Food philosophy

Simplicity and preserving the integrity of the main ingredient.

It easy to cook food that tastes nice by overpowering the dish with too many flavours but it is very difficult to simply cook the ingredient and combining it with flavours that complement the ingredient and not overpower it. The focus will always be on the main ingredients and therefore you need the best ingredients to cook with. Fresh is best and he always strives to use the freshest he can get.

In trying to improve or change a dish to make it better, he soon realised that focussing on the basics of cooking is best way to improve your dish. Cooking and using all ingredients in the best way possible and then combining them on a plate. ‘Eating with your eyes’ has a little bit of a mixed meaning to Pasch – a dish can look amazing but wouldn’t taste like anything. You get nothing out of that!  Then again, a dish can look boring, but taste is what people will come back for. So his goal has always been to make the dish taste as good as possible and then present it in an attractive manner, not adding too much to the plate just for the sake of adding it. Everything on the plate must be part of the plate. Pasch’s ultimate goal is to use ingredients that are unique to South Africa, and produce unique and flavourful combinations.