Monthly Archives: September 2011

Ferran Adria and The Family Meal

New book, The Family Meal

I was prepared to dislike Ferran Adria. Through a combination of his own publicity and the attention of the world’s food critics, he has assumed a god-like culinary status. It seems likely that any human could endure that degree of praise without becoming arrogant.

Last night, he was speaking at an event organised by Waterstones for the launch of his new book, ‘The Family Meal’, a compilation of the staff meals from El Bulli, laid out with step-by-step photos for the home cook. There is not doubt that he has some arrogance – he is fond of statements like ‘before us, no-one shared anything [in professional cooking]’. He is also an infectious, passionate speaker, talking about humility in this profession, the importune of creativity, but also the important role of those who reproduce others recipes with love and professionalism.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the evening. I was intrigued to meet the man in question, but in truth my expectations were probably on the low side. Book events can be very formulaic, with a brief talk about the contents of the book, followed by lots and lots of time for buying and signing of books. As this book is about home cooking, I wondered what sort of a talk it would be, and how much we would hear about El Bulli.

Ferran, translator and helpers

I needn’t have worried. Along with his translator Lucy, Ferran Adria gave an energetic talk covering the need to think when cooking, his theories of creativity in cuisine, a history of El Bulli, the background and purpose of the new creativity institute, a video of the drawings for the new buildings, and in a 15 minute answere to the last question of the evening, a long description of the origins of the term ‘molecular gastronomy’, via Escoffier, Michel Guerard and Herve This.

Ferran obviously has very clear ideas about what constitutes genuine creativity in cooking. He explained a hierarchy of efforts, from the basic level – simply to reproduce recipes with love and professionalism, the minimum we should expect in a restaurant – to the apex of creativity. Above the basic level of reproduction are those who adapt recipes with their own amendmentsand tweaks. At the next level, there are those combining different techniques or ingredients to make something new – he gave the example of a millefeuille of strawberries and rare amazon fruits. It may be a new set of flavours, but it depends on the existing idea of a millefeuille from a pastry tradition.

At the peak, are those creating an entirely new concept or technique. He clearly thinks of chefs operating at this level as being in a different league, and feels that this represents a clear and measurable distinction between this group and the rest. He was careful, though, to emphasise that this was a difference in great creativity, not the designation of a great chef. You can be a great chef, a great cook by reproducing recipes with care.

He described the omelette, for example, as a concept that was created at some point. He also described the difference between creating a concept and invention, with an unusual device. He asked if anyone in the audience was wearing a miniskirt – when they came up to the front, he asked if anyone knew who first created the miniskirt. Mary Quant, the audience said. Yes, correct, invented in London, he said. Except, of course, it wasn’t. Have you seen films of Romans, and ancient Egyptians? They all wore short skirts. Being the first isn’t important – it’s the conceptualisation that is important.

I think this works up to a point, but this description still doesn’t give an adequate description of what conceptualisation means. In Mary Quant’s case, it might be that this became part of her brand, what she was known for. It might be about defining the new concept in opposition to other concepts, in how it is a leap forward, not a recombination of two existing things.

His second diagram of the evening described a continuum of food preparations, with natural ‘product-based’ cooking at one end, as close to nature as you can be (the platter of figs approach, perhaps) and what he called ‘elaborative’ cooking at the other end, where the natural state of the ingredients is almost impossible to find. At this end might be a puree, a sorbet, a foam, a consommé. He took trouble to explain that this was not a distinction between new and old cooking (as he wanted to explain in great detail why he didn’t think molecular gastronomy was a good term to use). He gave an example of someone who says of an asparagus sorbet, why is it necessary when asparagus on its own is so good, but then is happy to eat a strawberry sorbet for dessert at another restaurant. He also said that some people will say to him that they are unconvinced by the idea of mixing sweet dishes and savoury dishes – and then will happily go and eat a hamburger with ketchup and a coke.

His thoughts on home cooking were kept fairly brief, but were refreshing, and echoed some things I have thought about, and Trish Deseine’s recent blog post. He said that we are giving the wrong messages about home cooking. “Home cooking now means cooking pizza at home. I love pizza but I have never made it at home – it takes ages!” Restaurants are good at some things, home cooks at others, and in common with many other chefs, he would not consider making restaurant dishes in a home kitchen.

Seventies styled ingredient layouts

The impression I got was of an incredibly energetic and passionate individual, who has thought deeply about what he works on every day. The book itself is much more likeable than I expected, with seventies style layouts that show you all the ingredients and a timeline for the meal, and simple, inexpensive recipes that sound really tempting, and photos that make the whole thing feel doable. The ingredient layouts echo those in Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at home, but without any pretensions about sourcing or dng everything from scratch. He has a fondness for bought sauces and dishes like crisp omelettes and piña colada for dessert are appealingly trashy. I’ll have to wait to try the recipes out to see if they really are doable, but at the moment it looks very good – a thoughtful book, where the producers have really thought about how people will use it.

