El Bulli and the new Spanish cuisine
The most creative, innovative and daring cooks in Europe these days are to be found in Spain, and the powerhouses of the new Spanish cuisine are located in the Basque Country and Catalonia. If there's one restaurant that exemplifies all that's best in the new approach it's El Bulli, outside Barcelona. Chef Ferran Adria rightly regards his work as art:
"I have no doubt that art can manifest itself in gastronomy, as much in the creation as in the perception of the diner. In my view, the true artists are the diners who are able to experience emotion as they confront a plate, to touch something that is difficult to conceive without resort to metaphor, or (and why not?) to bright ideas like that of a good Andalusian friend of mine: 'Art is the experience of a shiver down the spine.' "
Earlier this year, Jonathan Day and Robert Brown of the wonderful eGullet visited El Bulli and consumed a remarkable 30 dishes, including:
Mango caramelizado con pistachios y yuzu
"Caramelized mango with pistachios and yuzu. Inside a tiny "eggroll" was an intensely-flavored powder that turned into delicious mango juice when the dish was eaten."
Ravioli de guisantes
"Each person received two spoons placed on a small black stone. One held a round, transparent pasta filed with the liquid essence of peas; the other was filled with lightly cooked spring peas, tiny and impeccably fresh. This was a highlight."
Manzana especiada con piel de limon en tempura
"Spiced apple with tempura lemon peel"
Ventresca de salmon con amarenas
"Salmon belly with bitter cherries; the perfect salmon belly seared in pork fat, served with a strand of salmon eggs encased in a translucent skin, a fish reduction and a bitter cherry."
Menudillos de conejo a la gelee de garbanzos
"Rabbit brains with garbanzo jelly"
El Bulli may be expensive, but cooking as art and dining as appreciation do not come cheap, and neither should they.
Diarist of the day: James Boswell, 22 September 1773[touring the Western Isles and Hebrides] "As we sailed along Dr Johnson got into one of his fits of railing at the Scots. He owned that they had been a very learned nation for a hundred years, from about 1550 to 1650; but that they afforded the only instance of a people among whom the arts of civil life did not advance in proportion with learning, that they had hardly any trade, any money, or any elegance before the Union; that it was strange that, with all the advances possessed by other nations, they had not any of those conveniences and embellishments which are the fruit of industry, till they came in contact with a civilized people. "We have taught you, (said he,), and we'll do the same in time to all barbarous nations — to the Cherokees, — and at last to the Ouran-Outangs;' laughing.
BOSWELL: 'We had wine before the Union.
JOHNSON: 'No, sir, you had some weak stuff, the refuse of France, which would not make you drunk.
BOSWELL: 'I assure you there was a great deal of drunkenness.
JOHNSON: 'No, sir; there were people who died of dropsies which they contracted in trying to get drunk.' ."
