Dear Chef,
This project started with the ‘grolar’ bear. I was listening to a radio program explain how in 100 years the polar bear in all likelihood will cease to exist. The polar bear as we know it now anyways. But all would not be lost. In fact Polar bears looking for food would naturally head south and once there would cross breed with grizzly bears giving way to something new in the world: The Grolar Bear.
The main argument of the woman telling this creation story was that instead of looking back with an impossible sense of nostalgia for a nature synonymous with the garden of Eden we could instead, look ahead at what was within our control in this new world, with new weather and a myriad of constantly changing factors. For me there is this hint of the serenity prayer- grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can. Which gets to the heart of what I am asking of you for this project—
What do you love and how do you protect it?
I am collecting recipes for this new world we are moving towards. And I am looking to you as experts, trend setters, obsessors and lovers of a natural world. So please ask yourself, what do you love and how do you save it. What are the ways you are accessing flavors and textures when you are not allowed every ingredient your whims call for. It is a belief of mine and a notion at the heart of this project that we are thinning out of an excessive time. As far as food goes it seems that we are heading to a time when our pleasures will be simpler; A time when the availability of what we have now will not be as constant, nor as consistent. And there is a notion of impending dread that comes along with this, but it will also be a time when we get to reexamine our relationship with food. Which in itself is a gift.
I am asking for a recipe from you that is thin on ingredients and elegant in flavor. A recipe that may even access and preserve some cultural traditions that more than likely will no longer be allowed to us. An oysterless oyster stew. A pickled smelt bahn mi. Focus on the pantry. It’s a simultaneous meditation on honoring your predecessors and that ancient gesture of stirring the pot, while also looking at what your kids, their kids and so on might be eating. It is looking at this current moment as an opportunity to meditate, prepare and transition gracefully into some of the larger changes that are coming.
The recipes collected will first be published online at Entropymag.org where I am the food editor. Here your style and thoughts, of what you love will be available to a vast online community and beyond.
In a way I am asking you to reinvent the wheel, but only because the sea level is rising and we will need to float instead of roll.
It’s an open call so please send me your recipes at: leon@entropymag.org
xoxo,
-Leon Baham
