David Bogacz won the jury prize for the most creative dish and the public prize for the best recipe at the Golden Eye Chef (India).
03/17/2024, 03:30
In 2019, the local Golden Eye Chef competition for people with total blindness or low vision was held for the first time in India . In 2020, with the pandemic, the competition became virtual. And in 2022 it opened to the world. A year later, it had 32 participants from nations as far away as the United States, Mauritius, North Macedonia and Uruguay. The light blue was very well represented by doctor David Bogacz , who won the jury prize for the most creative dish and the public prize for the best recipe.
David Bogacz (66) is a clinical neurophysiologist (specialized in the study of the nervous system) who retired two years ago due to vision problems. These began to affect him in 2002 and progressed progressively. “In 2009 I lost vision in my right eye. It was as if a curtain began to be lowered on me, it started at the top of the field and increased. They couldn’t find anything for me. But the light had gone out. A colleague who has been in Chicago for many years treated me and told me: ‘Well, forget about this eye, let’s go to the other one,'” Bogacz recalls in an interview with Domingo.
The vision in his left eye also decreased, to the point that he was unable to continue working. In any case, he warns that he is not completely blind: “I have a little bit of the lower part of the field left, less and less, I see very blurry. The cause is not known, I did all kinds of studies here and in the United States. I also did the stem cell treatment, which at first worked well, but then, the second time I did it, not so much. It was a lot of investment, economic and emotional. In the end, I threw in the towel.”
“Kenny’s Lamb”
Bogacz was one of the participants (the first from Uruguay) of the Golden Eye Chef 2023 interviewed by The Week Magazine of India. “My family (his wife Mariella, a psychologist and theater actress, and his two children) was surprised by my decision to participate in the contest. They were very happy when I won. “They are happy not only for the award but also for the fact that he can accept the challenge,” the doctor told that media outlet.
Bogacz, who makes excellent pizza that he learned from his mother, specially prepared Kenny’s Lamb for the competition. “I wanted to cook something that was relatively new, with some typical ingredients from my country. I talked about it with my friend Kenny, who is a good cook but not a professional,” she added to The Week Magazine.
“I always liked cooking, but I had never had the opportunity to learn,” the doctor told Domingo. And he added: “I started taking the Crandon course but it was like opening a restaurant, you had two years of economics, it wasn’t for me, what I wanted was to cook. When I was doing rehabilitation at the Tiburcio Cachón Center, a gastronomy course appeared, which I started doing in March of last year. The teacher, Carolina Irurtia, encouraged me to participate in the contest. And I was encouraged. “I was the only one from Latin America.”
He has known Kenny for 40 years. It was she who gave him the key to enter through the big door. “He gave me an idea and I changed some things. He made the lamb marinated with Dijon mustard, tomato sauce, lemon, olive oil, cumin and ginger. I also added arazá jam, a typical fruit from northern Uruguay and southern Brazil, which is not easy to find. I left it to marinate for 24 hours and then I cooked it in a saucepan in a sauce of onion, garlic, rosemary, red and yellow bell pepper,” she describes.
The meat was accompanied with natural potatoes, olive oil and fresh rosemary. “And I made a medlar chutny that I put as a ‘little path’ between the meat and the potato,” she notes.
Chutny is something typical of India. “The loquat must be peeled, the seeds removed and cut into pieces. Then you put it with sugar and vinegar in a pan, where it sautés for 10 or 12 minutes without turning into caramel. It is somewhat bittersweet, because the vinegar brings out the sweetness of the medlar a little,” he explains.
When simple is difficult
Bogacz uses the TalkBack Android app, which reads your cell phone screen and transforms text messages into voice. And another program that allows you to identify photographs, although the latter is much less effective.
“These types of applications also allow you to use the computer or browse the Internet. Technology changed things. For example, I read a lot, not necessarily with audiobooks, but with the @voice program , which transforms texts (from a PDF for example) into audio. It is a robotic voice that can be regulated to make it more friendly,” he comments.
In Uruguay, the white cane is used for cases of total blindness and the green cane for low vision. White with red stripes combines low vision with deafness or hearing loss. Bogacz has the green. And he confesses that incorporating this element into his life had, at first, a great psychological impact on him.
He also highlights the support he has received at the Tiburcio Cachón National Center for Visual Disability, which has allowed him to solve basic – and not unimportant – problems in his daily life.
“As a doctor, I knew of the existence of Tiburcio Cachón, but I had no idea what they did. And the truth is that the work they do is wonderful. They are young people (mostly women) of great human quality, they give you enormous psychological support,” he comments. And she remembers: “The first time I grabbed the cane I started crying, the symbolic value that that has is terrible. Valentina, the girl who supported me, let me cry, told me to stop using it and after she did it again, we talked a lot. The work she did with me was very important to me.”
At the Tiburcio Cachón center there is a workshop called “daily skills” that was essential for Bogacz to be able to move around in his own home. “They teach you how to sweep, make the bed, wash yourself, iron or even cut your nails. These are things that seem silly, but they are very important,” he highlights. And he adds regarding the challenges that cooking represents for a blind or low vision person: “They explain how to move without getting burned or without throwing everything away. You don’t have to use a frying pan but a pot, which is less dangerous. They tell you to use oven mitts and the bottom burners so as not to burn yourself. Additionally, you learn to recognize things by smell, weight or sound. For example, when you put water in a glass, the sound changes as it fills.”
Little pleasures of life
Bogacz comments that cooking allows him to play with his granddaughter Vera, who is 4 and a half years old, and “helps” him with the recipes. “The contest also allowed me to learn about cuisine from other places. When was I going to know anything about North Macedonia or Mauritius? He didn’t even know they existed. And besides, I like to eat, mentally I am a fat person,” he says and laughs.
There are other pleasures in life that he continues to enjoy with his children, such as music (he loves jazz and going to Sodre shows).
“One of my sons, Rodrigo, makes films, he is an assistant director. He participated in The Snow Society when they recorded in Uruguay. He is also a musician and plays bass in Los Nuevos Creyentes, a group he has with my other youngest son, Santiago,” he says. The latter graduated from the Udelar Faculty of Arts (where he is a teacher today), and completed a master’s degree in Electronic Composition in Cologne, Germany.
Additionally, David Bogacz has been involved with music since his youth. Upon leaving the dictatorship he had a magazine called Ganzúa, in which he published his interviews and comments on albums. “I had the pleasure of interviewing Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Facundo Cabral and Chico Buarque, among others,” he concludes.