ElBulli’s food is famous for its extravagance, artistry and complicated production. So, asks Adam Gopnik, what can we expect from chef Ferran Adrià’s new cookbook?
A waiter at elBulli with one of Ferran Adrià’s creations: peach liqueur bonbons and a spoon of peach liquid on a frozen stone
by Adam Gopnik, Prospect
Learn how to make your family’s dinner from Ferran Adrià! It’s not unlike the notion of learning to write thank-you notes from James Joyce, not unlike taking ukulele lessons from Jimi Hendrix. It is not merely that the master who is to teach you defines a certain standard of excellence, but that he defines a style of extravagant excellence, rococo perfection—overcharge is so essential to the style that to miniaturise or domesticate it seems to betray its essential nature. A uke player who is taught to play with his teeth and set fire to his ukulele is, however excellent, in a certain sense not a ukulele player at all; he is not advancing the style so much as just playing the wrong instrument. Adrià is the author of that classic plat, lambs’ brains with sea urchins and sea grapes. How do you do this at home, and do you really want to?
Adrià is, of course, the chef and patron and resident and general Willy Wonka of elBulli, the now just closed Catalan temple of what is usually called “molecular gastronomy,” even if Adrià much prefers what he sees as the simpler name of “techno-emotional cuisine.” (Though when “techno-emotional” seems the simplest label that can be applied to something it can fairly be said that the thing being labelled must not be very simple.) A marriage of the extreme edge of French avant garde cuisine with techniques borrowed from the high-tech reaches of the food industry—sort of the offspring of Michel Guérard and a mad scientist—the principles of that cooking were not just rococo but recherché. New machines and new technology, liquid nitrogen and calcium carbonate, were used to turn food from its ordinary, some might say natural, forms into foams and gels and freeze-dried powders and pure smoke. A meal at elBulli might include—indeed, the one I ate there shortly before it closed did include—a tiramisu with tofu and green tea, a corn taco with parmesan ice cream and freeze-dried fraises, and Iberian ham with a ginger and caramel reduction.
As with Hendrix, though, the pyrotechnics and fireworks of Adrià’s style were, from his point of view, merely a playful coating on what was meant to be admired as a magnificent virtuoso technique. And so the recipes and dishes in Adrià’s The Family Meal (Phaidon) are plain—really plain, much plainer than almost any cooking you will find in any other recipe book by a famous cook, a catalogue of the recipes for the cheap simple meals that were served to the staff every night at 6pm, before the service began at elBulli. One realises that, if for the ukulele student lessons with Hendrix might seem too much, for Hendrix it might seem just right—a chance to show the real basis of his style, without the intrusions of a too-big amp and a too-wailing pedal, and without trying to please anyone who wants the guitar to flame, rather than just catch fire. (...)
His purpose, one senses, in offering these complete, three-course menus for ordinary weekday night dinners, illustrated with step-by-step, photo-romans style illustration, is not to spread his style but to justify his genius. The famous tricks are merely devices, he suggests, what matters for my kind of cooking is the mise en place, the habit of preparation. Adrià, with the eccentricity of genius, truly believes this: that what separates what he does from what you and I do is simply that he takes more trouble laying out his ingredients and keeping the plan in his head. (So Dante might have imagined that the difference between what he did and what you and I do was the ability to think of things in circles.) If you and I had the self-discipline to plan our meals and lay out our ingredients thoughtfully, Adrià sincerely believes, we could soon be making electric eel powder with goat-brain gels for our children.
Read more:
by Adam Gopnik, Prospect
Learn how to make your family’s dinner from Ferran Adrià! It’s not unlike the notion of learning to write thank-you notes from James Joyce, not unlike taking ukulele lessons from Jimi Hendrix. It is not merely that the master who is to teach you defines a certain standard of excellence, but that he defines a style of extravagant excellence, rococo perfection—overcharge is so essential to the style that to miniaturise or domesticate it seems to betray its essential nature. A uke player who is taught to play with his teeth and set fire to his ukulele is, however excellent, in a certain sense not a ukulele player at all; he is not advancing the style so much as just playing the wrong instrument. Adrià is the author of that classic plat, lambs’ brains with sea urchins and sea grapes. How do you do this at home, and do you really want to?
Adrià is, of course, the chef and patron and resident and general Willy Wonka of elBulli, the now just closed Catalan temple of what is usually called “molecular gastronomy,” even if Adrià much prefers what he sees as the simpler name of “techno-emotional cuisine.” (Though when “techno-emotional” seems the simplest label that can be applied to something it can fairly be said that the thing being labelled must not be very simple.) A marriage of the extreme edge of French avant garde cuisine with techniques borrowed from the high-tech reaches of the food industry—sort of the offspring of Michel Guérard and a mad scientist—the principles of that cooking were not just rococo but recherché. New machines and new technology, liquid nitrogen and calcium carbonate, were used to turn food from its ordinary, some might say natural, forms into foams and gels and freeze-dried powders and pure smoke. A meal at elBulli might include—indeed, the one I ate there shortly before it closed did include—a tiramisu with tofu and green tea, a corn taco with parmesan ice cream and freeze-dried fraises, and Iberian ham with a ginger and caramel reduction.
As with Hendrix, though, the pyrotechnics and fireworks of Adrià’s style were, from his point of view, merely a playful coating on what was meant to be admired as a magnificent virtuoso technique. And so the recipes and dishes in Adrià’s The Family Meal (Phaidon) are plain—really plain, much plainer than almost any cooking you will find in any other recipe book by a famous cook, a catalogue of the recipes for the cheap simple meals that were served to the staff every night at 6pm, before the service began at elBulli. One realises that, if for the ukulele student lessons with Hendrix might seem too much, for Hendrix it might seem just right—a chance to show the real basis of his style, without the intrusions of a too-big amp and a too-wailing pedal, and without trying to please anyone who wants the guitar to flame, rather than just catch fire. (...)
His purpose, one senses, in offering these complete, three-course menus for ordinary weekday night dinners, illustrated with step-by-step, photo-romans style illustration, is not to spread his style but to justify his genius. The famous tricks are merely devices, he suggests, what matters for my kind of cooking is the mise en place, the habit of preparation. Adrià, with the eccentricity of genius, truly believes this: that what separates what he does from what you and I do is simply that he takes more trouble laying out his ingredients and keeping the plan in his head. (So Dante might have imagined that the difference between what he did and what you and I do was the ability to think of things in circles.) If you and I had the self-discipline to plan our meals and lay out our ingredients thoughtfully, Adrià sincerely believes, we could soon be making electric eel powder with goat-brain gels for our children.
Read more:
