The book "Cooking in the Wild | Modern gastronomy in the depths of the Carpathians" - about survival in the nature of the Ukrainian Carpathians, cooking together, caring for the environment, forests and mountains, about love for Ukrainian traditions and the vocation of a cook. In 2019, the famous chef Ihor Mezentsev, together with the talented food photographer Dmytro Bakhta and Anna Smolyakova, created a unique project "TOPOT", the main goal of which is to return to the origins of national gastronomy. The participants - Ukrainian and foreign chefs - spend five days in the forest, mountains, and go down to the river.
They prepare modern dishes in completely wild conditions, using ingredients that they can take from nature, as well as buy from local farmers.
In 2021, Ukrainian chefs, as well as representatives of the foreign gastronomic community from the UAE, Denmark, Spain, the USA, Great Britain, took part in the fourth meeting "TOPOT: The Bridge", which took place in the Carpathians and was included in this edition. Everyone was on equal terms – men and women, star chefs and beginners. Every ingredient the chefs had to find, gather or buy from farmers. During this expedition, the participants prepared numerous dishes from the game they bought
from local hunters, and meat purchased from farmers, and different techniques were used: boiled, roasted over a campfire, and baked in an earthen oven. In their dishes, the chefs used wild plants as much as possible - edible fruits, nuts and seeds of plants, herbs, mushrooms, etc., which grew in the natural wild environment, and were not cultivated by humans. The usual plants that surround Ukrainians at every step and grow in gardens, fields and forests, chefs used as bright seasonings, and sometimes even made them the central ingredient of their culinary creations.
As a result, Dmytro Bakhta created a unique photographic material that, through modern stylized photographs, demonstrates modern, complex dishes, often creations of real haute cuisine. This project, like all "TOPOT", is an invaluable contribution to the development of modern gastronomy of Ukraine, motivation and inspiration for all chefs and farmers. This is an unprecedented case: such culinary expeditions have not yet been held in Europe. Ukrainians still often do not understand what treasures our unique nature has, how rich are the traditions and heritage that are the basis of our modern culture, an inseparable part of which is gastronomy. This is exactly what our book is about.
