The Aleenta Hua Hin-Pranburi Resort and Spa has enhanced its already formidable sustainability credentials with the launch of ‘Carbon Free Cooking’, an initiative where produce is sourced from the property’s organic farm, prepared by skilled chefs and served as the finest gourmet cuisine.
It’s a case of Aleenta Hua Hin continuing to push the boundaries of sustainability to offer guests luxury with a green flavor – a key reason why the resort was recently named the Best Sustainable Hotel (Thailand) at the prestigious International Hotel Awards.
Carbon Free Cooking is the brainchild of Aleenta Hua Hin Resident Manager and Michelin-star chef James Noble, the farm’s creator and overseer of gourmet menus featuring the freshest locally sourced ingredients and produce.
Mr Noble said: “The essence of Aleenta Hua Hin’s The Cellar restaurant is this food. It uses purely organic food and utilises solar ovens, smoke houses and techniques based on molecular cooking to keep our carbon footprint to a minimum.
“You can do things differently and succeed while also being environmentally friendly. Sustainability is at the core of who we are as a resort, and it’s great when you can combine that with an enhanced guest experience.”
Almost all the produce used at the resort, which is close to 90% sustainable, is procured from its organic farm. That includes a community garden where locals can take what they like and pay it forward via replanting, an honour system that is a matter of community pride.
Chicken, beef, pork, fruit and vegetables are farmed and transferred to Aleenta’s kitchens by bicycle. The menu includes solar-baked lime and honey cake cooked in a wooden box lined with foil, sand-baked clams and steamed-seawater seaweed, as well as clay pots buried in the beach.
Aleenta Hua Hin’s carbon-free gourmet dishes include hand-sprayed salted beef ceviche, sun-dried tomato sauce and ice crisp linguine-farmed vegetables. This dish involves banana leaf-wrapped fillet of local beef being rubbed in sea and salt peter before being burried for two days with fresh herbs and spices. It is then washed and finished with ginger and chill-infused sharp citrus and vinegar, as well as two week air-dried tomatoes hand crushed in a pestle and mortar. Spring-water seasoned, it is served with iced ribbon vegetables soaked in filtered water.
Another dish is solar comfit sea bass, air-dried crispy skin, ground fermented kimchee, preserved lemons and sesame mayonnaise (pictured below). In preparing this dish, solar coconut comfit hand-lined sea bass is heated to 63 degrees for 25 minutes and served on fermented cabbage garnished with one-year-old preserved lemons and hand-emulsified nutty mayonnaise, onion, red pepper and spices.
