wholefood kitchen

Jean Torné interviewed by Naomi Ricketts
Concord newsletter, Issue 18, Summer 2010 (pdf)

Can you tell me a little of your history and how you found your entry into the macrobiotic way of cooking? There is an old Berber song which says:

“What brought you here?
The sand? The wind…?
What brought me here?
The waves pushed me onto this shore…”

It was quite a long time ago. Were you to look at pictures of me at that time you would be surprised; I looked older than today, with more wrinkles, swol­len lips, long disorderly hair… That person had been travelling south, in all sorts of uncanny circumstances, and had caught some tropical bug, which meant I was not able to eat any foods, or keep them down – I was constantly ill.

I was in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London, ill and half dead, when a friend of my first wife came and said “Why don’t you try that?” ‘That’ was macro­biotics.

This guy who introduced me to macrobiotics was called Andy Whitaker, and it was he who in­troduced me to Bill Tara. Taking on macrobiotics made me feel even worse for weeks. I was more ill than before. How­ever, I stuck to the dietary recommendations given to me, because I had previously attended an ‘Introduction to Macrobiotics’ lecture by Michio Kushi who truly inspired me. So my early commitment was based on blind trust.

How strictly do you yourself adhere to this way of eating?
I do not adhere to anything nor do I stick to anything. But I know that I am (in terms of food and eating) consistent to what I say and teach.

How did you become involved with Concord?
I became involved via a link, or an ‘invitation’, to obey the tradition of this work. Although I had met Greg Johnson before, I came in first to take on teaching cooking for the first JumpStart programme via shiatsu teacher Andy Jukes. That was a long time ago. Prior to this, I had been invited to take part as a participant in Be­ing-in-Action, which I had re­sisted for quite some time!

How do you see your work complements the other programmes available at Concord? I would not use the word ‘complements’ or even say ‘my work’, but state that the space I hold – nutrition and whole food cooking – is integral to the work we do as an educational centre. We cannot say that the parts – bodywork, dialogue, cooking, Tensegrity – complement each other. They are intrinsically One. If you ignore anyone of them you do not get the full Taste.

Can anyone, regardless of experience, learn wholefood cooking and, if so, what de­mands does the wide range of students’ experience in your classes bring to you as a teacher? Anyone, indeed, can learn. Just practice. Study and practice. I have to constantly stalk my­self, revise my teaching, bring something fresh and everyday I continue to learn, to study, to research.

How do you feel your work makes a difference to people’s lives? I can see that my work makes a difference, especially when I teach cooking outside the con­text of Concord’s body of work. Elsewhere, I may inspire people and suggest to them to change their cooking habits, but that stops there. Within Concord’s context, more takes place – a lot more. So, I feel good – very good. But I feel also that it is a huge responsibility. My wife may now and then suggest ‘Why don’t you retire?’ (she means ‘give up’). This is tempting. But a voice calls upon me. Can I ignore it?

Have you found your class­es have evolved since tak­ing on your role at Concord, and has this taken your own cooking to a new level as an individual? Yes, absolutely! Not only have the classes evolved, but also my views on cooking and my cook­ing. In this regard, I am indebt­ed to having had the privilege to work alongside with remarkable teachers like Mutsuko Johnson and Michael Rossoff – from both I have learned a great deal in the area of nutrition – as well as to have had the coaching, the support and the constant ques­tioning of Greg Johnson, who was pivotal in creating our ap­proach to macrobiotic nutrition at Concord, and to be around Sheila Parmar who knows a great deal about ‘real’ food.

I understand you have sev­eral children. Can you tell me a little about how your lifestyle has helped and challenged you in this area of your life? Also how do you see the importance of healthy living in the develop­ment of children? I have five children. I will set aside the expression ‘Healthy Living’ as it seems to refer to some ideal or Utopia and, besides, my lifestyle has been, and still is, challenging mostly for my family. However, those five children had the following benefits:

– dedicated and loving mothers who took care of them right from the first days of their pregnancy.

– they were all breastfed past 10 months old.

– they were exposed for at least the first 12 years of their life to a wide variety of organically grown whole foods, in large part whole grains and vegeta­bles with some animal foods as an addition.

– they were never given sugar or Coca-cola.

– they grew up in communities. (Macrobiotic communities)

– they were educated in multi-ethnic schools.

– they grew up close to nature and animals.

All these important points are a function of being macrobiotic, surely. On the other side of this idyllic picture I managed to re­main Human. This implies that I messed up in many ways, left the kids behind many times, got them in my own drama, which is by all means un-healthy. And of course life went wrong. Good.

It can often seem that both looking after yourself and living a busy life just isn’t possible. What would be your top pointers for people that live active lives and still want to nourish themselves through Macrobiotics? I am not buying that! This is a recurrent concern for many people. However the solution is deadly simple. This is a question of priority, or commitment. So what is this magical solution and how does one commit fully? The approach needs to be very methodical:

1. Do The Foundation Course. If you have already done it and you are not there yet, redo it. The Foundation Course will open and fertilise the soil on which everything else will grow.

2. Study Basic Alchemy with Michael Rossoff. This is pure Science (of the Heart). Ba­sic Alchemy will provide you with an in-depth knowledge of your body and of nutrition.

3. Take on at least three Cooking Intensives with three different teachers. This will expose you to an extraor­dinary array of recipes and cooking techniques.

From there you can go back ‘to the market place’ in other words the kitchen, the ‘Athanor’. You will have grounded your com­mitment in such way that you won’t be able to turn back.

