Ferran Adria

I just watched a programme on Discovery Channel about Spanish chef Ferran Adria. And wow! It nearly made my eyes pop out. It has opened up a whole new dimension to my perception of the possibilities of food.

The show started with a visit to the chef's laboratory in Barcelona, where he exoeriments with he also has an industrial designer who ( I guess) designs the tablewares he uses to serve his unconventional food. He then demonstrated an experiment in which he tries to recreate the texture of foie gras using peach by searing and caramelizing it with chopped up Smint (no spelling error, it's the mint candy that we get in stores). It wasn't the fact that he has a lab or that he has his own industrial designer but the results of the experiments that blew my mind away.

At his restauarant, El Bulli, meals are served in over 20 small courses and some no more than a single slurp. Each course is a work of fantastic ingenuity and surprising combinations of ingredients, and no less creative than any other courses served in the same meal. Frozen powdered foie gras that reconstitutes in a dish of warm consomme. Cherries covered in ham fat. Pea ravioli without the ravioli skin and served as a dollop of pea essence on a wide shallow spoon, flavour engulfed only by the flavour itself. Grilled fish covered in cotton candy looking like something that you've dug out from under your bed. Mandarin froth that is as light as air. Gelatinous pasta squirted out in front of the diner in a single strand and meant to be consumed in a single long slurp. Faux caviar made from dripping apple essence from an array of syringes into a bowl of cold water forming bubbles of apple essence covered in a thin skin, which is then served in a caviar tin. A pastry so light that it disappears once it enters your mouth.

Here are some pictures i found on the net. The names are not the actual names of the dishes, just my own attempt to describe them.

pea ravioli


Gelatinous pasta made in a single strand


mandarin froth


Faux caviar made from fruit essence

The chef's approach to flavour is not to creat a fusion of taste but to have the the different ingredients retain its own flavour while working together to create an ochestra of sensations. He also speaks of the assigned value of food and preaches a notion of seeing an ingredient purely on its flavour without the bias of price and rarity. Foie gras should be seen to have the same value as a pear. He also talks about a creating new concepts of cooking and being the first person to do something, like being the first person to make a Spanish omelette, to come up with the idea of a Spanish omelette.

I was truly astounded by the ingenuity and innovation that he has displayed and his passion to continue pushing the boundaries of cooking. My new goal in life will be to visit his restaurant El Bulli in Catalonia and maybe attempt to push some boundaries too in what I do.
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I just found a photo album of someone who had a meal at El Bulli.
chez pim