New photo reportage by Oliver Brenneisen Photo published in ADAC Reisemagazin. This bi-monthly, mono-thematic travel magazine is published by ADAC Verlag, the publishing arm of Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club e.V., Germany’s and Europe’s largest automobile club, with 16 million members.
For this assignment I was colaborating with the writer Merten Worthmann. We were spending one week in the Osona region producing this splendid 10-page reportage. Osona is the area around the city of Vic, about one hour north of Barcelona. Driving up and down this mountainous region on our culinary tour, we met some great people with lots of interesting things to tell. People we met: Ignasi Camps of Ca l’Ignasi, Nanu Jubany of Can Jubany, Toni Sala of Fonda Sala, Joan Reniu of Ca l’U.
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I loved the topic of this assignment, a perfect match. For quite a while now I am very interested in this “terroir food” thing of fresh local and seasonal ingredients transformed into culinary pleasures. Slow Food follows a very similar approach and this low-mileage food is becoming more and more fashionable with even the most glamourous chefs finally starting to think “organic”. A great meal does not require its ingredients to be air-frighted from the most exotic locations. In many regions nature offers everything needed for the perfect dinner just in front of the kitchen door.
We work working along the members of the local gastronomic association “Cuina Osona” (Osona cooking), a group of local chefs in the Osona region, promoting their local fare. Osona is about earthy ingredients, pork meat, mushrooms, truffles and so on. The Costa Brava is not far and this is noticeable in the fact of recipes including seafood and fish blending with ingredients from the forest, something typical for the catalan cuisine.
As pork plays a dominant role in the local fare, we where trying hard to find some happy pigs to photograph and include them in our reportage. Surprisingly, we were not able to find any farm which allowed out us in and see their life stock. Why’s that, something to hide at animal farm?
Making of "edible landscape": Oliver Brenneisen shooting the Sala family having lunch on the village square in Olost / Photo: Merten Worthmann
