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Decoding Ferran Adria

The other day, I had the opportunity to watch not once but TWICE a special episode where my favorite chef, traveler and fear factor ( I call him that because to see what he is willing to eat in the name of gourmet can put any fear factor participants to shame ), Anthony Bourdain takes a peek at the most controversial chef ever, Mr Ferran Ardia.  Ferran Adria has been voted as one of the most controversial, scientific non conventional chef ever.  Not many has the opportunity not only to eat at his restaurant but to take images and video footage's of Ferran Adria's secret place where he does his menu concoctions.

Ferran runs a restaurant in Barcelona called El Bulli.  It has a great strong masculine charm to it what with the proud stance of a wooden bull in front, but that is not where the story starts for Anthony Bourdain.  Ferran first met Tony at a quaint little restaurant which sells cured ham.

Now this would be a bit peculiar.  Why would the meeting place, for the very first time for a world renowned controversial chef be at a cured ham shop?  That was what Tony asked until he went in.  Inside this small shop, almost orangy brown in color hung legs of salted cured ham.  Its almost like going to your regular chicken rice stall and seeing all the chickens being hung on a metal hook except, you got 2 walls of pigs thighs and leg.  It seems that the ham that is sold in this shop (I forgot the name, but it sure hits the right note) comes from the owner's land.  The owner fed this special black hoofed pigs with acorn and lets it roam free.  With all the fresh air, fresh water and running around, the pigs do not have so much fat and this is what made it special.

The owner of the restaurant surgically slices thin strips of one of the cured ham and you can almost see the oil from the fats glistening on the owner's hand while Tony explains about the owner and the shop.  The owner would know if the ham is properly cured by sticking a special bone into the thigh, pull it out and smells it.  He knows, by just the smell of the stick, whether the ham has cured well and if the pig in its heydays wasn't getting enough exercise, water, food or clean air.

All in all what Ferran is trying to say is that some of the most simplest food, can taste so much better following a simple but creative process.  What Chef Ferran Adria is, is re-inventing the wheel for food.  That is why he has a lab, not to make some weird gastronomic concoctions filled with preservatives and chemicals but to re-create some new and wondrous food substances.  His lab called the 'Trayectoria' looks exactly what a laboratory would look like.  He has a back lite wall on which rows and rows of glass jars line up with colorful substances inside of it, much like what a specimen jar would look like in a lab and has weird symbols pasted on the front of the jars.  Each jar is a creation of Ferran Adria and his team.  His 'Trayectoria team consists of chefs and a industrial food designer.  Food must not only taste sensational but must look good too.  What comes out from this lab, is a tried and tested creation of Ferran and his team.  To start a new invention, takes careful planning and road map.  Each food substance has a symbol for it, like meat, dairy products, nuts, vegetables, fruits and such.  These symbols represent the characteristics of the food object and is easier to identify and mix, very much alike to the chemistry Periodic Table in which Ferran calls the Food Mapping.

When Ferran Adria mentions re-inventing the wheel where food is concerned, he has a clear example.  Lets say someone makes a good omelet.  Now, the omelet has already been invented by someone, much like the wheel.  Adding new ingredients to the omelet is such as mushrooms, cheese and whatever is just like adding a new spoke to the wheel or having it in a different color.  The wheel anyhow, is already round, making it nicer is just adding things to it.  Ferran's idea is to concoct new food which can't be found anywhere else in the world.  Why re-invent things?  All other chefs in the world knows that cooking encompasses of choosing the best ingredients and slaving over a hot stove for hours on end to come out with a great dish, as according to Anthony Bourdain and not being grown or conjured up in some mysterious lab, but then again, Ferran Adria is not your everyday Chef.  To state some examples of his experiments that was caught on video in his lab by Anthony Bourdain were;

• Searing the outside of a peach so that it has a consistency of foie gras.
• Thinly slicing a fish and frying the inside of it so that when presented, it looks like raw fish but actually is perfectly cooked.
• Trying to make peach caviar.  Little round droplets of peach which has the same consistency of caviar but made from 100% peach.

and other mysteries which has the help from his team also consisting of a chemist to ensure that all the food in its chemistry properties stays within a certain pH or property.  Each and every experiment is noted down so that others within his team can contribute ideas to the success of the dish.  Ferran never takes credit for the inventions.  He always says its the work of everyone in Trayectoria and not just his alone.  So what is so special about his food?  We join Anthony Bourdain at Ferran's restaurant, the elBulli for a taste treat.

elBulli Restaurant has limited seats and has almost the same number of chefs for each seat.  His chefs run like well oiled machines, specializing at doing one part of the food creation.  If anyone of his chef does something a second too early or too late, adds in a drop too much or too little, the creation is spoiled.  We get a glimpse of what is served at elBulli with Anthony Bourdain and Ferran Adria sitting in the kitchen.  I'll try and write as many servings as I can with some photographs taken from Le Monde 2 to highlight how creative and weird Ferran Adria's creations are.