Although he made specific mention of the degree of testing that has been done at the restaurant for these recipes, I wonder whether the book has also been tested by home cooks. As others have pointed out, some of the basic recipes for sauces and stocks to freeze ahead seem to have quantities completely at odds with the amount of ingredients specified (more than 2kg of ingredients for 1kg of output, without much mention of reducing). The timelines look very helpful, but don’t specify whether the step should start or finish at the listed time. When some of the steps are likely to take even a competent cook 30 minutes or more, this seems an important distinction. But the proof of these things will be in the making. I’m preparing to clear some space in my freezer and get started.

Home cooking and changing the world

A group of nine chefs, including Ferran Adria of El Bulli (but perhaps not Heston Blumenthal) put their names to a ‘G9’ statement this week. The sense of it was that they committed, as a group, to improving the environment and people’s lives. This was fairly quickly seized on as being a somewhat hypocritical statement made by a group of chefs for extremely high end restaurants, who often have guests that fly in specially, and who themselves had flown into Peru for the conference at which the statement was made.

More disturbing than the hypocrisy was the impression they could and should influence a significant part of the world’s eating and cooking. Trish Deseine, an Irish food writer based in France, where her books are very successful, commented on this statement, and Jay Rayner’s critique with a discussion of what chefs have to do with home cooking.

I have a lot of sympathy with this view. I am as interested in El Bulli as the next gastronome, and have enjoyed the videos of the Harvard series on Science and Cooking that Ferran Adria and many other molecular gastronomes have lectured at (more coming in the autumn – you can get the audio and videos on iTunes University). However, I’m more interested in the science than the cooking. What any of these restaurants and chefs have to say about home cooking is fairly minimal.

It often surprises me that most people, even those who eat regularly in restaurants (or especially them), have little idea how a professional kitchen works, and how different it is to a home kitchen. I think most people have this slightly romantic idea that when they order a dish, the chefs start from scratch, chopping ingredients, making sauces, and then putting the whole plate together. This view of the professional kitchen is as a scaled-up version of a home kitchen and a dinner party – but this is not at all what happens.

A restaurant needs individual portions of protein, that can be portioned in advance, and then cooked to order in a short time. This will usually be things like steaks, chicken breasts, lamb chops, although the technique of sous-vide cooking makes it possible to cook tougher items like short ribs for a long time, and then just reheat them briefly before serving. All the accompaniments will be prepared as far as possible before service even starts (the mise en place) up to and including making all the sauces and keeping them warm. It’s easy and sensible to keep things like veal stock on hand, as it can be used in many different dishes, uses up leftovers or cheap ingredients that the kitchen might otherwise waste, and can cook all day (or overnight) in an out-of-the-way place. The restaurant needs to consider the margin of each menu item, how to use leftovers and scraps, and how to minimise waste and the time between order and service.

This way of cooking is completely different to a home kitchen. Having worked, albeit briefly, in a restaurant kitchen, I understand a little of the rhythms and resources that they work within, and I know they are completely different to a home cooking set up. When I reflect on the things I learnt at cooking school, I often think that what it did was to simplify the things I cook at home, not complicate them. I don’t even want to try and replicate that very different environment at home. I would rather do the things that home kitchens are good at, and get the most out of those.

At home, the important things are making a quantity that can serve many people (or over many nights) rather than individual portions. The time you get to cook is more likely in small chunks at the end of each day, and larger chunks at the weekends. Dishes like chilli and curries that can be cooked in a large batch, and that develop additional flavour when left in the fridge, are especially useful to a home cook. Baked dishes of beans or pasta, and roast joints of meat, that are portioned at the table as soon as they are done are much harder to do successfully in a restaurant. At home, you can cook something for a long time, and serve it precisely when it’s done. When was the last time you had a really good Yorkshire pudding in a restaurant? It’s really hard unless you serve it immediately.

There are good reasons to try and replicate restaurant food. Carol Blymire has progressed through the entire French Laundry cookbook, and is a long way through the Alinea cookbook too. In preparing these incredibly elaborate, multi-step recipes at home, she has learned so much more than I have about cookery, and added quite a few recipes to her home cooking repertoire. I have incredible admiration for the way she takes on these projects as a way to stretch her cooking abilities, but she never pretends that this is everyday cooking (nor do the authors of those books).

The sad thing, as Trish points out, is that we all want to be chefs. We watch Masterchef, and revere restaurant cookery, even if it’s just finding out what the chefs cook on their days off. Plain home cookery is a little out of style – perhaps with the exception of Mary Berry, flying the flag for home baking in an admirable way.

There is one major exception I would make to the general rule of keeping restaurant practice out of home kitchens, and that’s knife skills. I watched someone on the Great British Bake Off this week wielding a chefs knife while they made pork pies, and I winced. Learning to use a decent size (20cm plus) chef’s knife properly is an incredibly useful skill that will reduce the effort you make, and save your fingers. Find a course, or ask a friend who knows what they are doing to show you. It will make much more difference to your cooking than knowing how to make, say, a buttery biscuit base.