Reviews

Madridfusion 2008
Drinks plus Bars & Restaurants №3 2008

The gastronomic world has never lived through more exciting times.

Spain has become a centre of new revolution, and its capital Madrid was logically chosen as venue for a leading international culinary forum Madridfusion. This annual event which takes place in the end of January once again opened its doors for the most revered and influential chefs. They presented their ideas, skills and dishes in front of a wide audience of professionals and journalists.

Ferran Adria, Juan Mari Arzak, Michel Troisgros, Davide Scabin and other world’s top chefs had a lot to talk about. Despite differences in approaches and practices, they all contribute to creating modern international cuisine and are in charge of its progress. But what is modern cuisine and how can it be classified? This question was regularly raised at the last forum. At the event’s opening Ferran Adria, an absolute leader of the world culinary movement, challenged the audience to select a new word that would describe what is happening in the culinary sphere today. This issue was also widely discussed during the seminar “Genome of the modern western cuisine” that was moderated by a leading Spanish food critic Pau Arenos.

Evolution of gastronomy starting from the 20th century can be described by three big epochs. A period of classicism lasted for almost the entire first half of the century and was best represented by a French chef and writer Georges Auguste Escoffier. After the Second world war came the time of nouvelle cuisine with its ideas of freshness and simplicity which were opposed to complex, baroque dishes of the previous era. Nouvelle cuisine was headed by Paul Bocuse and a group of French chefs. The undisputed title of the world’s gastronomic centre and trendsetter for new gastronomic ideas belonged to France.

About 15 years ago a new movement was born in the Basque country which dared to challenge the French and to disobey their rules of game. In the meantime, Ferran Adria and the team of El Bulli restaurant at Costa Brava have greatly accelerated the use of new technologies and formed the basis of today’s culinary approach. The era of freedom arrived, and today progressive chefs all over the world choose own approaches and interpretations of cooking.

The concept of modern movement is described by various terms — neo-cuisine, post-modernism and so on. Spanish critic Pau Arenos suggests the term “techno-emotional cuisine” which he believes reflects the essence of what is going on in the culinary world today. He also offers 10 postulates to reveal directions of the modern cuisine. Briefly, they state that cuisine is a language with which the chef wants to express himself; new paths are open with the help of new techniques and concepts; cooking part goes above just physical sense — to emotional and intellectual pressure; all products have the same gastronomic value; cooking is not just business, but a way of life; act of cooking and eating requires will, etc.

Ferran Adria, an engine of the modern culinary progress, always finds time to participate in Madridfusion. This year he presented his culinary manifest and talked about cooking techniques which were used in El Bulli in 2007.

“A dream of any creative chef is to build own alphabet and language through dishes. We also want to create a language to express ourselves”, he says. Adria believes that revolution in the culinary world happened through new products, concepts and techniques rather than only by means of a technological breakthrough.

“Some techniques are simple, but we don’t value them enough”, he stresses. Last year he presented a technique of freeze-dry at the forum. “It was greatly received by the media, though for me it is not the most important”, notes Adria. On the other hand, some avant-garde things such as foams introduced by the chef 13 years ago, have become common in the culinary world.

The chef also disclosed secrets of several dishes from El Bulli menu. He finally achieved his dream of having a texture of chocolate without sugar. Peanut tablets are made, and their texture resembles that of chocolate, then they are coated with cacao butter. A person receives a gustatory shock as he is mentally prepared for a chocolate dessert and expects sweetness, but instead gets savoury taste. Another provoking recipe is made with parmiggiano cheese. It is mixed with gelatin and frozen. Then a liquid is made. It resembles ice wine, but reproduces the flavour of cheese.

One of the simplest, but “fantastic”, according to Adria, techniques of working with chocolate is to squeeze melted chocolate into iced water. Thus it can be molded into most unusual shapes which make a great presentation on the plate.

To continue with desserts, the chef mentioned edible flowers. A mixture of natural yogurt, sugar powder, citric acid and maltodextrin is spread in a sheet. Then ‘petals’ are cut out and ‘orchids’ are made. Another idea is imitation of fruit and berries. Juice of a given fruit is mixed with agar-agar or gelatin, and put in a mold to cover the surface. Sorbet of the same fruit is put in the middle of the mold. Adria showed a strawberry which looks like a real thing but which will give a totally different texture and gustatory sensations.

These are just some examples of ‘words’ and ‘sentences’ of the culinary language created by the chef who remains above competition in the world of high cuisine.

A new trend for using or imitating natural materials and textures was obvious in presentations of several leading chefs. Juan Mari Arzak introduced a dish with white clay. “In Japan I saw a chef who worked with soil. I decided to use white clay”, stated Spanish culinary maestro. First clay is boiled, after that it produces truffle aromas, according to Arzak. It is made into edible paint together with other ingredients such as fish stock, almonds, pine nuts, coconuts and others, and into sticks which are served with hake.

