The Clever Root

Fall / Winter 2015

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f a l l / w i n t e r 2 0 1 5 | 3 7 BROOKLYN-BASED CONTENT CREATION AGENCY A RAZOR, A SHINY KNIFE LOOKS TO BE A THOUGHT-LEADER IN CANNABIS-BASED CUISINE by Jonathan Cristaldi / photos by ryan c. jones I t's nearly midnight, and Michael Cirino's apartment in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York smells like a brew house. Reclining on a worn sofa in his living room, donning jeans and a t-shirt, he sips on some Counter Culture espresso, and a bit of brown foam hugs the whiskers of his densely black mustache. Cirino boasts that he doesn't very much feel the effects of caffeine and can fall asleep quickly, even after finishing a cup of coffee. This evening however, he won't be going to bed anytime soon—a recipe for celeriac and white truffle velouté, which he's been working on all day, needs some tweaking. In 2008, Cirino founded a razor, a shiny knife (ARASK), which was originally billed as a supper club devoted to providing "culinary and the- atrical experiences." Guests were invited to participate in the prepara- tion of a meal—often of haute cuisine, which called for extremely com- plicated recipes and cooking techniques. The club became a veritable lab for the molecular gastronomy craze. But as ARASK gained notoriety, Cirino, who, nodding to his Sicilian heritage, began pronouncing his name with an Italian "ch" a few years ago, has maintained his vision and philosophy of codifying "rituals." In his world, the greatest ritual is one of experience—one that is "immersive and embraces the whimsical and joyous celebration of luxury and decadence." Cirino defines cooking as an "experience and a ritual," just as designing cocktails might be an "experience and ritual." Similarly, he believes that creating art and theatrical experiences are rituals, and his efforts to define and showcase these rituals have been manifested in events such as the "L-Train Luncheon," that involved 12 diners who were treated to a white-tablecloth experience aboard a moving New York City subway. At various stops along the route, servers and buss- ers appeared to clear and present the next course. ARASK's other expe- riential acts include: a re-creation of the opening night party of the 1939 World's Fair; installation of a life-size Monopoly board for a charitable gala in the country of Panama; and a meal where three-star- Michelin food was paired with cocktails, acupuncture, and massage. These events have helped re-define ARASK as it has evolved into, as Cirino explains, a kind of, "content-creation agency specializing in experiential design and multi- media production." For a man who maintains such a public profile (Google can attest to Cirino's food celebrity), there is a private side to his explorations, which he is only now beginning to make public. For the better part of a decade, Cirino has experimented with cannabis. "Smoking marijuana is a very interactive practice, and I never enjoyed smoking as much as I enjoyed the social ritual of it," he explains. "I've always wondered how I can have a more interesting experience with cannabis, and so I started cooking with it." TRIAL AND ERROR "My interest in cannabis really exploded in 2006 and 2007 when I was taking seminars at the French Culinary Institute, reading online, getting into molecular gastronomy, learning about food compounds and food processing and high-end cuisine," says Cirino. "In 2007, there wasn't a lot of laymen's information about the molecular level of cook- ing with cannabis. Most of the useful work was being done by high-level students in organic chemistry and to learn you had to read at that higher academic level. It was admittedly confusing, but fun, so I pressed on." "We knew it was fat-soluble and there were a few techniques out there being used, and I wanted to explore ideas beyond brownies and cookies." Beyond butter, Cirino began toying around with different fats. "We started out simple with things like French onion soup, then made gougères and began expanding into olive oil, duck fat, beef tallow, and chicken fat and using the flavor of marijuana—which has a woody, or thyme-y, savory kind of flavor—and then trying to build that into a dish ARASK's other expe riential acts include: a re-creation of the opening night party of the 1939 World's Fair; installation of a life-size Monopoly board for a charitable gala in the country of Panama; and a meal where three-star- Michelin food was paired In one experiment, a dash of cannabis tincture adds depth and complexity to a classic bijou cocktail. Dried cannabis flowers waiting to be ground, toasted, and added to a compound butter that will accompany a bone-in rib steak. Grill-roasted bone-in rib steak finished with cannabis compound butter of thyme, parsley, tarragon, sage, rosemary, garlic, black truffles, and lightly toasted cannabis flowers. f a l l / w i n t e r 2 0 1 5 | 3 7

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