Deconstructive Gastronomy Part 2

More Parlor Tricks

Chefs like El Bulli's Ferran Adria use science and technology to explore -- then explode -- recipes.

By Clifford A. Wright | Friday, 29 January 2010 | 10:30

DECONSTRUCTIVE GASTRONOMY

^{Second in a three-part series on breaking down food.
Read part 1 here.}

EDITOR'S NOTE: On Feb. 12, the Wall Street Journal reported that Ferran Adria had decided to permanently close El Bulli, and replace it with a culinary academy.

Meals at deconstructive restaurants such as Ferran Adria's El Bulli are not conventional meals but a series of up to 30 small courses, or tastes, some no more than a morsel or slurp. They may be presented on a silver spoon or as a lollipop or in a tiny fluted glass, often with suggestions about how they should be eaten -- in one go, in separate bites, or in a certain order. It may taste good, but this is not comfort food. This is sublime and philosophical food for an educated palate.

An experiential analogue can be found in painting. When we gaze at Leonardo da Vinci's Dreyfus Madonna we admire the beatific face of the Virgin and her blue robe. However, if we look closely—and if we know the powerful meaning of signs and symbols in Renaissance painting—we see by her hand a pomegranate as if floating in air. In Christian symbolism pomegranate represents eternal life but can also signify fall from grace and man's sinful nature. Leonardi DaVinci's Dreyfus Madonna Her blue robe represents purity. We can appreciate and enjoy the painting without that knowledge, but how much richer our experience when we are educated about the depth of meaning embedded in the painting. So too, deconstructive cuisine is rich in meaning beyond the experience of a single bite. The food can be enjoyed by anyone of course, but how much richer it is when we know that the egg, potato foam, and sabayon in the martini glass is a deconstructed tortilla Espanola, the pan-Iberian tapa originally from Andalusia. Why would a Catalan, Adria, deconstruct an Andalusian tapa? Is there a subtext or is it coincidental? This isn't purely artistic creation: Adria has read and tasted extensively to come up with this food, a food of essences. One can follow the progression of his creations at the El Bulli website. It's quite fun to browse leisurely through their photo gallery of fantastical food.

Breaking food down

One of Adria's famous dishes is a liquid pea raviolo that seems to be nothing but alchemy. In fact, it's chemistry. The raviolo, (see photo at top) without a pasta skin or for that matter anything seeming to hold it together, is, at first glance, pure filling. Its little pearl of liquid baby pea essence can be seen in a clip from an Anthony Bourdain show. How do they do it? Adria uses calcium chloride and sodium alginate, a common emulsifier and thickener employed in the industry by, for example, McDonald's to keep food looking good while sitting under hot lights for the whole day. When mixed with the calcium chloride it creates a transparent polymer skin that holds El Bulli's liquid pea raviolo together.

To really appreciate the difficulty of creating and assembling this sort of concoction, consider that it must be eaten immediately because the chemical reaction of the sodium alginate and calcium chloride ultimately results in hardening. Leave it too long and you'll have hard marbles instead of liquid-gel. The Adria workshop apparently solved the problem by reversing the addition of the chemicals through experimentation, although it still can't sit around under a hot lamp. Very impressive.

zester Adria also does his own creative riffs on Spanish classics such as the previously mentioned tortilla Espanola or potato omelet. Knowledge of these Spanish and Catalan dishes assists the diner in understanding Adria's gastronomic hermenuetics.For background, a Spanish tortilla is a very thick egg dish likened to an Italian frittata but structurally nearly identical to the ma^cqūda (see photo) of the Maghrib, a kind of baked, puffy, egg pudding. The deconstructive part of Adria's creation is the separation tortilla-de-patatas-foam of the egg from the potato. The yolks are raw and complemented by a barely cooked sabayon, that becomes a kind of syrup. The caramelized onions provide the sweet in the savory bite. So where are the potatoes? The typical chunks in the Andalusian tortilla are now transformed into a rich mixture of boiled potatoes blended with cream and olive oil, then with nitrous oxide in an iSi North America Gourmet Whip to create rich foam. After the caramelized onions are spooned into a martini glass they're topped with the raw egg yolk and sabayon and finished with the hot potato cream as a crown.

Only a cynic would not be impressed with all these innovations and efforts but it does lead to an important question: Is it worth the trouble? Let's make that judgment based on the definitions of the deconstructive chefs themselves Their cuisine, they claim, is based on excellence, openness, and integrity. Excellence means working with the very finest quality ingredients. Openness means realizing the "full potential of the food," which in turn means seeking its essence and that must mean on some kind of molecular level, hence, this misnomer of molecular gastronomy. (See Part 1). Integrity requires understanding tradition, but Adria and his colleagues are transcending its limitations. We now have a more advanced understanding of cooking processes, and deconstructivist chefs are using it to radicalize their approach to classic recipes. We understand and appreciate what these chefs are doing by understanding how they define themselves.

However, is this nothing but culinary parlor tricks? Is there anything "natural" about this food? What should we make of deconstructive gastronomy in an age when we are paying a premium for natural and organic foods and the minimal amounts of food processing?

Next week: An overlooked level of human experience related to cooking and taste.

Clifford A. Wright won the James Beard/KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year award and the James Beard Award for the Best Writing on Food in 2000 for "A Mediterranean Feast."

Photos, from top: Ferran Adria's pea raviolo courtesy of El Bulli. Leonardo de Vinci's The Dreyfus Madonna from the National Gallery of Art. The El Bulli dish called "evolution of the hot ‘tortilla de patatas Marc Singla' foam," courtesy of El Bulli. Ma^cqūda by Clifford A. Wright.

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