“If you ask me why I like what I do, it’s very crazy, it’s strange, almost inexplicable. There is something that connects me with food, but it’s also very tedious. Having a restaurant is a love – hate relationship,” he says Mauro Massiminorenowned Argentine chef, referent of the healthy world, and owner of the subtracted Green Buenos Aires (Gorriti 5657).
“I am passionate about the kitchen and everything I do, to live, to communicate, to transmit when I teach. I am always in search of something new, I like how and why of things in general. I like research and always know a little more. Chemistry and physics, because there are many answers. I am curious and researcher,” he confesses to news.
His story with the kitchen began as a boy, as usually happens. In his Italian family he always ate well, rich, varied and abundant; and their mother and grandmother cooked. He liked to cook for friends, investigate, eat. One day he went to a free talk of the Dumas cat and ended up falling in love with that world. Then, he began to study and to train professionally and to go a path of knowledge that led him by different routes.
Cooking, administering, discovering, teaching, advising and traveling is part of your world. “Mauro’s favorites” was his latest program for Elgourmet. You can still see it on screen.
News: How would you describe your relationship with the kitchen?
Mauro Massimo: I would say that I am obsessive, very detailed, very technical. I like everything ordered, clean. In the kitchen we have a great responsibility because we are feeding.
News: What characteristics does your culinary style have?
Massimino: I studied and worked for eleven years in what we can call traditional cuisine, which could be Spanish, China, Japanese, whatever it was. I liked something, I learned the technique, or I wanted such a product from such part of the world, I got it and used it. I even realized that not everything can be brought and that there are foods and seasonal ingredients. Eighteen years ago I started a process of personal change and now my kitchen is of genuine products, not refined, organic, agroecological and without animals. A vegetarian, vegan and raw food kitchen. With naturism I learned that the non -cooked food, little touched is the one that gives us the most nutrient and less wear to our body. From that base I do my dishes with all the techniques I have learned. I love the technique and I still learn from great chefs, but I turn it all over my cooking style.
News: What dishes would you recommend from your restaurant?
Massimino: The raw lasagna, without cooking, made based on a mass of linen and fruits, with seasonal vegetables, cheese cheese, avocado, tomato and a raw tomato sauce with onion, green, garlic, basil. It is accompanied with green leaves and outbreaks. As for the sweets, I recommend our chocolate raw cake that has a dough of seeds with coconut, honey or organic sugar syrup and is filled with chocolate, which we do with paste and cocoa butter, and liquefied chestnuts and we can also put coconut oil.
News: How do you feed?
Massimino: I am a vegetarian eighteen or nineteen years ago for a matter of philosophy. In my classes I explain how the meat occurs and what is the step until reaching the dish, so that people understand what entails the happiness of eating a dike. Understand the process and realize that there is behind and how all that is manipulated. It is not only about the animal, but the animal eats pastures that are fumigated. I studied naturist medicine and I know what happens in the body when one consumes meat. Einstein and other very large thinkers were already vegetarians and vegan a thousand years ago. The cure for many diseases is no longer found in the remedies but in food. We are what we eat, Hippocrates said, and it is a reality. Food and stress can be modified and in genetics, over time and good diet, cells can be regenerated in a better way. For all this many recognized chefs, even with Michelin stars, have changed their kitchen to a vegan vegetarian.
News: It is more than a fashion, then.
Massimino: There is a fashion and welcome people who do it for fashion because they always end up understanding why. And not only change food but also the way of doing other things. For example, I used my teeth before and left the tap open, and then I realized that I had to close it to take care of the water.
News: What other important changes made from food?
Massimino: Everything that has to do with the care of resources, of what surrounds me, the use of things in general. Gas care, not because a high account comes to me, but because I understood that so that this caloric energy reaches my kitchen back there is a very strong blow to the planet. All that energy leads to a mistreatment, a wear of the environment. You have to understand the processes to be able to make decisions, but wrong decisions are made. It is my opinion.
News: On the other hand, there are people who become a fan of food and healthy life.
Massimino: Fanaticism is not good because it always leads to error. That is why I always say that you have to understand and feel it and not do it just because someone does it or because it is fashionable. In addition, it has to be a transition, it cannot be done overnight. Many people who do not know how to do this type of food begin to consume a lot of gluten, a lot of flour, a lot of tofu and begin to swell and plug. So, you have to know why it is done and how it is done. And a consultation is always good for a study. These controls should be to know how your blood cells are, your vitamin B12, your blood. It is very important. And at the time you have that anxiety because you want to eat meat again, so you have to do it because in the repress comes the disease. You have to listen to the body.
News: What do you think of cooking realities?
Massimino: It seems to me that they are fine for people who want to have fun, but they are programs that leave you something. I was just in Masterchef, I went to a class, it is fun and most of those who are there are acting. The celebrities and those that are not going for something. Very well those who drive, are colleagues, but it is not a program that tends technically. It is not to learn kitchen, it is something fun from another side. It is my professional opinion. In other countries it is different, it is more pointed, more professional, but it is also something media.
News: How much is true and deception in the healthy business?
Massimino: In Argentina, many people hang on something because it is business or because it is fashionable, and ends up ruining it. There begins a kind of farce and bad information. You have to understand, know how to do things and be serious. Everything that encompasses the healthy tends to be more serious than here. In the United States you have the possibility of dying eating scrap, but you also have a lot of information and a culture of what it is to eat well.
News: In his life, music is also important. No?
Massimino: Yes, music was always present in my family. My sister is a pianist, she touches classical music, I always liked the guitar. I followed and follow guitarists like Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Satriani, virtuous people, with study, who has studied with Frank Zappa. I studied a lot, I touched people, but I never did it professionally.
News: How is your world outside the kitchen?
Massimino: My life has to do with enjoyment and gastronomic. Eating well, traveling, knowing places, being in contact with nature. In the gastronomy it is won, but at the expense of a high price, because a lot of time and quality of life are lost, which just goes against what one seeks in this type of food. It is a very demanding, very arduous job, you are standing for many hours, you are going to the world at the schedules. I try to disconnect with music, reading, physical work, I like to run, do yoga. On trips it is impossible to disconnect from the gastronomic because I like to travel the markets, the fairs, go to eat at certain places, discover others.
News: Is it about to travel to Brazil?
Massimino: Yes, at the end of March, I go with a group. It is an idea that I have a long time ago. Organize trips focused on gastronomic and enjoyment, of course. To know products, producers, kitchens, gastronomic places. In this case we are going to tour San Pablo, Ilhéus and other sites in that area. I also want to do it in Argentina and other parts of the world.
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