Events

Top chefs are for scientific cuisine and against crisis
www.drinktime.ru, 3 March 2009

Where can one at once meet a dozen of the world’s top chefs — from Ferran Adrià and Heston Blumenthal to Pierre Gagnaire and Charlie Trotter?

In Madrid, during the gastronomic show Madrid Fusion. They come to show their latest achievements or simply to meet their colleagues, holding press conferences and giving interviews in the breaks.

This year Madrid Fusion launched an award The Most Influential Chefs of the Last Decade. Everyone who should have been nominated was nominated indeed — Ferran Adrià, Juan Mari Arzak, Michel Bras, Pierre Gagnaire, Heston Blumenthal, Nobu Matsuhisa, Chalie Trotter, Thomas Keller, Pierre Hermé, Gualtiero Marchesi and Alain Ducasse. Except for the latter, all came to Madrid in person to receive their awards.

Another news is that leading chefs now hold debates in front of the public. Ferran Adrià (elBulli, Rozes), the leader of the modern culinary movement, at each event has tried to find a definition of what he, together with a number of chefs, does. This time Adrià discussed the topic “Does molecular cuisine exist?” together with two colleagues and two scientists. They spoke at length against molecular tags, but for cooperation with science.

Food scientist Harold McGee admitted that the unfitting term “molecular cuisine” was invented in 1992 when he together with a group of colleagues started to organise seminars on physical and chemical processes in food during cooking. The phrase caught attention and was soon used by journalists. It stuck, although it didn’t describe correctly what chefs were doing. All participants of the debate, including Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck, Bray) and Andoni Luis Aduriz (Mugaritz, San Sebastian), agreed that “molecular cuisine” should be replaced by “scientific cuisine”. Will the new description be successful? Let’s see. It is more appropriate, but somehow boring.

Links between science and gastronomy were widely discussed at the congress. Ferran Adrià announced that he was working on a new book together with the Harvard University. It will feature relationships between high cuisine and science in the past 300-400 years. Heston Blumenthal is involved in the UK project initiated by the National Health Service. He is studying mechanisms of how people perceive aromas and flavours, in order to make hospital food more attractive for patients.

But even apart from these narrow projects everyone mentioned that science had always been present in the kitchen. It is just that now people pay more attention to it, and chefs and researchers are working in a close contact.

Science is good, but the world lives in the recession times, and even top chefs cannot avoid it. Ferran Adrià admitted that there were “years of excess” in haute cuisine, and that the crisis will change it. Now chefs have to be more inventive and create dishes on a limited budget. “Shoe-string haute cuisine” was the topic of several presentations at Madrid Fusion.

“Shoe-string haute cuisine starts in a cuisine born out of deprivation and hunger. We can update and even recover once forgotten dishes through modern techniques”, said Paco Ron (Viavélez, Madrid). As an example, he cooked chestnut soup, a typical Asturian peasant dish in the 19th century. He updated it by using clarified pork broth, and by intensifying flavours through aniseed and caramelized apple.

Ron showed another dish — potato chips with molluscs. The cost of production in Madrid is 2 euros. The dish was also served at Madrid Fusion gala dinner — the crisis is for everyone!

One can also save money on wine, by taking advantage, for instance of the results of the traditional competition “Best Spanish Wines Below 30 Euros” (price at the winery). The winners of this year were sparkling Freixenet Cava Meritum, Bodegas Julian Chivite Coleccion 125 Blanco and red Bodegas Hacienda Monasterio. The wines are also sold in Russia, but with adjusted prices.

In the meantime, guests of Juan Mari Arzak (Arzak, San Sebastian) forget about stock indexes and bank problems because of colour. Elena Arzak, Juan Mari’s daughter and his right hand in the kitchen, calls colour an additional flavour of dishes. Experimenting with natural colouring agents, she creates cheerfully looking dishes. In the menu one can find red squid with black ink, or a desert with red cabbage sauce — the purple sauce changes to pink after a drop of lemon juice.

Massimo Bottura (La Osteria Francescana, Modena) is also an artist, but tending towards impressionism. In New York he saw and urban landscape that shook his imagination and then recreated it on a plate at Madrid Fusion. It is a lawn in the city park made of strips of red and yellow pepper, with trees made of parsley foam and skyscrapers made of meat pieces. This is his interpretation of New York based on traditional Italian recipe of bollito misto.

Other presenters were chef-perfumer Corrado Assenza (Caffe Sicilia, Noto) and chef of “urban cuisine” David Chang (Momofuku, New York). Mexican and Peruvian cuisines were featured, as well as modern interpretations of pre-Hispanic American and Cappadocian cuisines.

Participants’ mood remained optimistic despite the fact that Madrid Fusion was held in a sad time of the world crisis. Many new ideas were put forward, and in this respect the value of Madrid Fusion for the culinary world will never be affected neither by financial, nor economic problems.