Unleash culinary creativity with botanical pairings on the menu

What does it take to be a five radishes restaurant? Definitely a pairing menu with homemade juice, tonic, tea, kombucha, infusion, botanical drinks or -however you want to call it!

There is nothing mysterious about what it takes to get the highest rating possible by the We’re smart green guide. The criteria are posted on our website. We share these openly, to encourage the culinary world to make pure plants the hero. Like Frank Fol, the chairman says: “Any truly sustainable food culture must place fruit and vegetables centre stage. And plants are delicious and have loads of creativity, techniques and fun to offer to chefs all around the world”. Every newsletter we explore what it takes to join the highest acclaimed ‘five radishes club’. This issue is about drinks. 

“Offers a selection of house-made mocktails, botanic and fermented non-alcoholic drinks, and the possibility to choose a non-alcoholic pairing with your menu” is one of the key criteria for chef and restaurant. The world of house made beverages is incredibly creative and broad. Our culinary reporter Sheila Struyck (chef sustainable gastronomy) visited professionals who create tonics, teas, infusions and so much more. Obviously, she started at the two best vegetable restaurants of the world, Rody Misseyer sommelier at ‘de Nieuwe Winkel’ and Aljandro Poveda Vidal, chef at El Invernadero, share some of their secrets. To understand how it works in a more casual restaurant she joined Anita Hagendorn -juice sommelier at Flores in Nijmegen. We showcase some innovative pairings from all over Europe ánd come to a few conclusions.

How do you create? 

It starts with Emile (van der Staak, chef) and Elzelinde (our head of R&D). They determine the main ideas for the next menu, we create a mastersheet with the key components and ingredients. Elzelinde decides which culinary techniques to apply. Once the main flavors and ideas for the dishes are created, the sommeliers step in. Which flavours do we want to emphasise, which need a contrasting pairing? Which techniques will we use? As an example, we have a beverage with smoked lemonthyme, pear juice from a local orchard and Dutch smoked tea. This is paired with a dish with slightly smoked tempeh. The smoke is the link, the thyme is the additional flavour layer added to the experience.

What is the basis for your botanical drinks? Kombucha? 

Well, our first drinks menu’s consisted indeed of a lot of fermented drinks (such as kombucha's, water kefirs and lacto fermentation). But soon we realized that it is not comfortable to drink only fermented botanical drinks with CO₂. So our botanical drinks menu now is much more a combination of various techniques, like fermentation, vacuum destillation and enzymatic clarification. 
We start with the light and fresh flavours move towards heavier. As a basis we often turn to homemade vinegars and shrubs. We serve many natural wines which, once uncorked, don’t last over the days we are closed. So we built a little solera system here -inspired by the sherry industry- and there I use those leftover wines to mature the vinegars. A shrub is a sweet-sour syrup, developed in the cocktail world. It is a great way to use leftover elements from the garden, the orchard, or the kitchen. The sourness in shrubs, which comes from the addition of vinegar, has a tartness that quenches your thirst by stimulating salivation . Vinegar and sugar also allows shrubs to be stored for long periods of time in the fridge.

What advice would you give to chefs and sommeliers who want to start?

We make all our drinks ourselves, because we have the manpower and we wish to provide a stage for the fruits, vegetables and herbs of the growers we work with. One of our suppliers is a social workplace for young people with autism, who make use of a fruit press as a daily activity. We did some projects together where they pressed aronia berries and quinces for us. Fermented drinks are easy to make but labor intensive to manage. We don’t pasteurise, so with the three of us we give daily attention to our brews. So if you are just starting, experiment with shrubs. They are fun, stable and you don’t need to invest in expensive machines.
 

Why is this important for El Invernadero?

Well first of all because it is delicious and better for your health. Secondly, our objective is to reduce foodwaste and creating these drinks is a great way. The seasonal fruits are our great inspiration. For example, we use a lot of lemons and other citrics, we use the celery leaves, beetroot leaves and huacatay stalks. We keep the zest, scrapes and the juice to  make citric kombucha and a citric wine. Lastly it is fantastically creative for all of us.

What is your personal favorite? 

To me the inspiration is like with our dishes. The smells of home. I love our Rosemary and thyme kombucha, it reminds me of the mountains where I grew up. We serve it with rice cabbage and beetroot drink of the menu and the smoked flavour of the rice goes well with the acidy kombucha.

Where did you get your knowledge? 

Two years ago I started to experiment, read and of course learn from Rodrigo, he is making fermentation from the 2015 and offering in his restaurant. We do infusion, maceration, fermentation and kombucha’s. We offer an average of 15 beverages at the same time and produce fresh every week. In sits in the kitchen prep list. It then rests in the fermentation room annex lab.    
 

Four inspirational and proven combinations around Europe

As Rody Misseyer of de Nieuwe Winkel says: “There are so many creative avenues to explore beyond kombucha”. Here are a couple of imaginative and clever combinations that have proven to stand the test of time.