Published on 09/16/2024 3:22 p.m.
Video length: 10 min
VIDEO. The art of picking with Top Chef finalist Clotaire Poirier Top Chef finalist Clotaire Poirier enjoys wild picking to find the ingredients that will make up his dishes. Brut went picking with him. (Brut.)
Top Chef finalist Clotaire Poirier enjoys wild picking to find the ingredients that will make up his dishes. Brut went picking with him.
Clotaire Poirier, Top Chef finalist, explains with passion: “Picking is becoming an obsession. I look at everything, all the time.” He literally has an eye everywhere to find the treasures that nature offers. “The only thing I carried in my fridge was this: wood ants,” he mentions, proudly showing off his signature ingredient.
These ants, rich in formic acid with a vinegary taste, earned him a certain notoriety during the cooking show. “I brought some back from the first event,” says Clotaire Poirier. His culinary approach lies in open-mindedness: “I think it’s important not to have a preconceived idea about products and just say: OK, what does it taste like and what am I going to do with it?”
After Top Chef, Clotaire Poirier undertook a real journey across Northern Europe to harvest wild ingredients. From Bornholm to Paris, via Copenhagen, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, Clotaire Poirier crisscrossed the roads for 3 days to bring back his precious harvests. His van filled with insulated boxes contains treasures such as “pine cones at different levels of maturity” or even “oils that I made with a blood currant”.
For Clotaire Poirier, this quest for wild ingredients is much more than a simple passion, it is a true philosophy of life. “Basically, you’re an animal, you figure it out, you see. And in the end, I think that’s how it is by reconnecting a little bit with what we are that we manage to be fulfilled,” he philosophizes. He also learned the techniques of this “nature’s cuisine” at the famous Kadeau restaurant in Denmark for almost 3 years. Now, “It has completely integrated my cooking, my way of thinking about dishes too,” says the chief.
