A Little Inspiration for Jaded Duluth Cooks
If you work in a kitchen but haven’t really experienced Michelin level cooking this is good learning material. It’s valuable because I’ve eaten at quite a few restaurants in Minnesota where chefs and cooks attempt to be “creative” just for the sake of being creative. It’s like Bobby flay and Jackson Pollock got together and fired up the crack pipe. There’s a lack of thought and process, two things that can take you to new heights as a cook.
Ferran Adria is widely considered the best Chef in the world right now (of haute cuisine) because he has been pioneering new techniques his entire career. He invented various kinds of “foams” and “airs” which offer a nice way to sauce and flavor lightly textured and delicate dishes. He has created Jellies that remain jelly at hot temperatures and even desserts that disappear when they hit your tongue… literally vanishing with only a trace of the flavors he intended (see video).
Even with all of this accomplishment and rock star status in Europe the guy likes simple cooking. If it doesn’t make sense and taste good he doesn’t do it. I think the old saying goes: “self-limitation is the mark of mastery”- something like that. Anyway, that saying applies here. There’s nothing he’d rather eat than peasant food from around Spain when he’s not in his kitchen or his laboratory.- Oh yeah, he has a laboratory. The restaurant El Bulli is only open 6 months of the year, not because it dies in the winter (they get 8 million reservation requests for some 8,000 seats each season) but because he spends the remainder of the year in his lab creating and perfecting new dishes and techniques.
I’ve included two videos here. One of Bourdain eating a number of the courses with Ferran at the chef’s table as well as an extensive conversation (about 1 1/2 hours). If you get time, expand the second video to full screen, grab some wine and enjoy his personality. It’s interesting if you enjoy this kind of thing.
