To be a good chef requires great dedication and an intense love for food. But to be the world's greatest chef, what qualities should you possess? Ask Ana Roš, the woman who was recently crowned as The World's Best Female Chef 2017 by The World's 50 Best Restaurants.
Ros didn't dream of becoming a chef. She was born to an ambitious family, with a doctor as a father and a journalist a mother. Since youth she has been destined for great things -- for instance, she's was player for the national ski team and fluent in five languages. Everything, however, changed when she met her husband Valter.
Rather than following her predestined career, she chose to live with her husband and manage their family restaurant, Hiša Franko. And now after 16 years, her hard work has paid off.
Hiša Franko specializes in traditional Slovenian restaurant. One factor that earned Ana her recognition was her "zero kilometer" approach to cooking. Basically, she only cooks what she forages in the forest outside her restaurant and in the local farms. With those fresh produces, she whips up a meal worthy of the gods, with the absence of usual fine dining ingredients such as truffles and Wagyu beef.
Because of her lack of training, her first few tries in being head chef for Hiša Franko were marred with failures. Her pasta aren't cooked well, her bread wouldn't rise, and so on. But rather than wallowing in despair, she just went and tried and tried again until she mastered the culinary efficiency of an international chef.
According to SCMP, "At Hiša Franko, she combines flavours and textures that seem incongruous on paper but make perfect sense on the palate: raw scallop and potato topped with a jelly of fermented cabbage water and tangerine granita, Arctic char with wild berries and buttermilk, and ravioli stuffed with cauliflower and goat brain in a rich broth accented with black beans and truffles."
"Her cooking is intensely personal and vigorously local - firmly rooted in the food traditions of Slovenia, a tiny country with a rich history influenced by Slavic, Italian, German and Austrian cultures."
But Ana isn't just a chef. She's also a loving partner and a mother of two. When asked what her next plans are after winning the Best Female Chef Award, "I would like to open a five-table restaurant on the seaside in Istria, about an hour and a half away by car. No New York, no Paris, no Tokyo. A little place in Istria."
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