In the other recipe presented at Madridfusion, Arzak made an imitation of pumice — the only stone that floats on water. He took black, white and dark chocolate and achieved porous texture typical for the original material. The recipe also features silver flakes.

Pedro Subijana who together with Juan Mari Arzak pioneered avant-garde Basque cuisine, presented coloured ‘sand’ made of red and green pepper. Vegetables are boiled with rice, then minced and spread in thin layer on paper to dry. Afterwards the crust is crushed and the texture of sand is achieved. Subijana also demonstrated ‘earth’ made of butter, ground almonds and seaweed. It has a more humid texture in comparison to ‘sand’.

Another exciting movement is linked to increasingly popular small-format dishes (like Spanish tapas) and finger food. Chef Benito Gomez from Malaga showed several striking mini-dishes such as jellied carrots with Sichuan pepper and lavender and shellfish in jellied sea water consomme with fresh ginger and sea salad sprouts. Another Spanish chef Ramon Freixa prepared a main dish which is served without a knife or a fork in his restaurant. It is fried codfish belly with several powders and sauces — passion fruit mayonnaise; jelly of coconut, marinated garlic and candied ginger; powder of ground hazelnut, demerara sugar and salt; grated coconut with salt; mustard ice cream. The main idea is about interplay of textures, when a person puts a finger into mayonnaise and powder and then gets a new gustatory effect.

French chef Michel Troisgros of Maison Troisgros talked about foods with high content of natural acids — from milk based products to citruses and vinegar. He believes that acidity provides a spine to the dish, like in wine. Today acidified (or acidulated) cuisine is hardly known, although it has a long tradition in northern countries, especially Russia, and among nomadic tribes. Troisgros presented a recipe of a dish based on fermented raw cow’s milk and veal rennet. Other special ingredients include yuzu (a type of citrus fruit) to contrast mildness of milk and black truffle.

At Madridfusion chefs introduced and discussed not only new recipes, but also innovative ideas, philosophy and other food-related projects. Among them are trash cooking and cooking with essential oils, use of olive stones as biofuel for grill, aesthetics of creative gastronomy and sensory perception of food. To sum up, Madridfusion yet again served as a huge melting pot in which everyone was able to find his own flavour of the gastronomic world today.

1. Cooking is a language through which one can express harmony, creativity, happiness, beauty, poetry, complexity, magic, humour, provocation.
2. One may assume that only top-quality products will be used and that the techniques used to prepare dishes will be well-mastered.
3. All products have the same gastronomic worth, regardless of price.
4. We prefer to cook with vegetables and seafood. Dairy also predominates, as well as dried fruits and other products that amount to a light cuisine. We rarely cook large cuts of red meat or whole birds.
5. Even if the characteristics of products are changed (temperature, texture, shape, etc.), the goal is to preserve its original flavour, except when slow-cooking or when searching for the matrix resulting from reactions such as Maillard’s.
6. Cooking methods, both classical and modern, are a heritage that the cook must utilize to the maximum extent.
7. As happened throughout the past in other fields of human knowledge, new technologies support the progress of gastronomy.
8. The family of broths is expanding, and alongside the classic ones we use lighter broths (flavoured waters, consommes, clarified vegetable juices, milks of dried fruits or nuts) in similar ways.
9. The information that is on a plate is enjoyed through all senses, and also through reflection.
10. The stimuli of the senses are not only taste-related: we can also play with the senses of touch (contrast of temperatures and textures), smell, sight (colours, shapes, illusionisms, etc), so that the senses become one of our points of reference when we create dishes.
11. The techno-conceptual search is one of the cornerstones of the creative pyramid.
12. We create as a team.
13. The boundary separating savoury and sweet is blurred. There’s a rise in the importance of savoury ice creams and cold food in general.
14. The classical structure of dishes is being ruptured. There is a revolution in the appetizers and desserts, in the sense that they have become symbiotic, while the appetizer — main course — dessert hierarchy is broken.
15. A new way of presenting food is gaining strength.
16. A chef’s cooking style is linked to his feelings towards his surroundings.
17. The products and preparations from other countries are submitted to our cuisine’s own criteria.
18. There are two main ways to reach harmony between products and flavours: through memory (deconstructing, links to the autonomous cook, adaptation, previous modern recipes), or through new combinations.
19. Our food is connected to the world and the language of the arts.
20. Recipes are conceived to be served in small portions.
21. Taking a dish out of context, or using irony, performance or spectacle is perfectly acceptable, as long as this is not done in a superficial way, and so that there is a link with gastronomic reflection.
22. The tasting menu is how we express our avant-garde cuisine. Its structure is alive, and is subject to change. We are betting on concepts such as snacks, tapas, morphings, etc.
23. The knowledge and/or the collaboration with experts from different fields (gastronomic culture, history, industrial design, science) is primordial in our evolution.