Spalding’s Feast to the Future, for Miele

To celebrate their fiftieth year in the UK, kitchen appliances brand Miele commissioned a trend forecasting agency Trendstop, to predict what technology we might be using in the production and cooking of our food and drink, another fifty years in the future.

Trendstop CEO Jaana Jatyri handed over a report with a list of suggestions including scanners that monitor a variety of measures of health and dictate changes to our diet to improve and maintain good health. Personally, I think we already have most of the knowledge we need to improve our diets, and this particular prediction may also require a sea change in societal values to put a greater emphasis on health over hedonistic enjoyment. I’m certainly not clamouring for a little machine that will warn me every time I’m eating something deleterious to my health!

Another prediction foretells of living walls of green in our home to increase the production of oxygen and hydroponic technology to let us grow more fruit and veg at home too; this is something I love the sound of, and have bookmarked several examples of people creating these in their kitchens right now. It’s also likely that we’ll want to reduce the energy wasted in transporting food from farm to store to home even further; the report’s talk of advanced technologies that work on cellular and atomic rather than mechanical levels” immediately made me think of the Star Trek replicators that can synthesise anything that’s been analysed and entered into the database. “Earl Grey tea, hot!”, anyone?

Whilst I can’t imagine we’ll see replicators in my lifetime, I’m already amazed by current advances in agricultural methods that turn centuries, even millennia, of traditional growing methods on their heads. I saw an exhibit demonstrating how to grow plants without any soil at all, at one garden show I attended last year!

Edible food packaging sounded like a laudable idea, though I wondered if it would too susceptible to bruising during transit, and the grime accumulated during the journey would need to be very thoroughly washed away before I’d be willing to add it to my cooking pot.

Insects becoming a standard source of protein is something I do think will happen. It’s already the norm in many other parts of the world, and it’s really just a cultural aversion to the idea that stops many Europeans from giving it more credence even today.

To bring some these ideas to life, Miele asked chef Ben Spalding to create a Feast To The Future, with a menu of dishes he anticipated might be popular in 2063. He noted the prediction for food cocktails – single drinks or dishes that contain all the essential vitamins, minerals, and macro-nutrients people need to survive. “Five-a-day will be old hat, and-10-a-day juice drinks will be the new craze.” And he was excited about all the new flavours people would have available; there are plants that don’t suit current farming methods but which might come to the fore in a world of home-growing; and just as now, there would be new super foods from all around the world, such as the jamblung fruit he had us try and, in my case, spit straight back out again!

Like my friend Rejina, the dish that blew me away most of all was Spalding’s 30 ingredient salad; the plate a cacophony of colours, textures and tastes that was utterly compelling. Every mouthful was exciting, the entire table were animated with excitement, calling out questions to Spalding about the various ingredients we were encountering as we ate.

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One of the elements was cress that Spalding had grown in a prototype Evogro Farmino, a machine which uses LED lighting and hydroponics, controlled by specially written software, to create and maintain optimum growing conditions with very low energy requirements.

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Taking a note from the current love affair for East Asian fermented products, we started with a fermented elderflower and apple drink.

Puffed pork skin was dusted with paprika.

Dark malt bread toasts came with crisp shards of chicken skin, butter creamed together with sugar and crunchy chewy rice cakes.

Next we tried shrivelled jamblang fruit; far too sharp for me but some loved the complex flavours.

Cucumber and vodka was served on our hands, to be licked off, for a more interactive experience!

The brains dish worried a few diners, but most of us loved the Asian-style steamed veal brain and kimchi dumpling served in individual bamboo steamers. It was paired with a ten-a-day cocktail including ingredients such as bramley apple juice, green tea, carrots, tonka bean, lime zest, horseradish salt and a slick of tune mayonnaise puree around the lip of the glass. Odd!

After the 30 ingredient salad came a tiny spoon of intense caviar oil, enjoyed by those of us with a taste for fishiness.

Pork belly cooked in a steam oven with a sweet, sticky glaze was served with equally sticky rice. Delicious!

Then came a microwave cake served crumbled with lemon thyme ice, a fruit jam and muscovado custard.

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Another prediction from Trendstop was that socialising in the future might be courtesy of holographic technology; we would get together with our friends in real life much less often. Does this mean that dinner with our mates will become a think of the past? I hope not!

Do you have any predictions on where our eating and cooking might be in fifty years time?

 

Kavey Eats attended Feast To The Future as a guest of Miele.

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4 Comments to "Spalding’s Feast to the Future, for Miele"

  1. Snigdha (Snig of Snig's Kitchen)

    Kavey,

    My wish for food in 50 years time is a simple one – that we have real, actual food. That it is made of real, natural things. That we don’t have some horrid tasteless or textureless chemical slop intended for “maximum nutrition” or “maximum nutriment” [shudder].

    Real actual food, made by people, with love and care.

    MAKE IT SO!

    Lots of love
    Snigdha
    (Snig of Snig’s Kitchen)

    Reply
    kaveyeats

    Yes, unless we do something about the global population, I suspect food and water shortage will be chronic and there will be synthetic food. Perhaps “real food” will become super expensive luxury. Distopian sci-fi, here you come!

    Reply
  2. Gill

    Was the microwave cake a special one, or similar to mug cake? I was talking to my friend just last night about how we never make salad recipes. I’m sure the 30 ingredient one was fab but not sure I’d want to try making it!

    Reply
    kaveyeats

    Gill, it was a mug cake I suspect, but tasted nice. Not my favourite dish, more ordinary than rest. The salad was amazing, see my next post for an utter failure in paying homage, but a delicious one nonetheless!

    Reply

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