Vegetarian sushi at Junta Local

From Portuguese Junta means ‘to get together’ and Local has the same English connotation. The organisation of this monthly event in the city of Rio de Janeiro aspires to create a community of small scale producers and consumers and reinforce their collaboration. Extracted from their site: Our approach is transparency and trust. In other words, we need to get along. Most products on the board will always be local, made independently by people we know. At the same time we are aware of the fact that some basic ingredients of the kitchen cannot be produced locally and we want you to do not have to make several steps to supply your pantry. Therefore, to ensure the force of each Junta Local and the local food suppliers, some products come from further afield, while maintaining proximity to the information.

For the weekend in October, during Brazilian Spring, I collaborated with a farmer family that hosts their vegetable’s field in the province. After a personal visit to the farm of Manaca , which took at least 3 h of travelling by bus reinforced by 2 extra h of car to get to the final destination, it was astonishing to see how purely they treat their products and love their workers, and how hard is to survive when you are surrounded by farmers that use only agrotoxics and contaminate nature.

Manaca Organicos

In the fullness of time we stand together at the market of Junta Local, where I exclusively used their ingredients to make sushi, promoting vegetarianism and organic nourishment.

...at Ferro e Farinha

I am very happy to announce that after many years of self-restraint to work in a restaurant I defeat, but only because this place is very, very special. To my own surprise I end up running around a wood oven at Ferro e Farinha in Rio de Janeiro. Probably due to that the whole reminds me of Kynoto, the restaurant I used to be in charge of in the '05-'07 in Barcelona. In fact Ferro e Farinha doesn’t have more 2m, almost with no space for storage and few tables for service but with a large bar stand to host around 10 clients. It opens at night hours and serves selected drinks together with 5 variety of pizzas.

The decision came not only due to nostalgia, the pizza we are making is a mix of Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Brazilian and street food style. By now all these cultures have in rooted deeply in my palate but I never had the occasion to eat them on one singular dough....so here I am again, with my new chef friends: Sei, Bruno, Chris, Camilla, Thais, Kimi, Cat and the rest.

News: Last week our team won the price of the best pizza in Rio de Janeiro !!! Congrats to all of us and our clients.

Feijoada for the Dutch Art Institute final presentations

The residency at Capacete reinforced my culinary knowledge with some Brazilian traditional recipes. The outcomes of this new experience were celebrated at the DAI in Arnhem, last week. Alongside several students of the program have been travelling to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Finally we could culminate the academic year by combining these events in one day.

CAPACETE program launch with Leandro Nerefuh

CAPACETE art residency 2015 program launch including a presentation from Leandro Nerefuh.

One month ago on a Wednesday, we the residents, opened the year with a communal dinner, some caipirnas and a talk by the Brazilian artist Leandro Nerefuh : The Telepathic Motion Picture of ‘The Lost Tribe’. On the menu there was a vegan indian soup, a legumes salad and finally some Brazilian sweets made out of coconut and corn meal. In our hands a sculpture of the Venus of Willendorf passing by and on the screen the image of Shakira, Byonce and Gaby Amarantos.