Interview by Andréa Marcelli, manager of Soil Seed
Why do most of us have a natural aversion to bitterness? Why does the slightest hint of bitterness in a food make our faces twist into grimaces?
An enmity that is also exploited by the agri-food industry that has been shaping our palates for decades by orienting them ever more towards the harmless perimeters of sweet and salty. However, bitterness (as well as acidity) can open up worlds and provide unsuspected pleasures, provided you are curious and sharpen your taste buds .
It may indeed be that our aversion to bitter is cultural. We therefore have no choice but to re-educate our palates!
Being Italian, I may have a natural taste for bitter. In Italy, bitterness is joyful and social. From a very young age, Italians become familiar with this taste horizon, encountering it at almost every meal. Starting with the ristretto coffee in the morning, then in dozens of salads – arugula, bieta, cicoria, radicchio, puntarelle, carciofi etc… where bitterness is omnipresent, subtle and enjoyable. But also in the famous Italian aperitifs , -who does not know Spritz or Campari - and especially in digestifs called simply amari whose powerful bitterness is barely civilized by sugar.
I love the subtle variations of the bitter sensation, activated according to foods and recipes, all at once euphoric, electrifying, destabilizing, refreshing. The taste for bitter, natural therefore for me, was powerfully reactivated with the discovery of certain foods from the fascinating botanical heritage of Amazonia. The cat's claw For example, this beneficial vine with its raw and uncompromising bitterness. This powerful adaptogen, used for two millennia by Native Americans, is now of interest to the scientific community for its multiple benefits. Its bitterness is powerful and could in principle disorient the taster.
But this is a plant whose the taste is tamed , ends up producing a almost bewitching pleasure . This is also the case with the raw cocoa bean , whose bitterness is simply delicious. raw cocoa beans have so many benefits that a single page would not be enough to describe them all. It is even called "food of the gods" .
At Sol Semilla we import it unroasted, but dried at low temperature , not only to preserve its multiple nutritional qualities but also for its taste: a fine, subtly floral bitterness, sometimes smoky depending on the beans.
These products also tell us about the incredible Amazonian botanical variety , the stakes of whose preservation are not limited to the phytogenetic resource, but extend to the associated cultural heritage. From the biodiversity and ingenuity of ancient peoples who knew how to acclimatize and transmit them, these superfoods come to us as the testimony of a understanding between man and nature but also as the chance to be able to travel through new and intense flavors .
