Ancien participant aux programmes de Connect Institute et passionné de pâtisserie, Rachid El Alami a animé un premier atelier avec un groupe de jeunes de MOMKIN sur l’art et la pâtisserie.
Chacun des participants a fait un exposé sur le sujet. Ils ont ensuite discuté sur la particularité de la pâtisserie marocaine.
Voici le compte rendu de Hind :
On Sunday, June 6th, the first session of ciCOOK took place with the presence of 7 participants of MOMKIN program lead by Rachid El Alami the manager of Pastry Soul and the contribution of the artist Khalid Assalami.
It was Youba who started the presentation talking about the definition of art and how art was viewed throughout history : It was first judged based on beauty and only reserved only for nobles. Later came the realism trend where beauty become a secondary aspect. And finally the self-expression mouvement based on a quest for personal feelings.
Mostapha later talked about what defines an artist : one that can talk and present his art or someone that can produce art pieces.
Then came my turn, in which I talked about the artistic side of pastry by clarifying the difference between artists and artisans. I also gave examples of pastry pieces made by the famous pastry chef Jordi Roca.
Smail was the last participant to present and he discussed nature as the main inspiration of art proofing it with the example of art created by the puffer fish.
At last, Rachid summed up all of the previous points building a relation between them to give us a full idea of pastry art around the world.
A discussion took place after the presentations about Moroccan traditional pastry and how it could be treasured and given an artistic value to help spread it on a wider level.
One idea led to the other and we found ourselves debating the origins of Moroccan pastry. A discussion that came to an end by the words of Khalid : “The countries of the mediterranean have many commun food and traditions due to their closeness and the cultural marriage that happened because of travelers and colonisation. To know the roots of a meal you need to go back down the history line and compare dates that it appeared at and the events that took place at that time”
This first session aim was to put all the participants on the same track when it comes to how they view pastry before moving to the step of practice.
From a personal perspective, Sunday’s session was beyond my expectations. I went with the intention to learn just about pastry but ended up learning not only about it but also about art, history and different aspects related to it.
By Hind Chtibia
