Blood, bone and a lot of rot

After listening to the world's top chefs at Sydney's Crave festival, Janne Apelgren reflects on 12 lessons she won't forget.

1. The most important tool in the kitchen is the mortar and pestle. Forget the immersion circulator, Thermomix and Pacojet, the prehistoric grinder is the one chefs keep coming back to. Neil Perry said hand-pounding pesto was the only way to go, while Ben Shewry ground roasted seaweed between two beach stones.

2.Use more salt. Real chefs throw it in by the handful. Amateurs, they say, often underseason. David Lebovitz, blogger, Parisian and former pastry chef at pioneering Californian restaurant Chez Panisse, uses and loves it in desserts (think salted caramel). He travels with his own to avoid having to use processed granulated salt.

3. Diets are actually bad for you. New York author-chef Gabrielle Hamilton railed against people who obsessed over everything they ate, saying it was a vicious cycle. Relaxing about what you ate, sometimes enjoying what you shouldn't, was better for you. It was a view echoed by several chefs, including world-renowned Mexican cuisine expert Diana Kennedy, who admitted she had always had high cholesterol but still indulged in fatty meat. She's 87.

4. Blood, bones and butter are three hot ingredients. Gabrielle Hamilton was spot-on-trend in the title of her memoir, the wonderful Blood, Bones and Butter. Perhaps it's the chefs' way of proving the difference between us and them. After all, Andrew McConnell admitted as he poured a plastic bladder of blood into a dish he described as a blood custard, most people found it a bit confronting, so he thinks its safer to call it boudin noir in the restaurant. Magnus Nilsson's hors d'oeuvre of roe in a dried pigs' blood crust delivered crunch followed by a primally familiar slightly metallic taste. Bone marrow was another lauded ingredient, so too butter, which Hamilton loves to compound. Tip equal parts butter and your ingredient of choice into a food processor and blend, use it on toast, on meats, in dishes, and freeze for later, she suggests. Wrinkly oil-cured kalamata olives, or anchovies, or garlic with parsley and shallots all make great compound butter, Hamilton says.

5. Pickle power is on the rise. From sauerkraut to kimchi, (''kissing cousins'', according to American-Korean chef David Chang), the pungent and pickled are popping up everywhere to punch up flavour and texture.

6. Pioneer skills are in, so drag out the Mrs Beeton. Living by the local, seasonal mantra, Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson admitted his seven-person team spent 50 per cent of their working hours sourcing produce, stored food in soil and straw to stretch it across the year, and only ever bought meat in the form of a whole, live beast. Gabrielle Hamilton pointed out chefs were using ''pioneer skills'' more and more, making jam, preserving, conserving, cellaring and storing, even cooking in earth.

7. There's a burning desire for fire. More cooks are using it and loving it. Francis Mallmann, of Argentina, grilled oranges stuck with rosemary and sprinkled with sugar, Magnus Nilsson stuck a whole bone on coals, and sawed it open for the marrow as he does in the dining room of his remote restaurant. Mallmann urged cooks not to toss and turn meat on a grill, but to leave it be. His love of fire is part of a broader philosophy: ''All of us have to spend more time outside, children have to spend half the day outside, to learn the language of the wind, the clouds and smoke. It will make them better adults.''

8. Octopus and crab are the go-to seafoods. Ben Shewry said he and David Chang agreed crab is ''one of the most amazingly beautiful products we have to work with in Australia''. Shewry dispatches them humanely by lowering their body temperature to about 2 degrees, then spiking them behind the ''head'' with a knife. Los Angeles chef Jon Shook (Animal restaurant) rhapsodised about our baby octopus.

9. I do not want to be a chef. Ben Shewry described the first years of his career, working 100 hours a week, his fingers bleeding under the nails from scrubbing dishes. Gabrielle Hamilton, of New York's Prune restaurant, said, ''The biggest mistake people make is saying, 'I want to be a chef because I love to cook.' You should not go into a restaurant for that reason. You do it because you have a strange work ethic, you love to put systems in place, you like to create order from chaos.''

10. The future of food is rotten. David Chang (Momofuku in New York and, soon, in Sydney) says managing microbes will be the next food frontier. Mould, fermentation and bacteria have the potential to transform what we eat, in a good way, from aged steak to locally made soy. He's working with two Harvard microbiologists to understand microbes better.

11. Marinades are bad. The charismatic Frances Mallmann, Argentinian king of the barbecue, opened his session declaring, ''I hate marinades''. His objection was that they change the taste of the primary ingredients. He prefers to add other flavours at the table, such as sauce, ''so the flavours have a little fight inside the mouth''. To explain further, he used pumpkin soup as an example. ''After three mouthfuls soup is boring, but if you then have a crunchy galette … mmmm.''

12. Bloody Mary for entree. At my next dinner party (or breakfast, or brunch) I'm serving guests Bloody Marys as an entree. Gabrielle Hamilton has nearly a dozen on her brunch list. She serves them with skewers dangling off the side, perhaps pickles (turnips, brussels sprouts, beans) or smoked peppers, or olives, or anchovies. You may even get a beef jerky swizzle stick. The ''Danish'' comes with aquavit, the ''Mariner'' with clam juice, ingredients dance from wasabi to horseradish to beef stock. They're best chased with a small beer.