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Jet City Gastrophysics

~ Exploring Modernist Cuisine in the Northwest

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Tag Archives: Ferran Adria

Ferran In America

10 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by jethro in blow shit up, cookbook

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

elBulli, elBulli Taller, Ferran Adria, Modernist Cuisine

NYC Via The Brooklyn Bridge

NYC Via The Brooklyn Bridge

I had an opportunity to leave town for a week, so I decided to hop on over to NYC to visit old friends and catch up with the city. I didn’t do a major gastropocalypse tour this time around, hitting all the necessary landmarks like EMP, Momofuku, Per Se, etc. As far as food goes, this is what you need to know: Brooklyn is happening, and take your appetite to Martha, Glady’s, and Chuko. I also found an amazing old bar that is stuck in the 1970s and is a killer place to have a drink and be left alone, and in that spirit I’ll keep that one to myself.

But this post isn’t about food, it’s about Ferran. Ferran Adria, chef of elBulli, one of the great artists of our time. The Drawing Center in Manhattan had the first major museum exhibition to focus on his drawings and concepts. I, of course, went to see it.  Little did I know I’d soon see him myself.

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Eating In (And Exploring) Barcelona

03 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by jethro in i ate there

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

anchoas, Barcelona, cafe, Catalunya, elBulli, elBulli Taller, Ferran Adria, porron

Barri Gotic In Barcelona

The Barri Gotic In Barcelona

Catalunya, the current center of the gastronomic universe.  I hadn’t been there since 2001, when food meant to me whatever the closest restaurant was offering at the moment.  This time I walked through Barcelona with a culinary eye, and found (and ate) many a wonderful thing, if only for a short couple of days.

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Gastropocalypse 2012: Third Stop: Tickets Tapas Bar and 41º

27 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by jethro in i ate there

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

41º, Albert Adria, Barcelona, elBulli, Ferran Adria, gastropocalypse, tapas, Tickets

Tickets in Barcelona

The gastropocalypse continued on from England and Austria into the next country: Spain. Specifically to the culinary paradise of Catalunya, and the beautiful city of Barcelona.  There I had made reservations at a tapas bar.  It doesn’t have any Michelin stars and isn’t in the Top 50 restaurants in the world.  But I thought it was worth checking out.  Why?  Because it’s run by Ferran and Albert Adrià.  You know, elBulli.  Considered the most revolutionary cooks alive and all that.

Excuse me for a moment while I channel Eric’s excitement:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I ATE AT TICKETS!!! I HAD A DRINK AT 41º!!!!!!!  AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, that feels better.

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Roses in Chicago: Experiencing elBulli At Next

15 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by jethro in i ate there

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Dave Beran, elBulli, Ferran Adria, Grant Achatz, Next Restaurant, Nick Kokonas

Next:elBulli

For the next three months, Grant Achatz’ Next Restaurant will feature a 30 course meal from the recipes of Ferran Adria that he created at elBulli.  I was lucky enough to get a ticket on the opening week to what is literally the hottest reservation on Earth at the moment.  With thousands of people vying to get in, how did I manage to pull off the impossible?

A rap battle, of course.

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Following Ferran: Cooking From El Practico

30 Tuesday Nov 2010

Posted by jethro in recipes

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

El Practico, Ferran Adria, flank steak, pork fat, potato stew

El Practico

…I am grateful to him for having given me a big fat book five hundred pages long to read and learn.  A book of classic recipes, sixty-five hundred of them, a mix of traditional Spanish cooking and dishes heavily influenced by French cuisine…I still have the book.  It has a red hardback cover. It is called El Practico.  The pages are frayed.  The spine is cracked.  But I have it in a prominent place, always at hand, in my laboratory workshop in Barcelona.

–  Ferran Adria, The Big Red Book, or El Practico from How I Learned To Cook

Ferran Adria began his cooking career by landing a job in a hotel kitchen in order to save money to spend a summer partying in Ibiza.  Ibiza is a hedonist island wonderland just off the coast of Spain. It’s a wild, endless fiesta filled with bars, babes and beaches.

I know this.  I spent a weekend there about ten years ago.  My last night there I danced until dawn at Space, an indoor/outdoor club where airplanes from the nearby airport would launch overhead, sending the crowd into a frenzy.  I barely made it out alive.  Spainards are a different breed when it comes to being “a friend of the party”.  I can’t imagine an entire summer there.  Although I did try my best.

One can understand the motivation for a soccer obsessed high school dropout like Ferran. So he took the job as a dishwasher.  The cook, Miguel Moy, had a short temper and would explode at the slightest deviation from the expected way of doing things.  With his demand for excellence, he gave Ferran a copy of El Practico to memorize.

