Read Online Love and Other Ways of Dying by Michael Paterniti - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Paterniti
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this, we can eat the head. Spanish people find it provocative. They have an affection for it,” he said. “At El Bulli, no, people are not prepared to eat the head. Ninety-nine percent of the people won’t eat the head. It’s not permitted in high cuisine.” He took another prawn in his hand, pulled off the head, and crushed it. This time the caramel-colored liquid pooled on the plate before him.
“But if I pour this over food in my kitchen, I’ve changed the context. I can do this and people will eat it. People will eat it and taste the Mediterranean. This is what I look for. This is what I search for. This potency. Double the potency. The depths of the sea …” He sat back for a moment, considered. Then he reflexively leaned forward, swiped a finger through the puddle of prawn nectar, brought it to his mouth, and licked it.
“Mágico,”
he said.
8. [APHORISMS FROM THE PROFESSOR, SEQUEL]
In the kitchen, scribbling in a notebook marked SISTEMA CREATIVO : “Anarchy is fine but only after logic.”
Before we said goodbye one night: “There’s more emotion,more feeling, in a piece of ruby-red grapefruit with a little sprinkle of salt on it than in a big piece of fish.”
To me, spoken conspiratorially: “The perfect meal: Have a reservation so that you can look forward to being there. In a secluded place, where there’s a certain magic in arriving. Four people, everyone on a level playing field gastronomically. There shouldn’t be a leader. Equals. When the food starts coming, concentrate on the dish, then speak about the dish. You have to laugh a lot. For me, it would be better to go with my partner because I like to have a woman by my side.”
At the end: “Until I can serve an empty white plate on a white tablecloth, there’s a lot to be done.”
9. [ON MEXICO]
During my August sojourn at El Bulli, Ferran invited me to return to Barcelona in the winter to watch him, his brother, and a third young chef, Oriol, at the workshop, where during their off months they like to experiment wildly. The workshop is located in a very old building in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona just off the Ramblas, which, when I arrived, was brightly lit with Christmas lights. I climbed a worn stone staircase that led through an enormous set of carved wooden doors, and then the workshop appeared like a modernist’s dream: a cool, high-ceilinged space with pine floorboards and white walls and Omani rugs. Upstairs, a library houses hundreds of cookbooks, as well as everything—shelf after shelf—that’s been written by or about Ferran Adrià.
From a balcony on the second floor, it’s possible to look down on the kitchen as if from a luxury box, witnessing the consternations and elations of Albert, Oriol, and Ferran. Albert is a fairer, younger version of his brother, and Oriol, at twenty-seven, is simply a madman, according to Ferran. On this morning, Oriol had just returned from the market while Albert was in hand-to-hand combat with a food processor known as the Pacojet.
It was this device that broke one day in the kitchen at El Bulli, prompting Ferran to see what would happen if they ran frozen chocolate in it, broken. From that came something called “chocolate dust,” very fine dust devils of chocolate—a kind of vanishing chocolate, something between solid and air—that Ferran seized upon as a wholly new substance.
Now the group was working on about thirty things at once, among them “basil cylinders” (flavored ice frozen in the shape of a perfect emerald cylinder, to be filled with a yet-undetermined ice cream, perhaps Parmesan), something called “sponge ham” (a complete mystery to everyone), and a bowl of foie gras and apple foam, into which the diner would pour a broth, disintegrating everything to a soup for which they were also seeking a third and fourth ingredient.
“We’re going to be much more interactive this year,” said Ferran. He showed me a morsel of grilled chicken on a white plate
“But if I pour this over food in my kitchen, I’ve changed the context. I can do this and people will eat it. People will eat it and taste the Mediterranean. This is what I look for. This is what I search for. This potency. Double the potency. The depths of the sea …” He sat back for a moment, considered. Then he reflexively leaned forward, swiped a finger through the puddle of prawn nectar, brought it to his mouth, and licked it.
“Mágico,”
he said.
8. [APHORISMS FROM THE PROFESSOR, SEQUEL]
In the kitchen, scribbling in a notebook marked SISTEMA CREATIVO : “Anarchy is fine but only after logic.”
Before we said goodbye one night: “There’s more emotion,more feeling, in a piece of ruby-red grapefruit with a little sprinkle of salt on it than in a big piece of fish.”
To me, spoken conspiratorially: “The perfect meal: Have a reservation so that you can look forward to being there. In a secluded place, where there’s a certain magic in arriving. Four people, everyone on a level playing field gastronomically. There shouldn’t be a leader. Equals. When the food starts coming, concentrate on the dish, then speak about the dish. You have to laugh a lot. For me, it would be better to go with my partner because I like to have a woman by my side.”
At the end: “Until I can serve an empty white plate on a white tablecloth, there’s a lot to be done.”
9. [ON MEXICO]
During my August sojourn at El Bulli, Ferran invited me to return to Barcelona in the winter to watch him, his brother, and a third young chef, Oriol, at the workshop, where during their off months they like to experiment wildly. The workshop is located in a very old building in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona just off the Ramblas, which, when I arrived, was brightly lit with Christmas lights. I climbed a worn stone staircase that led through an enormous set of carved wooden doors, and then the workshop appeared like a modernist’s dream: a cool, high-ceilinged space with pine floorboards and white walls and Omani rugs. Upstairs, a library houses hundreds of cookbooks, as well as everything—shelf after shelf—that’s been written by or about Ferran Adrià.
From a balcony on the second floor, it’s possible to look down on the kitchen as if from a luxury box, witnessing the consternations and elations of Albert, Oriol, and Ferran. Albert is a fairer, younger version of his brother, and Oriol, at twenty-seven, is simply a madman, according to Ferran. On this morning, Oriol had just returned from the market while Albert was in hand-to-hand combat with a food processor known as the Pacojet.
It was this device that broke one day in the kitchen at El Bulli, prompting Ferran to see what would happen if they ran frozen chocolate in it, broken. From that came something called “chocolate dust,” very fine dust devils of chocolate—a kind of vanishing chocolate, something between solid and air—that Ferran seized upon as a wholly new substance.
Now the group was working on about thirty things at once, among them “basil cylinders” (flavored ice frozen in the shape of a perfect emerald cylinder, to be filled with a yet-undetermined ice cream, perhaps Parmesan), something called “sponge ham” (a complete mystery to everyone), and a bowl of foie gras and apple foam, into which the diner would pour a broth, disintegrating everything to a soup for which they were also seeking a third and fourth ingredient.
“We’re going to be much more interactive this year,” said Ferran. He showed me a morsel of grilled chicken on a white plate
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