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We are always very happy to meet and chat with the famous Raw Chef Marie-Sophie L. You can find the replays of the live sessions with our tea expert on our Instagram… and discover, without further delay, the interview created to introduce you to her wonderful plant-based world.
Marie-Sophie L, author of L’instant Cru and of L’alimentation crue, naturellement healthy, is a NatuRawChef®. A naturopath for thirty years and a raw chef since 2012, after studying vegan and raw culinary art in California, Marie-Sophie L shares her plant-based, no-cooking cuisine and invites you to experience her gastrawnomy®.
Marie-Sophie L answers our questions: find out more about her inspirations and her work!
Can you tell us about your wonderful career and your aspirations?
I answered a call of the body and the heart by wanting to eat only plant-based, pure, raw and unprocessed foods after a long fast, instinctively. I then discovered the existence of raw food on the internet and rushed to the United States to study it, both nutritionally and culinarily. The benefits were so extraordinary — physiological, digestive, emotional and intellectual revitalisation — and my happiness so intense: to put this raw, plant-based cuisine into equation to create recipes… that I immediately wanted to share what was, for me, a revelation. It became a website, mariesophiel.com, books such as L’instant Cru, courses given in cooking schools to train young chefs, the creation of online courses to guide my readers from the discovery to the mastery of my Gastrawnomy®… This living food transformed my life; I devote it to enchanting that of my learners, to inspire them to put more raw plants into their plates, into their lives. Creating recipes is a rigorous art, a demanding science; teaching has been my profession for almost 10 years.
You have great sensitivity and a lot of talent. How do you put them at the service of raw food?
I am delighted that you are sensitive to my work; it is a respectful and grateful salute, to plants as well as to the animals and minerals that we plunder to survive… and to live badly. I pay tribute to them with all the subtlety of my art, to celebrate plant richness in the pleasure and joy of knowing it, to interpret its scores in my raw cuisine, to play its chords to let the world hear what I perceive of it… an inexhaustible love song of beauty and generosity.
It is this music that I am happy to share with as many people as possible, because I marvel every day at the joyful vitality with which it nourishes me.
Where does your inspiration for creating your recipes come from? How do you select your ingredients?
I am in love with my raw food; it’s what drives me from within…
I love its audacity, its fierce determination to preserve aromas and scents from the fire of cooking. It has wit; its liveliness and its length on the palate are matched only by how far ahead of its time it is. It is fiery, wild and young, but not untameable, and asks only to be tamed to nestle in our plates, to be speared on our forks before conquering our taste buds. Crunchy or melting, it gives all its aromas and yields on the palate to make our palate quiver and convince it of its bold, frank eloquence. I love it, I give it everything, it makes me happy.
How were you introduced to tea? Do you have a tea moment or a tea pairing that touched you to tell us about?
I discovered my passion for tea tasting during an introductory course with Carine Baudry, before becoming a NatuRawChef®. It was love at first sight, for Carine and for the art of tea. My senses were summoned in such a sensual way that I was very moved. It was Carine who tasted my first recipes. The way she validated them, telling me that she fully realised why she did the job of sensory expert by tasting my “crusine”… I pretended not to hear, I was so touched. It was too big for me. Since then, we have not stopped working together to pair my dishes with teas that she selected. They were moments of tasting, of very intense sensory solicitation… sometimes until the middle of the night.
You work with our tea expert Carine Baudry on food-and-tea pairings. How do you go about this pairing work?
Under the expertise of my Tea Master, Carine, we taste the teas with the dishes I have prepared and only seal the pairing when we are struck by a delicious shiver of obviousness…
You are giving us a lovely gift by sharing the recipe for your Chocolate and Kumquat Fondant. (Find it by clicking here). What was your inspiration for this creation? Which tea from the nunshen selection do you recommend to accompany your wonderful fondant?
When I went to the Alcazar to have my sweet creations tasted, I had my famous Opéraw as well as an outsider dessert that I had prepared for myself at the weekend, driven by an irrepressible craving for chocolate and orange. I concocted the Chocolate and Kumquat Fondant, and I brought it simply because I had some left. The director of the Alcazar loved it. It quickly entered the top 5 desserts.
Carine immediately paired it with the Jasbire Awakening black tea, from Nepal. Her profession follows the fluctuations of the teas she sources, which she discovers while criss-crossing the tea gardens around the world; she rides the shifting waves of the seasons, the climates, the terroirs, the great crus, her senses always alert, on the lookout to offer ever more dazzling pairings and to provide constantly renewed emotions.
Find out more at mariesophiel.com.
Find Marie-Sophie L’s Chocolate and Kumquat Fondant recipe by clicking here!