Reviews

Madrid Fusion-2009
«Enoteka» № 2-3(70) 2009

It has become a custom that a new working year for me starts from a trip to Madrid, to Madrid Fusion congress.

And what does a wine critic do at a specialized culinary event? I go there, firstly, to be up-to-date with the latest culinary trends which are presented by the planet’s top chef just in four days. New cooking styles, by the way, also influence wine choices in the restaurants. Also one can have face-to-face meetings with Spanish Ferran Adrià, British Heston Blumenthal, French Pierre Gagnaire, American Charlie Trotter and a dozen of other chefs of the first rank. Excellent wine tastings, sufficient to understand current developments in Spanish winemaking, are regularly organized at Madrid Fusion. Jose Penin and Victor de la Serna, leading wine critics of Spain, come round, as well as familiar food and wine journalists with whom we exchange news and opinions.

In this respect the latest congress was similar to the previous ones. Seventy leading chefs arrived. They cooked on the stage historic and avant-garde, creative and signature, national and ethnic dishes. The exposition area was full of stands and visitors. Wine seminars offered the topics of innovative Spain, the country’s great vineyards, smart buys to combat crisis and others.

Yet each event offers something unique, and this year there were three main points of difference. Chefs reacted to the current global turmoil by presenting anti-crisis dishes. Debates on the stage were introduced where best known chefs can discuss burning issues of the industry. Mexico was chosen the guest country of Madrid Fusion-2009, and its cuisine was in a special focus.

The financial-economic slowdown makes even haute cuisine chefs be more inventive. Some like Paco Morales (Senzone, Madrid) literally go back to the roots by using root vegetables. He, for instance, creates an aesthetically pleasing dish with a beetroot presenting it with crystallised shoots, goat’s cheese cream and dried leaves. Others, like Paco Ron (Viavelez, Madrid), remember about poor cuisine, but update it with modern cooking techniques. He does deconstructed Asturian emberzado (pork meatballs wrapped in cabbage) and makes the star of the dish humble cabbage that used to be fed to livestock. There are also those, like Petter Nielsson (La Gazzetta, Paris), who take just one ingredient and waste nothing. His signature dish is made with cauliflower, where all parts, from florets to leaves and stump, are used. Shoe-string haute cuisine was among the most popular topics of the forum, and anti-crisis dishes were served also at the gala-dinner.

Madrid Fusion was held for the seventh time, and the question about how to define the current culinary phenomenon led by Ferran Adrià (elBulli, Rozes) and a handful of other known chefs, invariably arises at each event. It used to be discussed during closed seminars or in private conversations, but this year organisers decided to run open debates on the stage. The discussion was formally called “Does molecular cuisine exist?” In fact, Ferran Adrià with the help of his colleagues and scientists tried to find an exact date of birth of the new culinary movement and to give it a proper definition. Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck, Bray) weakly argued that chefs live in wonderful ear, on a junction of “intercultural pollination” — why invent a name? But Adrià was firm. The notion of molecular cuisine does not correctly convey the idea of the gastronomic revolution, and the term “techno-emotional cuisine” offered by Spanish food critic Pau Arenos last year, wasn’t widely accepted.

Harold McGee, who researches cooking processes and has also written an acclaimed book “On Food & Cooking” admitted that the term “molecular cuisine” was poorly invented by a group of scientists in 1992. The phrase was chosen to create a sensation, and soon it was picked by journalists. It, however, limits understanding — people focus on technology rather than look at the general style of dishes. All participants of the debate including Andoni Luis Aduriz (Mugaritz, San Sebastian) and Davide Cassi (professor of theoretical physics and a founder of “molecular” movement in Italy) agreed that the term “moleсular cuisine” should be replaced by “scientific cuisine”, and that it was born in the end 20th — early 21st century.

Science was always present in the kitchen (Harold McGee recalled an engraving in a French cook book of 1759 where there is an appeal to a kitchen maid to be a chemist, to please annually changing tastes), but people started to pay more attention to it only in the 21st century, and chefs and scientists began to work in close contact. Ferran Adrià has 7 people working in his laboratory, and 70% of expenses are paid for research. He said that in 2003 he looked at chemical formulas like at the Martian language. “Today I can’t live without a research team”, he noted. Adrià, by the way, is now compiling a new dictionary for scientific terms describing cooking processes.

We know little not only about reactions in food, but also about the cuisine of a faraway South American continent. Peruvian chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino (Malabar, Lima) presented an amazing world of Amazonia at Madrid Fusion, with such exotic fruit as camu-camu, a grape-sized sweet fruit containing more vitamin С than any other, or uvilla — with a shape of a grape bunch, aniseed flavour and litchi texture. Schiaffino also demonstrated how to cut a giant gamitana fish (of piranha family) which can be prepared like lamb on the rib.

Several presentations on the stage and a big stand in the exposition area were devoted to Mexico, a guest country of Madrid Fusion-2009. Mexicans prepared well for the event. They presented historic retrospective — pre-Hispanic gastronomic traditions and modern cuisine in all its diversity. Today soup alone can be made in over 500 versions. Ricardo Muñoz (Azul e Oro Сafe, Mexico City) explained that soups can be religious, regional and even dry. The ‘king’ is pozole blanco, there are up to 12 ingredients in the recipe. The best known and emblematic country’s soup is sopa de tortilla, which as the name suggests is made of tortillas. Patricia Quintana (Izote, Mexico City) started her presentation with a poetic dedication to corn and then showed an original interpretation of traditional Mexican dishes, including empanadas (pasties) и picaditas (street snacks).

Retuning to visionary chefs, this year Elena Arzak (Arzak, San Sebastian), the daughter of Juan Mari Arzak, played with colour. She, for example, explained how to dye squid. Melanin is extracted from squid ink and mixed with beetroot juice. Squid are saturated in the “broth” and then dried on a string like clothes. In the result the dish comes with an unconventional red squid surrounded by usual black ink. In the restaurant’s menu there is also a dish “Bonito on a flowerbed” — fish served with green triangles (from leeks), red circles (from cochineal) and colourful flowers.

Italian Massimo Bottura (La Osteria Francescana, Modena), in the meantime, experiments with form and content. Traditional Italian dish bollito misto in his hands turns into a three dimensional New York urban landscape, with a lawn and people in the front and trees and skyscrapers in the background.

Denis Martin (Martin, Vevey) from Switzerland loves pranks in the kitchen. What he does is best described as play food, or rather games with aromas, flavours, textures, forms and cooking techniques. The restaurant’s menu features “Radio Molluscs 2450 MHz” or “Temperamentally seen place in Thailand”. He also cooks “postal” pigeons serving them in ordinary postal envelopes.

Sebastien Bras (Bras, Laguiole), David Chang (Momofuku, New York), Sotohiro Kosugi (Soto, New York), Carlo Cracco (Cracco, Milan) and many other leading chefs also presented at the Madrid Fusion stage.

“If you are creative, you don’t have to justify what you do”, once noted Ferran Adrià. That’s what happens at the congress. Chefs create and inspire others without being stuck on academic “what” and “why”. This is what I especially love about Madrid Fusion.