Techniques and technicalities

The great success of last week’s editorial has induced me to delve deeper into the subject with some pertinent considerations. I can still remember the wave of criticism aimed at the Catalan Chef Ferran Adrià, back when he had his now-closed El Bulli, a restaurant in Cala Montoj, over his use of practices in the kitchen that were similar if not identical to many used in the food industry. This because he would, for example, freeze-dry some products, a procedure food giants would then copy and expand further.

He also engaged in alternative cooking methods including using liquid nitrogen, which seemed more like a chemical experiment than a kitchen technique. Making matters worse, Adrià, like many other chefs in his school, could care less about using local quality ingredients, considering them only as a means to achieve a desired organoleptic effect. And I can still remember Stefano Bonilli’s surprise when he brought Adrià to Italy to cook at an event organized by Gambero Rosso, back in its heyday, and discovered the chef used sweet, canned corn to obtain a certain flavor in his creation. Can this be considered experimentation? Or simply a means to find a new way of cooking at any cost? One that was original and unnatural at the same time, where technique is reduced to sterile technicalities.

And so the question arises: if the world of wine is expected to move more towards environmentally sustainable winegrowing, one that respects the origins and characteristics of the grape and can involve using indigenous yeasts and sharply reduced amounts of sulfites, why is the same not true for cooking, especially in regard to things like ‘molecular gastronomy’? And why is it that some champions of environmentally sustainable wine are also supporters of this food trend? This is a blatant contradiction that can be found among neo-Steinerians and the fans of certain star chefs. The chefs in question include those who obtain an exact temperature for their foods by seal wrapping them in plastic and letting them cook for long periods in special ovens. They also freeze-dry wonderful vegetables and ruin prime ingredients in order to épater la bourgeois and present them with a hefty bill.

All this is made possible thanks to the complicity of food critics and a rich and often incompetent clientele ready and willing to pay the bill without realizing or wanting to accept that the emperor has no clothes.