A Green Thumb for the Kitchen

Some chefs are out to change the world through the magic of using only locally-grown organic produce, citing evil carbon footprints and keeping family farmers in business as their mantra. Jean Paul Gauci, formerly of 3-Michelin star Le Petit Nice in Marseilles, south France, only wants his creations to taste fantastic. "I just want people to really enjoy their food, and if using my own herbs and vegetables makes the dish even better, that's my mission accomplished." Not that these factors don't come up, but this chef's focus is all about flavour; feel-good environmental and socio-economic factors are a happy benefit. I visited him at his home where a feast included new potatoes, tomatoes, plenty of fresh herbs, home made ice cream with zest of orange and lemon, all from the garden just outside the house. Well, mansion really, a two-story palace of Old Colonial architecture on the shores of Tai Tam, with a sprawling garden producing enough herbs and vegetables to feed three restaurants, not to mention the family brood and helpers, as well as an occasional food writer/former chef. I grew up in beef country, first Alberta, Canada, then Houston, Texas, where all you need is a huge steak on your plate for a full meal, so for me to focus on the difference fresh, organic vegetables make in restaurant cooking is really out of character. But now I'm a convert, and am planning on turning my rooftop patio into an herb garden of my own.

Starting Small

Gauci has been cultivating his own produce right here in Hong Kong for over 10 years, starting with a garden in Lamma Island. "The police were very interested in my rosemary bushes," he laughs. Today, he has his own plot on the 120-year-old estate called La Maison in Tai Tam, and also sources organic produce from a local farm in Lam Tin courtesy of his Chinese wife's family, which he visits at least once a week in which to harvest the best produce. At La Maison, it's a much bigger garden including an incubating hatch for new herbs, and potatoes are kept in his wine cupboard until ready for planting. Potatoes, oranges, lemons, Thai eggplant, rocket lettuce, radishes, basil, parsley, and absolutely heaps of rosemary abound. "No poisons, no chemicals, no carbon footprint and very importantly for a chef, not too many hands have touched them - just my own," he says with obvious pride. In fact, he often gets so excited about some new planting project he wants to show me it's hard to keep track of all the plants he is currently growing.

What to Grow

This is where Gauci's mad genius becomes apparent: bringing back fabulously expensive plants from his culinary travels in Spain, Italy and other parts of Europe and re-planting them in his own garden, destined for the tables of his three restaurants: the Mediterranean Cococabana (which he brought with him from Lamma), the Greek El Greco, and the Thai Coco Thai. His latest project is Normontier potatoes, valued at over HK$1,200/5 kg. "I like to try expensive things; why bother with watermelons?" he reasons.

From Garden to Table

But do the customers notice the difference? In a food-crazy city such as Hong Kong, the more effort and hard-work story made in producing the dish, the better. "The rosemary still has the oil in it, smell it! It's better than imported because I pick it every morning - it's literally hours old, not shipped in on some stuffy airplane and thrown in an unheated truck to be dumped in some warehouse for days before the restaurant finally picks it up." And yes, you really can tell - his herbs and the potatoes in particular are absolutely bursting with flavour, totally unlike what you get in most restaurants.

Every morning, chef Gauci will be found roaming around his vast garden, checking on the progress of his many plants. The only thing he gives them for extra nutrients is eggshells for the calcium content; otherwise he lets nature run its course. One of the blessings and curses of the garden is that sometimes he has a massive amount of one particular vegetable or herb, so has to use it as quickly as possible. "Sometimes at the house we have to eat one thing all week! It definitely gets your creative juices going," he laughs.

Seasons? Not the Reason

Gauci says his garden does not have seasons so much as cycles. He practices a form of crop rotation, planting different herbs and vegetables to take advantage of the variety of the natural mulch. But while he says almost anything can grow in his garden, even European potatoes thanks to the sea breeze, there is one herb that eludes him: Thyme. "It just takes way too long, and anything simple like a single heavy rain can wipe it out. The other herbs are far more resilient - I just snip off the top of my rocket and within a week it's all grown back. Thyme has a very small yield in comparison, and unless you're really determined, it seems to make sense to grow more of another herb."

At the restaurants, the herbs fulfill their purpose. Italian parsley for the pizza; rosemary for the grilled sea bream, French chicken, Marseille seafood stew and white asparagus with morel mushroom and black truffle sauce; chives for the pan fried scallops with basil cream and tomato confit; basil for the oven-roasted John Dory filet with herbs, pistou cream and leeks as well as all the roasted vegetables.

Too Much Trouble?

With supermarkets brimming with ‘organic' this and ‘pesticide-free' that, why does Gauci bother with raising his own vegetables? "There's a lot of joy involved. You don't have to go to the shops because it comes out of the ground. It's a real sense of power, giving you a feeling that you're doing something worthwhile. It's a great feeling when you walk into the restaurant with a load of fresh herbs and vegetables straight from your own garden. A lot of the guests don't even know that the herbs are just hours old, but I guess a full restaurant night after night is testament that we're doing something right."

Cococabana is at Upper G/F, Beach Building, Island Road, Deep Water Bay, 2812-2226