The first food Ferran ever cooked by himself for other people was a stew of flank steak and potatoes that he prepared one evening for the staff meal.

– Colman Andrews, Ferran

The first dish I learned to make was a potato stew. Miguel did not trust me at this stage to cook for the clientele. This was the food for the staff of the hotel…

–  Adria, The Big Red Book

When I read these passages, I thought I could gain an unique insight into the methods of the best chef in the world by creating his first dish. So I decided to hunt down El Practico, find the recipe for potato stew, and cook it up.  And, as always, things got more complicated than they seemed.

Hunting Down The Stew

The first step was finding the cookbook itself.  I had to hunt down the author’s names to make sure I was going to buy the right book.  I briefly lived in Madrid (around the same time as my trip to Ibiza),  so I used my connections there to find the book in a local shop.  Alas, no luck.  So I went online. It took a while but I finally found a copy, and after debating the price for a few days, finally let my culinary curiosity get the better of me and ordered it.

They had a difficult time fulfilling the order and it didn’t land on my doorstep for about six weeks.  I was very excited when it finally arrived in the mail.

One thing I noticed right away was at the beginning of the book.  A page full of symbols, representing what I gathered were elements of a professional kitchen.

Graphic Chart from El Practico

This page immediately reminded me of something I saw in A Day at elBulli: a set of symbols used to classify different product families of ingredients.

elBulli Graphic Chart

Could have this system received its original inspiration from the pages of El Practico?  I do not know, but the similarities are striking.

So there I was, holding Ferran Adria’s prized cookbook in my hands, the cookbook that inspired him to become a better cook, to become the best cook. I flipped through the pages.  A cornucopia of culinary knowledge.

If only I could read Spanish fluently.

I knew ‘potato’ was patatas in Spanish, so I looked it up in the book’s index, and flipped to page 449, where they had five and a half pages of short recipes for potato dishes.  117 dishes, to be exact.  Which was the stew?  I found that caldo means ‘broth’, so I read and re-read all 117 dishes looking for the word caldo.  I found three: Lard, Paysanne, and Savoyarde.  The only one that had meat in it was Lard, which had bacon.  OK, bacon – kind of like jamón serrano, I thought.  It’s not flank steak, but it’s close.  Perhaps this was his first dish.  But it seemed less like soup and more like a potato side dish.  Maybe I was looking in the wrong section.  So I turned to Sopas, or ‘Soups’.  Once again, as far as I could tell, no luck.

Next I turned to my Spanish speaking friends and asked what they would call Potato Stew with Flank Steak. Perhaps it was cocido, consome, or caldo. Maybe for meat they used churrasco, bistec, or filete.  Look for estofado or guiso. It could be in French: ragoût de pommes de terre or pot au feu.  And so I kept ‘reading’, searching for a recipe that would have all the elements I was looking for: potatoes, stew, and flank steak.

Ferran was right – a lot of the dishes in El Practico are French (and published in Buenos Aires by the way, so not really a Spanish cookbook at all).  I came up with an idea: I could use my copy of Larousse Gastronomique to read the French recipes to see if they were what I was looking for.  Finally, on page 323, I found a meat dish that could be served as a stew, which contained potatoes: Navarin.  Navarin is a French ragoût (or stew) of lamb or mutton.  I figured he could have substituted flank steak for lamb.  It didn’t have to perfect – it was for a staff meal after all, right?  It must be it.

From Spanish To English To Food

The Recipe

El Practico was first published in 1928, so the recipes reflect that: no measurements or steps, just short conversational sentences on how to put it all together.  A good set up for a dishwasher making his first stew, as it allows a lot of leeway. I translated the recipe with the help of Google and my meager Spanish cooking vocabulary.

Pedazos de pecho, paleta, etc. de cordero o carnero.  Sazonar con pimienta y sal. Saltear a la grasa de cerdo.  Escurrir.  Deglacer al vino blanco.

Brisket pieces, chuck, etc. lamb or mutton. Season with pepper and salt. Saute the pork fat. Drain. Deglaze with white wine.

Pork fat.  For most people, that would entail some research to find and purchase.  I, however, live right next to an Asian grocery store.  I knew, having never bought it before, that they would have it.  Sure enough, they did.  So I began cooking it up.

Pork Fat

Next came sauteed onions, the flank steak, potatoes and a bouquet garni (what else could give it away as a French dish?).  I also added pearl onions, turnips and carrots.  No need to follow it to the letter.  I mean, I’m just cooking a staff meal.

After it cooked for a while, I removed all the meat and vegetables to another dish, reduced the stock, and added it back to let it simmer a while longer.  And soon I had a potato stew with flank steak.  Ferran Adria’s first dish.