(Editor’s note: in alchemy, an athanor is a self-feeding fur­nace used to provide heat for alchemical processes.)

Remember: in the kitchen, you do not cook – you transform and create; you create life, your life and the life of those you love. There is a secret though: KEEP IT SIMPLE and follow these few instructions.

– Take a stand: no cheap take­aways, processed foods, Mac­Donalds, frozen pizza  leave these for teenagers – but use high quality foods. Alive foods. Always.

– Keep basic ingredients on your shelves like: 2 Oils, 2 Vinegars, Soya sauce, Kombu, Wakame, Toasted Sesame Seeds, Nori, whole grains and fast cooking grains, pickles, noodles, Mochi, onions, garlic, things like that.

– Buy fresh foods as you need them, mainly organic, foods easy to prepare but whole.

– Invest in high quality cook­ware to gain in efficiency and improve quality. A good pot can contain your life.

– Never spend more than one hour in the kitchen.

– Develop a spirit of gratitude.

– Cook!

Consider the time one may spend during the course of a day complaining, gossip­ing, grooming, procrastinating, speaking rubbish, reading the Sun or the Daily Mirror… what is one hour of cooking then? Just a moment. And that moment is your life in the making.

As a top chef in your field, I’m sure you’ve been asked many times if you’ve written any recipe books? What are your views on such books & do you think you ever will write one? I own lots of cookbooks. I do not buy so many now. I think that recipe books are things of the past. Most cookbooks today are constructed around the per­sonality of the author or based on sensory judgement. They are sold for their design or the pic­tures. Very few have to do with education or practicality.

In 2010 we have access to re­markable cooking eBooks, ex­cellent applications for smart phones, lots of YouTube cooking series. Type ‘carrots’ into your Mac or PC, click – up pops on your screen dozens of recipes in praise of the carrot. Most of them are useless but one can source some extraordinary materials this way and create your own recipes file. You can then shop directly for your ingredients from the inter­net and get them delivered to your door, if you want. Great! You do not need a greasy book anymore, full of sauce stand­ing between the flour and some cabbages!

Where do you find inspira­tion in your life outside of your work? I do not separate my life from my work, as some of you may have noticed!

One of the principles of Macrobi­otics is that ‘Everything Chang­es.’ Change is a major source of inspiration for me. Back in the sixties (the decade of a major leap in consciousness for hu­manity) there was in France a beautiful love song on almost everyone’s lips.

Mon amie la Rose
Francoise Hardy

Youtube link

A lifetime comes and goes
And as my friend the rose
said only yesterday
“The good lord smiled on me,
so why then should it be
I feel I’m falling now,
oh yes, I’m falling now.
My heart no-one can save,
My head begins to bow,
my feet are in the grave.
The rose God smiled on me.
Tomorrow will be gone,
forever gone away.”

That’s about impermanence. DEATH – and Beauty. Nothing lasts.

There is another expression of change, which fascinates and inspires me: this is the trans­formation of people taking on Concord programmes. That’s about creating LIFE.

Death, Life and Love are the three fountains of my inspira­tion.

Jean Torné

Article Links

To learn more about Michio Kushi & Bill Tara and their relation­ship with Macrobiotics and The Community Health Foundation visit the Concord website.

See Jean in action teaching at the JumpStart programme.

Jean Torne
Chef Jean Torné specialises in both classical French and international wholefood cuisine, and since 1997 has served as principal cooking teacher at Concord Institute for Integral Studies, and Director of Catering for all Concord’s major events. Prior to this, Jean was Head Chef at Kientalerhoff (the international holistic health teaching centre in Switzerland) for ten years, during which time he co-founded and ran the Kientalerhoff Catering Training School, training students from all over Europe.

Bill Tara
Bill Tara is an active advo­cate for natural health care. He has been a health counsellor, teacher, author, entrepreneur and creator of health education centres in Europe and North America. In 1975 he founded the Community Health Founda­tion in London, England, a Char­itable Trust that was the largest natural health education center in the world. He is co-founder of the Kushi Institute and served as Director of the Institute’s programmes in London, England and Boston, USA)

Tensegrity
Tensegrity is the modernized version of some movements called magical passes developed by Indian shamans who lived in Mexico in Times prior to the Spanish Conquest. A Mexican Indian shaman Don Juan Matus introduced Carlos Castaneda, Carol Tiggs, Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar to the cognitive world of shamans who lived in Mexico in ancient times. Don Juan explained to his students that those shamans discovered through practices that he could not fathom, that it is possible for human beings to perceive energy directly as it flows in the universe. For more information, visit the cleargreen website.

Concord Institute
The Concord Institute is dedicated to developing and promoting an integral model for health that takes into account nutrition, bodywork practices, communication and self-expression. By emphasizing a body-mind approach to living the institute aims to empower people to move beyond personal limitations in terms of health and vitality, creativity and joy in living.

Basic Alchemy
Basic Alchemy is a programme led by Macrobiotic Teacher, Counsellor and Healer Michael Rossoff. It provides a gateway for personal change through an understanding of the essentials of Oriental medicine and macrobiotic principles.

Foundation Course
The Foundation Course is an integral part of the educational curriculum offered by the Concord Institute. It is by far the most comprehensive programme that the Institute offers in terms of variety and depth of training. The aim of The Foundation Course is to secure the breakthrough achieved in i Evolve by establishing an integrated body-mind foundation. Such a foundation enables participants to better manage their health and well-being, and continue to explore the endless possibilities that life or evolution has to offer.

Tags: Bill Tara, concord institute, jean torne, Michael Rossoff, Michio Kushi, Naomi Ricketts

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