Ancestors Bothered
Marris describes most of Redzepi’s recipes as similarly ‘exotic, oceanic, deep-woodsy, and uncookable’. Serving something as simple as ‘silken fresh cheese and crispy beech leaves’ requires pickling beech leaves in a vacuum pack with apple balsamic vinegar for at least a month…. one wonders what our remote ancestors would think of this culinary fad.
I don’t know, what would they think of this essay? What would they think of the computer you made them read it on? Or did you go back in time to show it to them? In which case: Are your arms and legs fading away? Are you disappearing from family photos? “Our remote ancestors” would see the entire modern world as a threat and probably attempt to either escape or destroy it, I think is the answer. Or they might just say, “wow, nice, look at all this food.” As far as demonstrations of absolute dominion over the world and its history, voluntarily eating bark ranks as pretty harmless.