The first thing to be served was artichoke chips, dried and fried which works wonders as a snack.  Then came the 1st of many weird dishes such as foam carrots served in a special glass bowl.  You see, when Ferran designs his food, some of his creations do not have the proper container for it so he had to design the container to hold his food creations, one of which is the carrot foam bowl.  100% carrots are somehow designed to come out in a foam form to be eaten.  If you think that is weird, wait till you take a gander at what comes next, which is fish floss.  You can see from the picture that the middle of the fish is in a state similar to candy floss and that is how they the meat from the fish comes out, in a flossy way.  Next is apple caviar served in an authentic caviar can.  Each bite bursts with the flavor and taste of real apples, which incidentally is made from real apples.  Other weird food designs include Parmesan spaghetti pressurized in a can.  How do you eat that?  They will squirt the spaghetti out from a can in one long string.  Fancy a glob of pasta made without solid pasta and served on a spoon or how about eating tuna marrow with caviar or eating liver soup while smelling, that's right, SMELLING a piece of rosemary.  The idea behind this is that sometimes, some food require a certain kind of smell without having the flavor into the dish.  Because rosemary's taste is rather overpowering, to get a subtle flavor to it is by smelling it.  So you slurp your soup while with the spoon in one hand and smell the rosemary with the other.  Its like drinking teh o ais and (ice tea) and smelling a lemon.  You don't get the sour taste of lemon but you get the citrus smell of it.

Tony just couldn't believe the dishes that was served that night.  It was the most exquisite and extraordinary dinner he has ever had from the most renowned chemist cum chef, Ferran Adria.

Pictures were taken from Ferran Adria's website

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- La Monde 2 - 25th Jan 2004
- Wine Spectator - 1st December 2004

Going Japanese Part Deux

I hope this time it works.  This is the 3rd time I'm trying to post about my second part at Going Japanese cooking workshop.

Okay, a week after the Sushi class was the last installment of the 3-part Japanese workshop class in cooking.  This time around, we got our hands ( well some of them did ) dirty in the making of Tempura and also Chawan Mushi ( seems to be the ideal Jap food for many women ).  This time around, its done at Hanabi Japanese Restaurant.  A quaint little corner lot at Menara Rohas in Kuala Lumpur, very close to the week before class at Ozeki Tokyo Cuisine.  Hanabi Japanese restaurant is vibrant, alive and energetic but it is contrasting.  The restaurant is littered with back lighted posters of fireworks in Japan, so you get that red, orange and yellow brightness, giving the whole idea of energy and sportiness.  On the other hand, the kitchen area is dimly lit with a very cool light box roof giving soft warm light to the kitchen area with some of those Japanese writings on pieces of paper stuck to a wooden foundation much like if you go to a Japanese restaurant in Tokyo, you know the small ones, they would write your order on this small long piece of paper and paste it on the beam in the kitchen for the cooks to look and prepare your food.  So here, one part of the restaurant is modern, fresh and lively but yet the other part is contemporary and subdued.

Well back to my class, I noticed almost the same old faces as I entered the restaurant and many of these aunties whom I believe, hardly cook or at least only cook on special occasions like when their maids run away, take leave etc.  Their characters stand out and become more apparent when they get too technical in asking questions and do not base on common sense.

Let's start with Tempura.  Tempura means to fry with batter.  It could be seafood or even vegetables.  Now the main ingredient for making Tempura is of course the batter.  To make the batter you need Tempura flour, some eggs and also what they call Dashi water or 'fish water'.  Now most of these ingredients can be purchased at your local supermarket that has a Japanese food section.  You can make all these yourselves but then again, the people who do it from scratch are professionals serving it to hundreds of people everyday, unlike for just 1 family.  So it is more economical to buy it from outside.  Important things to note are:

1. Make sure your prawns, squid or anything that you want to fry, is dry with minimum water.  Else when you fry it, the oil will splatter and sputter.
2. That you need the batter to be very cold, with ice if possible.
3. You need to use cooking oil, and loads of it to fry your Tempura and the oil must be tasteless like the Tempura oil.  Any other oil can be used if it doesn't have a strong taste and spoil the rest of the stuff.

Now I wouldn't delve into the mechanics of actually frying the stuff but it was amusing to watch how these aunties took in awe when the chef started frying the prawns and stuff.  Its like these aunties haven't seen anyone fry prawns with grace and style.

Next to be cooked is the famous Chawan Mushi or egg pudding.  A touch of difference there is that they added Gingko in it.  Little seeds of the popular Ginseng that enhances blood flow in your body.  A bit bitter to bite but its better for body ( say that quickly 5 times ).  Chawan Mushi is basically white eggs ( non-beaten ) added with crab sticks, diced chicken and some other stuff and its steamed inside the steamer ( duh, where else? ). 

So there you go, 2 more Japanese cooking to be unleashed in your fine kitchen.  Can't wait to get my own kitchen ( not that I don't have one ) but my own as in my own 1,200sq foot apartment, but that's another story.

