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Argentinian chef Francis Mallmann has published a new book, Green Fire: Extraordinary Ways to Grill Fruits and Vegetables, from the Master of Live-Fire Cooking. It is the culmination of a love affair with fire that began in childhood.
Mallmann grew up in the wilds of Patagonia, and fire was at the centre of his family home. It provided the heating, the hot water and of course all cooking was done with fire. The coming of winter was marked by the cutting and the stacking of wood in the woodshed to ensure there was ample fuel for the harsh season.
Life in Patagonia was lived outdoors, skiing in the winter, walking in the summer. Then when he was about eleven years old, Mallmann began to work as a caddy - not for golf though, he carried equipment for fly fishermen, and learned to cook the trout they caught on the fire.
But that was a lifetime ago and as Mallmann grew up and became a chef and a devotee of French cooking. He travelled the world and worked with some of the best in the business. However, something was missing.
“In my forties, I thought, ‘what the hell am I doing?’" says Mallmann. “I was a French chef from Patagonia. I wanted to find my own language, so I sort of kneeled down and remembered all that history from my childhood. I just picked up those tools and started working, talking to anthropologists to understand how the natives lived and ate in our country. That went on for many years until today, we have this beautiful base full of different techniques to cook with fire.”
Speaking with Mallmann, though, it becomes apparent that fire is more than just a cooking technique. The chef has a poetic relationship with fire, almost intimate.
Smashed potatoes (left) and Roast with Raclette (right) Photographs by William Hereford
“It’s a silent language, it’s unexplainable. You can write a book, as I have just done, about fire, but it’s unexplainable because it’s a language that goes inside of you through all your senses. So it’s your touch, your smell, it’s the taste, the listening, every sense starts drinking in all this information, who in the long run, gives you the silent language of craftsmanship of fire."
“I think that’s very beautiful, because no matter how many books, or how many cooking classes you take with a master chef of fires, in the end you have to stand there yourself and do it. It takes a long time to learn, because it’s very fragile. There are so many small gestures about cooking with fire that change everything and obviously the first and most important ingredient is patience. Without patience you can’t cook with fie. Then you have temperatures, which is so important, you need to be able to read what is happening with your fire."
Mallmann has been mastering fire cooking for decades and is internationally recognised for it. Today, cooking with fire is resurgent and the world’s best chefs, from Victor Arguinzoniz to Mauro Colagreco and Grant Achatz, are turning to raw flames in their cooking. But when Mallmann began on his journey, it wasn’t so well received.
“When I started in 2007 with my book Seven Fires, it was sort of at the height of molecular cooking and everyone was criticising me so much. I didn’t invent anything, I just embraced the past, the traditions, the history and the essence of what life has been for humans for the last thousands of years. I think that it’s a good moment to do fire cooking because it’s such a silent, lovely message for humans."
Chef Francis Mallmann, Photographs by William Hereford
Cooking with fire could be called a current trend, except it is something we have done for two million years. It’s an innate part of being human. Molecular gastronomy can be described as a trend, something Mallmann is not ambivalent about.
“Molecular cooking kind of ruined a generation of chefs,” says Mallmann. “There were some very talented, young chefs who went directly into that. With all the very modern and innovative restaurants in those days, they needed so much staff to be able to produce those forty courses and menus. So they were taking in a lot of trainees, and all those young people who had very big dreams, they didn’t go through a classical training. I think that to be a chef you have to respect deeply the history of cooking. It’s a bit like painting, I think that before Picasso did Cubism, he could just grab a pencil and perfectly draw the body of a woman."
“I feel there were many bridges that that generation jumped, they became immediately molecular cooks, without knowing what a béchamel sauce was, or what a hollandaise sauce was, or a minestrone… Maybe I’m exaggerating. In order to be modern, you have to know all about classicism, in literature, in art, in cooking, in carpentry, in everything. It’s part of growing up."
“When I say a generation was ruined, I say that there was a generation where they were on this sort of fast track, where they were doing very, very modern and innovative cooking and when that faded, I think the whole world needed a handle to hold on and I think that one of those handles has been fire.”
That rekindled interest in cooking with fire has seen Mallmann’s expertise much in demand, both as an author with his new book, and as a teacher. The chef wants students to learn about fire and to understand its idiosyncrasies. It begins with watching the flames.
“When I give a cooking class with fire, the first thing I do is I make a circle of chairs and I make a huge fire in the middle and I get the student to look at the fire for four hours until it becomes ashes,” he says. ”I tell them, now write your impressions about what you have seen, what happens with the fire. That will start making them understand what the fire is."
“That’s why that silent language of the fire is so important. You’re standing outside and you’re watching, how the lamb is dripping, what’s happening with the rib-eye, what’s happening with the fish and the movement on top of the ashes, what’s happening with the vegetable in the coals"
When we think of cooking with fire, we automatically think of meat, of barbecue and pit masters. We tend to overlook the rich history of plant-based cooking over the flame. Vegetables are transformed by fire, and Mallmann’s new book is a well-timed wealth of knowledge on the subject.
“When I decided to write this book I didn’t want to elaborate new techniques for cooking vegetables with fire. I just thought I would just embrace everything I do, very simply, all the vegetables and fruits with the techniques that I already use, about seven or eight techniques.”
Of all the fruit and vegetables that Mallmann cooks with on the fire, is there one ingredient that continues to surprise him?
“Potatoes always surprise me, they are so ductile, they hug you, whatever way you want, with the humidity, with the possibilities of crust – are you cooking with butter are you cooking with oil, are you cooking in the ashes, are you grilling? Potatoes are incredible."
“I don’t think I invented anything, but the more I cook with fire, the more I realise, I’m still learning. I have a good base, I know what I’m doing with fire, but there are always new windows where you are learning new things, it’s extraordinary. It fills me with hope."
“Being around a fire cooking, it’s a celebration of happiness. Everybody’s happy. I don’t want to cook in a kitchen anymore.”
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