It's been a year since chef Pavol Sekerka said he would return home to Slovakia from a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris. However, he didn't leave the world of gastronomy, quite the opposite. With his creative wife, Lucia Hô-Chí, he came up with a project that connects world gastronomy with both large and small growers and breeders, thus giving the food on your plate a story.
"I'm not interested in stars. Neither Michelin stars nor TV stars, but real ones. People who grow honest vegetables and fruit, raise happy animals and produce quality products. And you too, people who can enjoy cooking and the whole ride," with these words Paľo and Lucie introduced the concept of the workshops, during which they will first take participants to farms, and then prepare a tasting menu with them from local and seasonal ingredients.
In addition to the one-day workshops at their cottage in Žitavany, multi-day workshops in the regions of Slovakia have gradually been added. We experienced such a stay in Turec.
We head to the Valčianska Valley, to the Woodpark chalets , which are surrounded by the hills of Mala and Veľka Fatra. After greeting Paľ, Lucie and other participants, we get in the cars and head to the farms. Because cooking starts much earlier than in the kitchen.
Our first stop is the Stigoland Permaculture Family Farm. This is where Ivka and Michal Štigo live with their three daughters and a lot of sheep, goats, rabbits, geese and chickens.
The desire for their own food led them to grow fruit and vegetables. "We don't focus on one thing, but it's a combination of everything. Everything we grow here is extremely aromatic. Even ordinary beets. It's because of the soil. Ours is gravelly. Not much topsoil and then eight meters of gravel. So the plants have to fight their way through, which causes their intense flavor," explains Michal, and we suddenly understand why the mint tea tastes and smells different.
We leave with our hands full of olive oil from a friendly farm in Crete, as well as products they produce themselves. Eggs from free-range hens with views of the Malá and Veľká Fatra mountains, zucchini and quince jams, and handfuls of herbs. And lamb, that will be our main course tomorrow.
In addition to bryndza, they produce 21 other products - ripened cheeses, sheep's cheese, ricotta, smoked and unsmoked cheese, žinčica... We carry everything.
It's almost two in the afternoon. The sheep are returning from pasture for the second milking of the day, and we silently watch the perfect choreography. The young sheep are supposed to be taught it, but the old ones already know exactly what to do. After milking, the sheep rest a bit and return to pasture, closing up for the night according to the light. "We don't care if it's a holiday or a Sunday. We have to be with the animals all the time. Luckily, we have good guys here who have been with us from the beginning. We are lucky with people."
He likes French cooking techniques, but he likes to "lighten" the cuisine itself with Asian and local ingredients. We already have them on the table in front of us. But we still don't know what we're going to cook.
We write down what we have, Pali introduces us to the techniques he would like to teach us and we start creating. Everyone adds "their own" to the individual dishes and Paľo holds the backbone that unifies the entire 5-course menu. Just seeing it written down makes us look forward to the result.
Everyone has their favorite on the menu, from which they take a little more, but for dessert - sheep's ricotta ice cream from the Polun farm - we all have it twice.
We savor and talk about what we really did well and what we could improve on. But we know that even if we try to cook the same menu twice, it will never be exactly the same. Because that's not what cooking is about.
Stigoland
“When we came here, there was nothing here, just land destroyed by pesticides,” Ivka points around her. “No bees, very few birds or other insects.” Today, more than 300 fruit trees and other plants have been planted around their house, helping the surrounding biodiversity. “Suddenly we have a lot of birds, insects. In the summer it’s completely alive here, and we see that what we’re doing has a meaning.”
We walk around the huge property and begin to understand what the Štig family means by saying that their favorite thing about life is freedom. And that they don't need blinds or curtains. We imagine a home "cinema" that they create on one of the outside walls of the house in the summer, but we are convinced that the best "theater" is the one they have above their heads at night, all year round.
Half moon
At Polun Cheese Factory, they make cheese from 100% sheep's milk, but they only milk seasonally, in harmony with nature. By not pasteurizing, the milk and products reflect what the sheep ate the day before. Bryndza is best when everything is in bloom, so not only in May, but also in June, July or August.
Day two – we cook
Paľo tells us how he got into gastronomy. He didn't graduate from any special school, but perhaps thanks to a French bilingual grammar school, he made his way through London to the south of France, to Antibes, where he learned the basics of French cuisine for eight months. Then he worked for six years at the one-star Michelin restaurant Ze Kitchen Galerie in Paris, where he rose to the position of chef.
Outside the windows, all the seasons alternate during the day, it snows, rains, hail falls, but the sun also peeks out. When it is just above the Mala Fatra Mountains and the sun is shining, we finish the individual components of our courses. Let's try to serve it like professionals. Pali "plates", we peek and create a perfect interplay of ingredients, consistencies, flavors and aromas on our plates. Herbs or flowers always reign on top, but none are for decoration, they complement the other flavors in the dish.