Going Japanese Workshop

Just like what the title says, I went Japanese yesterday.  No, not Japanese car workshop nor its a Japanese language workshop, though there were some lessons learned.  I went for the Japanese Sushi Workshop.  Thats right, the macho old me has learnt how to make sushi and handrolls.  This workshop organized by Flavours Magazine from Star Publications and sponsored by Ozeki Tokyo Cuisine restaurant and Hanabi Japanese restaurant was extremely exciting and informative.  It was 1 out of 3 workshops and I missed the 1st workshop which taught about normal sushi making.  The workshop I attended was about special hand roll sushis such as Volcano Sushi, Diamond Roll Sushi, Unagi Sushi and the most ever popular, California Roll.  Apart from having free lunch (you paid for it with the class actually) you get to do hands on in rolling the sushi.  Sushi much to many people's perspective is actually not about raw fish though you do have those ingredients in some of the sushi that you make.  That title belongs to Sashimi which in Japanese means raw fish (duh). 

I was amazed at how professional and how they detailed they are regarding preperation of the items.  The chef was Master Hitoshi Nikijima from Tokyo with 15 years of experience in his belt...well his apron and chef's hat.  He has won several cooking competition including the KL Gourmet Cuisine held in Kuala Lumpur recently and he is well versed in cooking French, Italian and German food too.   Well, to make sushi, one must at least know and have the following items.

1. Sushi rice - This is one of the most important ingredient in making sushi.  Without the rice, the rest of the items cannot sit in properly.  The rice is a special rice and there is a way of washing it, letting it set, cooking it and mixing the vinegar.  If you mix it wrongly the rice will be extremely sticky and not nice to eat.
2. Vinegar water - They even teach you how to make this coz this is the stuff which makes it sticky to the rice and non sticky to your hands.  Use this a lot when handling the sushi rice.
3. Seaweed - There are many types of dried seaweed.  One type you use it to boil with your rice and the other type you use to wrap the sushi rice with.  Seaweed must also be cut into different sizes for different rolls.  Hand rolls use smaller sized dried seaweed, California rolls uses the biggest and Temaki rolls uses the average size.
4. Bamboo Mat - This is one of the most important tool to make a sushi roll.  Need 2 for different type of roll and also non stick wrap one of it.
5. A very VERY sharp knife to cut and clean everything else.

Can't tell you everything right?  We were also taught how to differentiate the different types of fish from salmon, snapper, tuna and mackeral and the different flavours and color that it has to enrich and add color to your sushi.  Also avacado plays an important part in sush making too.  All I can say is, that its pretty easy to do and is very very nice to eat.  Can't wait for my next week's workshop which covers Miso Soup and Chawan Mushi.  Will let you know all how it turns out.  Until then..Arigato Gozaimasu!

Is there a direct relationship between generations, height and food?

Am wondering.  Is there a direct relationship between generations, height and food?  Last week I suddenly realised as I was walking with an elderly person to a 'makan' or food place in Sri Hartamas, that eldery people seem to be smaller in size.  Have you wondered why?

I know that as you get older, your bone density gets less thus you get osteoperosis if in your younger days, you did not stock up on calcium.  When you are young you stand up straight but as you get older, you start bending down or slouch more, but do you actually get smaller when your bone density lessens?  Many elderly men and women happen to be so unless they were actually born small.  Look around you, the younger generations are at least twice the size of their great grandparents.  If you look at sizes and pictures to compare, our parents and those way before that, they don't seem to differ in size.  They all seem to have the same height.  My generation though starts to grow taller and the newer generations, well...they seemed to have been playing basketball all their lives.

I have a theory here.  Those who are 50 and above are considered to be the older generation, which includes my parents and my grandparents and my great great grandparents and so on and so forth.  Now back then, Malaysia was not exposed to any sort of fast food.  There were no burger joints like McD's, KFC and stuff and Asians hardly eat potatoes and wheat.  When fast food joints came into Malaysia, slowly, the generations start to take in those processed food and out of the blue you start to wonder, why these younger kids are getting taller and bigger.  My dad has a theory too.  He said its because of potatoes and wheat.  Asians are accustomed to taking in rice as their staple diet.  I mean look around from India to Japan, rice is the staple diet.  If you notice the height of these people in these countries, well basically, they are about the same height.  Only until lately.

Food does play an important role in how a child grows.  I can bet my bottom dollar that my 9 yr old nephew will grow up taller than anyone else in my family.  He is already showing signs of shooting up for a boy his age.  Amongst my family (my mom's side), my cousin who is the same age as me, is the tallest.  Standing at 6 feet tall, he spent his childhood growing up in the states where fast food was his staple diet.  He only came back when he was in high school.  So at those crucial times of growing up, he's been fed the American way and about a few years from that, the invasion of fast food joints hits Malaysia and he just continued the lifestyle.

So if I would arrange the 4 generations, you can actually see that from those aged 70 and above would be the shortest. 50 - 70 2nd shortest. 30 - 50 3rd shortest. 24 - 30 4th and the teens, well, they are towering infernoes.  You can say, "Hey, I'm not that tall too but I am in that generation", well ask yourself, what have you been eating all this time and how often?  Previously many years back we only had A&W and KFC.  When McDonalds came in and Burger King, then you see the difference and now coffee joints too are flourishing.

Just something to ponder about when you sit down sipping your latte in one of those coffee joints in town, look around you and you'll get what I mean.