Spain's new chefs turn food into 'poetry and provocation'

MADRID: Caramel threads made with a screwdriver may surprise on a dessert menu.

But today, in Spain's top restaurants, you may also be able to order pea puree that solidifies with the help of calcium chloride, liquid ravioli, honey potato, tomato sorbet, beeswax ice cream or salmon-flavoured coffee.

Just how innovative, the casual observer may wonder, can the simple act of eating get?

Those who eat just to satisfy their hunger are missing out on a whole universe, top chefs say in a country hailed as one of the world's hottest gastronomic scenes.

"Food is a language in which you can express harmony, creativity, happiness, beauty, poetry, complexity, magic, humour and provocation," said Ferran Adria, regarded by many as the world's best chef, in his Manifesto for Contemporary Cooking.

The manifesto also contained "commandments" such as stimulating the senses, effacing the borders between sweet and salty, connecting food with the world of art, and inventing recipes in which "harmony functions in small portions."

The enthusiasm of the likes of Adria is turning Spain into a culinary trendsetter, a country even more exciting than France whose nouvelle cuisine is said to have inspired Spain's gastronomic revolution in the late 1970s.

The likes of Adria or veteran chef Juan Mari Arzak have become models for dozens of younger chefs who are making their mark by experimenting wildly.

Spain is going through a gastronomic revolution comparable to the shake-up of French cooking in the early 1970s, according to the daily El Pais.

Much of it is happening in small towns in Catalonia, the Basque region, outside of the big cities.

"I am proud to say I have students in the Basque region, the United States, Japan or France," said Basque chef Martin Berasategui, one of the best-known representatives of Spanish new wave cuisine.

Strictly speaking, Spaniards have always eaten fairly well in so far as the traditional Mediterranean diet contains a large share of fruit and vegetables and is based on fresh ingredients.

Regional dishes developed before distribution networks allowed the transportation of food from one end of the country to the other, with the rich variety on offer ranging from northern meats and wines to seafood in the east and fruit in the south.

Yet for a long time, Spanish cooking was regarded as rather simple peasant food, and no ambitious Spaniard would have dreamed of becoming a cook.

All that began to change in 1976, when French chefs Paul Bocuse and Raymond Olivier visited Madrid to share their knowledge with Spaniards just opening up to new influences a year after the death of dictator Francisco Franco.

Spaniards discovered that "food is also a part of culture," said Juan Mari Arzak, who came to listen to the French chefs talk about a nouvelle cuisine based on olive oil (rather than butter and cream), fresher ingredients and exotic influences.

A culinary revolution was sparked in the northern Basque and Catalan regions, which have retained their avant-garde reputation to this day.

The undisputed king of Spain's kitchens is Catalan Ferran Adria, a visionary who seeks the advice of chemists for his high-tech cuisine.

Adria's restaurant El Bulli in the seaside town of Rosas is closed for half the year to give him time to experiment with new dishes.

Adria is said to deconstruct food like Picasso did painting, transforming textures, forms and temperatures.

The man on the street may not appreciate such refinement any more than he understands Picasso. But no lover of fine food questions the achievements of the new chefs, many of whom have also retained an earthy passion for local produce.

Source: China Daily