14 15 #pop-up chef curated by Federico Spadoni pop-up chef pop-up chef unknown pleasures. an interview with valeria margherita mosca Humans are born gatherers. What then? Despite the primeval imprinting of our ancestors, this kind of natural state has been gradually fading away due to the most recent advances of consumerism. Yet today, in our times of cooking shows and celebrity [whether coming it from the tv screen or not] chefs, an innovative path of culinary research has opened up in Italy. It reaches deep into ancient times to rediscover the practice of gathering, and we have Grandma Pinuccia to thank for that. Her teachings on edible wild herbs, plants and berries live on in her granddaughter, Valeria Margherita Mosca, 39, a chef born in Brianza, with Finnish ancestry, and raised in Valmalenco, Valtellina. Italian pride. Valeria is the founder of Wood*ing - Wild Food Lab, which has become the world leader of research into the use of wild food in cooking. She is also the pop-up chef of this issue of Ossigeno, and author of the exclusive menu conceived for our O à la carte, created wearing a black jumper with the historical print from the first, legendary album by Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures. Bark, sap, moss and also shellfish and algae are the raw material at the heart of foraging, the core of Valeria's work. Foraging has caused terms such as organic and zero food miles to become household concepts. federico spadoni / right now cooking is fashionable but you have selected a very special niche. How did it all start? valeria margherita mosca / it was something that – ça va sans dire… - was spontaneous. My Granny Pinuccia was a gatherer, and she taught me everything I know. I remember that she would ask me to go gather mallow to prepare herbal tea or to see if budding had started. I was raised with a passion for nature. My father is a former enduro rider and my mum is a compulsive hiker. So I spent my childhood in the woods. And when you grow up in the outdoors, nature influences everything you do. fs / including your choice of studies and what you wanted to do when you grew up? vmm / well, not quite. At university, I studied anthropology and cultural heritage conservation. After I graduated, I found myself working in restaurant kitchens of all levels, like Michelin star restaurants run by fantastic chefs from whom I learnt a lot, and worked up through the ranks the hard way. In fact, I have always seen the kitchen from my own perspective, in a somehow anthropological way. Humans were born gatherers before becoming hunters. And this was so until the early 1900s, before the birth of intensive agriculture. People had to work hard and be cunning to survive by gathering wild food. Alimurgy was a true science mainly in the hands of monks and preserved by popular wisdom. It has not been long since we lost this skill. fs / and that is the wisdom that you pass down now through Wood*ing? vmm / Wood*ing was born in 2010. Now we are a team of seven fixed members, and there are fifteen of us if we count trainees. 60% of our activities are devoted to researching raw organic material and analysing their chemical and nutritional characteristics, aimed at environmental sustainability. Other activities stem from here: divulgation with tastings of haute cuisine and drink-mixing, training of both professionals and amateurs at the first foraging academy, and other projects involving consulting for individuals, for nutrition or cosmetics companies or multinationals interested in products with a low environmental impact. The Wood*ing Bar is also the result of the Lab. We serve cocktails and food, mixing ordinary and wild ingredients. For me, all this is culture. fs / which are the essential techniques that you have applied to this philosophy? vmm / one of them is wild mixology, a new approach to mixology by blending wild ingredients and extracts with wines, sparkling wines and juices. Here the image of myself when I was a child springs to my mind. I was fascinated by the effects of time on matter. I used to leave things to soak and stare at them as they dissolved. I used to collect leaves of the same kind and monitor them over the different seasons.
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