Luxury of freedom

BIG BERRY PEOPLE

BIG BERRY Chef: Tilen Tisnikar

Tilen Tisnikar and Urban Romšak were our BIG BERRY Chefs last weekend. 

They brought the art of fine dining to our riverside terrace. All of our guests had the opportunity to experience the top-quality food, served at the best restaurants of Slovenia, while enjoying the relaxing, natural atmosphere of our resort.

The chefs accepted our challenge in it’s toughest form: they prepared very elaborate dishes on site, from scratch. They used ingredients from local producers, such as milk from Kmetija Štrucelj. They bought the ingredients that couldn’t have been provided for them on site in Ljubljana, at their favourite farmer’s market.

"BIG BERRY  Chef project is a great way for young chefs to make a name for themselves… to express themselves, to meet new people, new partners…"

For appetizer, they introduced a Slovenian speciality called Obrnenek, a dish made of roasted buckwheat flour. When paired with sour cream, it becomes a classic.

BIG BERRY 8th Chef 2018 Tilen Tisnikar starter   BIG BERRY 8th Chef 2018 Tilen Tisnikar 3

What is Luxury of freedom? "Expressing myself. At home, it’s really hard to do that. [...] But here, they just told me to write a 3-course menu, and I did. I did the best I could."

The main dish featured pork ribs, marinated in Zlati Ghee, cooked sous-vide for 12 hours, then smoked on charcoal and wood chips of Jack Daniels barrels imported from Tennessee,  which elevated the flavour. The pork slices were then immersed in a wonderful sauce, that were simmering all day to have a concentrated taste, flavoured with Vizir beer. On the side were deep fried polenta, celery root and horseradish cream, as well as piped dots of apple jelly. The fancy plates came from Duke Group and Fiducia.

For dessert, they made a reimagined mille feuille. On a splash of english creme and beetroot jelly, they built little towers of pop pastry, topped with a lavender flavoured heavenly cottage cheese cream. Next to the tower, there was a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream, and everything was sprinkled with powdered pumpkin seed oil from Oljarna Pečarič.

"I just love the adrenalin you get when you start serving… seeing people smile when you serve the dish, and when they taste it."

 BIG BERRY 8th Chef 2018 Tilen Tisnikar desert   BIG BERRY 8th Chef 2018 Tilen Tisnikar vacuum

The young chefs succeeded in serving all courses exactly as they planned. They can look forward to a promising career ahead, and we at BIG BERRY wish them good luck on reaching their goals. We hope that our collaboration will help them.

After lunch, we gave Tilen some local products for tasting, such as hemp oil form Kmetija Kočevar, and sparkling wine from Semiška Penina. He also received a slicer, made by Status, the same company which provided him with the vacuum sealer machine for the sous-vide bags.

"If you are a chef and you are not creative, not passionate about it, you better go out of the kitchen."