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  Texture, Cachaca and El Bulli!

Hervé This is very specific in the terms he uses, and he stressed the fundamental difference there is between molecular gastronomy, which is, as stated above, the scientific study of physical and chemical processes that occur in cooking, and molecular cuisine. Because he thinks culinary sayings and oldwife's tales are invaluable starting points for his research, he is working on gathering them in a database. When you freeze a liquid by lowering its temperature slowly, the crystals form progressively, hooking themselves up to those crystals that are already formed. If, on the other hand, you lower the temperature very quickly, all crystals form at the same time, without having a chance to link themselves to one another. This is why the texture of a sorbet is more pleasant if it has been frozen quickly, hence the use of liquid nitrogen, which lowers the temperature of the liquid instantly. The intrasauce technique consists in injecting a sauce inside an ingredient with a syringe, think Grand-Marnier injected in the flesh of a duck (a dead one, I mean).

Sous vide (low-temperature cooking of vacuum-sealed foods) is probably the best-known high-tech cooking method. To infuse the cachaça in its strawberry caipirinha. With a normal infusion, you have to wait a long time to get the flavor you want, but the freshness is lost. The vacuum method is much quicker: All the air is sucked out of the fruit, replacing it with the alcohol; a second whirl pulls some of the alcohol out of the fruit, infusing the cachaça with the flavor of strawberry. Big companies use vacuum techniques primarily for economic reasons, like shipping and preservation. In addition to these applications, for decades, manufacturers have been using a technique similar to Arnold’s to process rice: Employing a vacuum, they remove air from the rice kernels, allowing water to penetrate them more fully. This results in improved texture, nutrition, and ease of processing

Eating at El Bulli is less dinner than performance art. Adrià seems to me a Picasso of food, having moved beyond classical cuisine into another realm. Adrià looks and acts like Picasso too: about the same height and build, with wild dark eyes and palpable sexual energy. With art and food you need your body; you need knowledge of sex and death. The last course, a chocolate dessert called autumn landscape, made me think the meal was too short and that this was the last thing I’d ever eat. Adrià is creating a language for future chefs while conjuring a fantastical alchemy of love, one in which eating, thinking, nourishment, and feeling merge.

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