The secret of Ángel’s cooking? Love.
Ángel is one of the most beautiful encounter I had in Chile. An encounter that deeply impacted my change of life. This is why I’m telling you today, at the beginning of my tour of France to meet the pioneers of natural agriculture.
After having worked in industrial food production under different aspects, Ángel tried to reconnect with meaning, tradition, health, well being.
He started by baking bread, recollecting, in a corner of his memory, those hours when – little boy – he watched his mother kneading flour, working the leaven.
But how one can bake bread with a flour that isn’t one anymore? He was telling me that when he was working in industrial kitchens, he was shocked with what one could read on the ingredient list on the bags of wheat flour.
He then went looking for those flours that nourish us, these seeds that provide essential proteins, this leaven that only serves our health and reproduces itself indefinitely.
Rye bread, wholemeal bread, granola, carrot cake with ginger & orange zest, vegetarian empanadas, cereal bars, vegan recipes. In Chile, in the little warm city of Limache, Ángel products are what’s hot.
On the way to quality he didn’t stop there. He then wondered how to improve his flour quality that he uses to cook. Because for example wheat grains can be preserved for a long time which is not the case once they are transformed in wheat flour. Most of the time he found that while flour bags were getting to him they were loosing in quality. He then invested in equipment to mill wheat grains himself when he needed it to bake bread as freshly as possible.
Even though he mills his own cereals that he buys, they are still what one could define as conventional, cultivated with chemical products. There isn’t any organic market in this field in Chile. So you can imagine that in his quest to achieve the best possible product to delight the consumer, Ángel was going to go further: SOW & GROW his own cereals, naturally!
© Fótos de Ángel
He went to look for ancient wheat seeds, Chilean and definitively organic. He convinced a farmer to work with him and together they proved on a surface of 4000m2, working with organic techniques, that their production had exceeded the best yields of industrial farming.
With much love, on a small piece of land, with life respectful techniques, they produced a priceless wheat quality. This year they will increase the cultivation surface by planting different kinds of cereals and improve their process thanks notably to biodynamic preparations.
Ángel is a 21st century artisan, a pioneer, a simply living person, a shining individual, always smiling. His cooking is unique. His secret; would it be in the way of growing, the choice of his products or in his way of cooking, it is always done with love.
Translation: Antoine Vinay
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