Known for his \u0027unconditional love of meat,\u0027 the Argentine chef applies his live\u002Dfire techniques to plants in new book.
Francis Mallmann’s style of live-fire cooking is naturally cinematic. Wood smoulders, smoke billows, flames lick, embers glow, juices drip and sizzle amid the backdrop of his remote Patagonian island refuge.
At the crown, Mallmann might hang pineapples, cabbages, bunches of beets and carrots, even a watermelon. In the radiant embers on the ground, he embeds pumpkins, butternut squash and potatoes. “I was raised in the mountains of Patagonia as a kid. And that nurtured my whole life: past, present and future. Because I learned this language of the outdoors, which is in relation to the wind, to the snow, to the rivers, lakes, forests, mountains,” he says.
, he spent his teens and early 20s working at some of Europe’s most prestigious restaurants. When he returned to Argentina, he began to establish himself as one of South America’s most influential chefs.Article content “I remember going to Barcelona for a few days on my own, and I was walking around the city crying, smiling. And I realized that there was a change coming in my career. That I had to stop being a French chef. I had to stop with that immaculate way of presenting things,” says Mallmann.