What I learned was his cooking, like most all Western chefs, is informed by French techniques. Having spherified coffee, root beer and melon juice earlier this year, it was enlightening to return to Ferran Adria’s roots, and see, like all artists, that he began with the basics, and it is from that foundation that he has launched his culinary innovations.

And that foundation, I might add, is pretty tasty.

Jethro

elBulli At Home: Pumpkin Oil Sweet

07 Sunday Nov 2010

Posted by jethro in recipes

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

candy, elBulli, Ferran Adria, induction cooktop, isomalt, pumpkin oil

Pumpkin Oil Sweet

A lot of modern cooking techniques call for exact temperatures and measurements.  This is more akin to baking rather than cooking, where a pinch here, a dash there, and phrases like “until a golden brown” is sufficient to get you where you need to go.  I tend to paint with broad strokes over the detail of a single-hair brush, but I always try to do the hard stuff, if only to challenge myself.  This endeavor was no exception.

Caramelo de Aceite de Calabaza: Pumpkin Oil Sweet

The Cast Of Characters

The Cast Of Characters

I really wanted to tackle a dish from elBulli, voted Best Restaurant in the World five times.  Paging through my copy of A Day At elBulli, everything required six detailed components or access to exotic equipment like freeze dryers and superbags.  I wanted to start simple, and found the pumpkin oil sweet: two ingredients.  Exotic ingredients to be sure – Isomalt and pumpkin oil – but I could work with that.  Yes, this should be interesting.

Isomalt is a sugar substitute derived from beets.  It is half as sweet as sugar and has remarkable properties for molding, and most sugar sculptures are made using it.  Pumpkin oil is just that, and found mostly in Eastern Europe.  Neither can be found easily.  I ordered the Isomalt online but found the pumpkin oil here in a specialty store in Seattle.  Seattle is good like that most of the time.

The process is simple:

  1. Melt the Isomalt.
  2. Dip a pastry cutter into the Isomalt so a thin film covers the bottom.
  3. Pour a teaspoon of pumpkin oil onto the film.  The weight will force the film to wrap around the oil and drip down below.
  4. Cut off the thin strand of Isomalt attached to the pastry cutter.

So I began.

Melt the Isomalt in a pan over a medium heat until the temperature reaches 120 C/250 F.

I dumped the Isomalt into the pan and turned on my new induction cooktop  (Did I say new?  I meant to say used.  On Craigslist.  For $60 – less than half the price for a new one.  There’s rarely a reason to pay full price for anything – even weird kitchen equipment.  Just keep your eyes peeled and who knows what you’ll find.). Now it doesn’t hit 250F exactly.  It has ten settings, and each setting increases the temperature by 30F.  So I could get to 240F or 270F, but not 250F.  Close enough, though. Right?

Melting Isomalt

Wrong.  In order to create a thin film on the pastry cutter that is still pliable enough to drip down after the oil is added, the Isomalt needs to be at exactly 250F.  If it was warmer, it was too liquid, and no film would form.  If it was colder, it would thicken up and no film would form.

Film of Isomalt

My Kingdom For A Thin Film

Of course, since I couldn’t maintain this exact temperature, I had to play this game of Heat Up and Cool Down to get it just right.  Sometimes, the temperature would be where I could make a thin film, but within a second it would harden, and the oil would just sit in it.

Sometimes, it was too weak, and wouldn’t hold the oil and just collapse immediately into a pool of oil and sugar shards.   So, most of the time, I just made a frickin’ mess.

And another challenge: if I tried to let the pastry cutter sit for a moment in the Isomalt so I could get a decent film, it would heat up and burn my fingers.  But I persisted and managed to figure it out.  That they are able to pump out dozens of these a night perfectly shaped at elBulli is quite humbling.  Trying it myself just heightens my admiration for their creativity and execution.

Pumpkin Oil Sweet Closeup

I ended up with a rouge’s gallery of misshapen candies as well.  They reminded me of the artwork of H.R. Giger, who designed the alien in Alien.  They would have made very creepy candies to give out on Halloween.  “Eat these right now, my pretties!”  I don’t think their parents would go for it.

The Rogue's Gallery

How to eat:
Pick up a sweet carefully with your fingers and place in your mouth. Without chewing it, let the sugar melt and the pumpkin seed oil flow out.

It is definitely tasty.  The Isomalt cracks open and the oil glides onto your tongue, with what would be an unexpected and surprising flavor, unless you’ve been trying to make them for the last hour, in which case the flavor is well known to you.  This happens.  But the pumpkin matches well with the leaves falling from the trees here in Seattle, and becomes a perfect autumnal sweet, a half a world away from its birthplace in Roses, Spain, at elBulli.

Autumnal Sweet

Jethro

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