Carrots, Carrots, Carrots and Freshwater Tiger Prawns

The project Salt Dykes is a serious invitation to let the imagination (the capability to generate images as a tool for learning and forming) be dragged on the other side of the membrane, to make culture permeable and adapt it to changing, non-linear, non-dichotomous conditions. 

The menu is an exercise to the taste as a means to defy the general understanding or practicing of spaces and edibility, hence the paradox. Recipes records no weight or measures, no procedural or serving hints but a way to think about ingredients and reframe their value as such.

carrots- it seems this is another vegetable excellence in Hamburg, for taste and variety in colours. Yellow, purple, orange (selected by the Dutch for the colour of their royal family and then imposed on the rest of the world as the only possible carrot, they ended up being the carrot) and mixed. Carrot is an underrated root (probably because it’s mostly used boiled, don’t) but with great potential when raw, roasted, marinated, baked or fermented in a sort of kimchi (with green hot peppers, salt, shrimp paste and salicornia, leave it there for at least a couple of months, the more the merrier).

freshwater tiger prawns- I was originally hoping for Flusskrebs, something between a lobster and a langoustine in the look, related to the crayfish used in the Southern US but smaller and less aggressive (like most things on this side of the Atlantic). There were diffuse in rivers all over Europe, in Italy they are extinct in most rivers also due to the competition with their American cousins also known as killer prawn or Louisiana killer prawns that show no mercy for fish, small mammals and even birds. I have been chasing them for years but in Italy they are quite rare, only coming from small breeding farms aiming to preserve the species and repopulate. In Hamburg they seem to be a big thing, but out of season. Annoying, yet reassuring to see we are still subject to seasonality when it comes to something. I was offered instead these terrific prawns from a repopulating programme in Bavaria. Delicious, just served raw they have the consistency of their saltwater relatives but more delicate. Still slightly sapid but that “taste of the sea” is replaced by the one of an alpine freshwater basin.

inula- Lymbarda crithmoides, or sea rosemary for the English language that associate anything it doesn’t know with the little it knows. Very efficient from the perspective of a language, not very effective when it comes to defining things. It has nothing to do with rosemary, not biologically nor in terms of flavour profile. It is a strong aromatic, balsamic and a bit spicy in the way of a fresh green pepper. Dried and grinder it can be used as a substitute for pepper. Or it can be mixed with fresh chili peppers, citruses peels and salt for a sort of yuzu kosho of Japanese inspiration as in this dish.