trees and devour for the mythical creature.

—-

Apple Butterscotch pies with a candied apple give in to tempation

—–

Tiny deep fried mars bars in fleur de Sell batter – served as petit fours. Shed new light on myths

and this was the Gala Dinner

The deconstructed Scotch Quails Egg with the “Cutlery Disc”

The conventional cutlery outline was laser cut into the giant cracker.

The inspiring mixologist Eben Klemm with his reversed cocktail using liquid nitrogen- it became stronger as you drunk it.

Diners attacking the iced creature with warm treacle served in test tubes.

Pioneering is seeing the magic in the humble everyday – in this case floating bread rolls.

The Haggis was “piped in ” by a real bag piper and addressed by a woman ( very unusual) with a Robert Burns poem.

( He wrote an entire hymn to the dish !)

 

You are part of a ritualist eating performance

Cocktail by Eben Klemm

Eat floating bread rolls suspended by thin air. Inject with Cream Cheese. Inspect Whiskey marinated Salmon.

—————-
A manifesto of new eating experiences by Caroline Hobkinson.

Deconstruct everyday rituals. Force yourself to reassess. Look at the familiar in a new light and find new solutions.
————–

Blindfold yourself.
2 flavours are paired specifically to complement 2 fragrances
to complement the fragrance of fresh mint:
Petit pois on a crusty bread
are placed into your mouth
to complement the fragrance of fresh rosemary:
Roast squash on a crusty bread
is placed into your mouth
See again.
—————
The Sound of a back pipe carries a Haggis
The Haggis is served as part of a deconstructed Scotch Egg.
Haggis on a bed of breadcrumbs with quails egg
Look at customs of the past which give our culture the rich flavour of today.
Eat with cracker bread disks with fork and knife laser cut onto them.

—————

Clean your palate with Hendrick’s and Tonic
——————
Tinned Fresh Sea Trout
Things aren’t what they seem to be.
Bite into soft apples of the earth from branches of trees DIg up buried treasures and get inspired by the humble everyday
Baked potatoes served on two pronged chip forks carved into twigs
——————–
Sponge cake and whiskey & raisin ice cream Melt the ice with your own warm golden treacle.

Me with the wonderful and very down to earth Peter Gordon, great-greatgrandson of William Grant who pioneered Single malt Scotch Whisky. It was such a wonderful thing to spend some time at this traditional distillery with so many people so passionate about pioneering – it gave me a real taste for whisky though.

 

Masonic Banquet of the elect 20
Code of conduct and substances
Guillotine shot
You are part of a ritualist eating performance
You are blindfolded
A candle is lit
The scent unfolds
3 amuse bouche are paired specifically to complement the 3 different notes of the scent
to complement the head note of lavender, marjoram, laurel
an amuse bouche of
Purple potato mousse on truffle oil
is placed into your mouth
to complement the heart note of thyme, rosemary
an amuse bouche of
Courgette roulade, aubergine and tomato
is placed into your mouth
to complement the bottom note of juniper, sage, pine, hay
an amuse bouche of
Saddle of venison, red wine juice, seared mushrooms
is placed into your mouth
Your blindfolds are removed
Eat the floating Campaillou bread Rolls without using your hands
Add the secret wood smoked oil
Receive Tiger prawns marinated in lemon, chilli and gin directly into your mouth
Suck Frozen Champagne and Pomegranate popsicles on iron skewers to cleanse your palette
Your hands are washed
The arrival of the beasts. Winged suckling pigs
Extend your arms with the branches of trees and bite into steamed apples
Reach for the spirit
Your hands are washed
Crack the egg and lick the Praline Milk Chocolate out of the shell
Eat the Eye of Providence
Take from the rich fruitcake in the divine form and devour it
The end of the ritual is marked by the extinguishing of the flames.