Marcin Molik – the Chef at Drukarnia Restaurant in Warsaw for two years, interested in healthy eating, an author-to-be of a cooking and lifestyle book, and a fan of unusual flavours. We talked about what we should and shouldn’t eat and how to serve bull’s testicles.
I’ve heard your pet hobby is the glycaemic index. Can you tell me something more about it?
Since I started Dr Dąbrowska’s diet, that is since the end of the last year, I’ve begun to pay attention to that glycaemic index. I try to eat all vegetables with a glycaemic load of 70 or less. Of course, everything within reason. It’s for health purposes, if you want to cleanse your body. It sets off the internal nutrition system, where the body burns all harmful and dangerous deposits. Fat burning is a side effect of that diet. A very positive one, indeed. It’s recommended to eat products with a low glycaemic load, which lowers the risk of e.g. diabetes and other diseases of affluence. This diet doesn’t exclude occasional kebabs or burgers. You can eat such food, but you need to keep the diet balanced. 20–30% of my daily food ration is meat and fish; the rest is vegetables and different lettuce mixes. I feel much better now. In my opinion, people should know what they eat, pay attention to calories and the amount of sugar in processed food, since it’s really huge and unhealthy. You might feel it in the first days of the diet, when you cut down on sugar, oil and fats. In this diet, food is boiled, roasted, or raw. For the first 3–4 days, you suffer from an unbearable headache. It results from cutting down on sugar, which we’re addicted to. It’s everywhere. Fit bars on the shelf with ecological food may contain a spoonful of sugar. These are really huge amounts. I’d like to write about it in my book, too.
What interests you the most about cooking?
In general, I like offal very much. One of the most unusual dishes I’ve recently had is bull’s testicles. It turns out they’re delicious. In one of Warsaw restaurants, they are served with smoked white chocolate and grapes; a very nice surprise. If you didn’t know what it was, you wouldn’t figure it out. I like all kinds of offal, such as legs, sweetbreads, and hearts. I like to experiment with it, so that nothing goes to waste. Rabbit liver is very tasty and healthy, it doesn’t have a metallic aftertaste, but it must be fried for a very short time to be quite sticky but very sweet.
People rather opt for muscles, don’t they?
Yes, I used to eat a lot of meat and I couldn’t imagine my life without it. Now, I can’t imagine it either, but I’ve been feeling better since I cut down on it. Everything in excess is bad, except for vegetables.
How did you get interested in cooking?
I’ve been interested in cooking since I was a child. When I was nine, I wanted to cook, I watched cooking shows, I made dinner for me and my parents for the first time. That’s how it all began. When I went to junior high, I knew I’d go to a technical college. But you don’t need it to become a cook; I know a lot of people, great chefs and cooks, who didn’t go to technical college and later decided that’s what they want to do. One does not preclude the other.
What are the most common diet mistakes that Poles make?
I think we make the same mistakes as other nations – eating irregular meals, eating processed food. People don’t have time for cooking or are too tired to cook the meal themselves. And the food industry is what it is – store-bought food will never be as good and healthy as a home‑made meal, where we know the ingredients used, we don’t use chemical additives to extent the best-before date, because, let’s face it, if you buy a sandwich at a petrol station with a three-week shelf life, there must be something wrong with it.
Why is it bad? Why preservatives are bad?
Not everything is bad; some preservatives are used with good intentions, but it’s not controlled. If it was, perhaps we could feel safer, but unfortunately, all that is done behind the curtain, and we don’t see it. In processed food, most nutrients are destroyed. In turn, the lack of nutrients may lead to, for example, body acidity.
I’m thinking, in the Middle Ages, we would add salt to meat, freeze food…
These methods do work, it was preservation to some extent, too. Small amounts of salt are fine; the problem is with e.g. monosodium glutamate and similar additives, which are supposed to replace flavour that isn’t there, that is umami. If seasoning is poor, we still think it’s fine because of the MSG. And that’s only the beginning. There is the whole periodic table. Of course, not everything that starts with an E is bad; as always, there are special tables you should read.
I guess the Japanese are fascinated by this umami flavour.
Yes, but they’re able to get umami from mushrooms. There is a restaurant in Warsaw that serves ramen, which is vege, and there are mushroom broths. They get umami without any seasoning or additives, such as MSG. I think people get more interested in the subject when they are more aware of it. We either take the easy way out and buy a ready-made pizza with a four-week shelf life and an unknown history of transportation or we try to make it ourselves, and here, laziness or the lack of time and busy lifestyle come into play.
Sometimes also the costs.
Yes, that’s true. I’ve noticed it myself. It seems to me that on this diet, I spend more on veggies than on meat. I tell myself that it must be related to current trends. Concerns take advantage of the healthy eating craze, and prices go up.
Yes, I think that’s the main reason. You think that it’s better to buy a chicken for PLN 16 per kg and make meals for the whole family for two days or bio corn for PLN 10 per can.
That’s true, but bio products aren’t so perfect either. After all, it’s still canned and put on a shelf. We should buy products from local farmers, rather at the open-air market than in supermarkets although I’m not saying that food is bad. The bigger problem is that food is wasted. If we buy one chicken for two persons, after a few days, if the chicken isn’t well managed, it’s thrown away. That’s one of the reasons why chickens are so pumped up. It’s another serious problem – when go to an open-air market, we won’t buy 100 grams of ham to buy some more on the following day, but we’ll buy some cheese and five other products in the supermarket; we won’t spend PLN 10 but PLN 300, because we’ll do shopping for the whole week, and later this food goes to waste. It’s a common practice. Everyone says they eat everything they buy, but I think that everyone, at least once in two weeks, once in a month, throws something away from the fridge.
What are your culinary inspirations?
I’m inspired by eastern cuisine. When I was in Beijing, I discovered some flavours and seasoning. I use them in my cooking. Of course, I don’t cook similar meat, but similar types with the same seasoning mix I make myself. I don’t have strict rules, I simply go in and do it.
I’ve heard that Chinese restaurants in Poland are much different from those in China. There, people eat frogs, cockroaches…
It depends. In Beijing, street food is slowly disappearing, since Beijing authorities believe street vendors create a poor image of the city. There are a few nice streets where you can eat something like that, but it’s not what you can see in Vietnam, on cooking shows, where one is walking down a narrow street, and street vendors are throwing a dead frog straight into frying fat. In general, it’s different in Beijing, and I think that you’d get completely different food in the provinces.
That’s true. As regards your kitchen, do you believe that the atmosphere is more important than demanding your cooks to be 100% available?
You spend a lot of time in the kitchen, often 12–15 hours a day. Sometimes, in busy months, you may spend more time in the kitchen than at home. You also think about it at home, too, contact your workmates, etc., so the atmosphere at work is very important, because emotions are later transferred onto the plate. Unless you don’t care what you’ll get on your plate – we know what we can expect in such a restaurant. There are restaurants that have the same menu for 3–4 years, but usually if the cooking is good, and someone puts their heart into it, and the atmosphere gets worse all of a sudden, guests will notice the difference on their plate. The atmosphere is very important.
Thank you for the meeting.
