Spain spreads new, modern techniques

Into the stainless steel mixing bowl goes liquid nitrogen, so cold it's below minus-320 degrees. A witch's cauldron of wispy vapors spew as a mixture of ordinary olive oil and clear tomato juice is sprayed in. Then the extraordinary begins.

Whoever thinks oil and water don't mix has never seen them combine like this to create "popcorn." From this brew, fluffy kernel-like pieces emerge. They are cold and weightless on the tongue, melt into a slick of buttery fat in the warm confines of the mouth, and taste wistfully of delicate gazpacho.

This is "cooking" _ modern Spanish-style.

At the epicenter of the revolution stands Spanish sensation Ferran Adria, the Captain Kirk of gastronomy, whose personal mission has been to boldly go where no chef has gone before.

The excitement swirling around him and this gastronomic Spanish new wave was profoundly evident earlier this month at the Culinary Institute of America's Greystone campus in St. Helena. This year's annual Worlds of Flavor International Festival, which focused on the cuisine of Spain, sold out even before the brochure was printed. More than 500 people were wait-listed for the conference.

About 70 chefs from Spain flew in to demonstrate their flair and passion. But there was no doubt as to whom the 650 attendees were most there to see. When Adria strode into the school's bustling teaching kitchens for the first time, an institute representative says, it was like the parting of the Red Sea. Tickets to his intimate cooking demonstration were more coveted than those to a Rolling Stones concert. And when the quietly magnetic 44-year-old chef took the stage at the closing session, he drew a standing ovation, complete with shrieks and whistles.

In the past 22 years at famed El Bulli on the Costa Brava in Spain's Catalonia region, chef-owner Adria's wildly provocative cooking has captured the imagination of legions of chefs from around the world. His unique techniques have been adopted by many, including Wylie Dufresne at WD-50 in New York, Grant Achatz at Alinea in Chicago, David Kinch at Manresa in Los Gatos, and Dani Garcia of Calima in Marbella, Spain, who makes the liquid-nitrogen "popcorn" at his restaurant as a salad garnish.

"Ferran has taught chefs to question why they're doing things _ not to turn their backs on old ways, but to see if there are other ways to do something," says Colman Andrews, co-founder of Saveur magazine.

With containers of liquid nitrogen, xanthan gum and calcium chloride, as well as chemist-like machinery de rigeur in contemporary restaurant kitchens in Spain, is it any wonder that country has been turning out some of the world's most exciting and avant garde cooking?

The country that spawned the artistic geniuses of Gaudi and Miro has brought forth foams, "airs" (frothier, lighter versions of foam), and gelatin noodles that don't melt under heat _ novel food textures with intense flavors.

"I realize I am the reference for a lot of people," says Adria, whose El Bulli this year was named the top restaurant in the world by London-based Restaurant Magazine. "The most important thing is that thousands of cooks are asking the `why' of things. I just want to make people think."

Some may think Adria's so-called "molecular gastronomy" perplexing. Comfort food it is not. Manipulated food it is, with chefs now inspired to create sushi out of edible paper or morsels eaten off a bobbing antenna without the use of cutlery. It is food that challenges the senses, sometimes thrillingly so.

And surprisingly, in some cases, it is food made with techniques that actually can be adopted at home.

Molecular gastronomy may seem at odds with the California cuisine mantra of doing as little as possible to pristine ingredients to let their freshness shine through.

But Adria sees room for all that and more.

"Using science doesn't mean it's artificial," he explained in an interview. "If very little cooking is going on in restaurants, why should I go to eat? You have to find the balance."

Spain seems to be have found that equilibrium. Traditional tapas, paella, roast suckling pig, and super-fresh seafood simply grilled with olive oil and salt are as popular as ever. And the country's deservedly famous, sweet, buttery-beyond-belief Iberico ham finally will make its debut here next year with the first-ever imports to the United States.

As conference chairman and Adria-protege Jose Andres points out, when it comes to food, "the Spanish have been doing magic for years."

Andres, who cooked at El Bulli for years, and is now chef-owner of seven restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area, says one need look no further than the traditional Spanish dish of pil pil to see that.

In that Basque dish, rehydrated salt cod and a generous amount of olive oil are cooked in an earthenware casserole on low heat over the stove top. After about 20 minutes, without the addition of anything else, a thick, creamy sauce is somehow created.

Food scientist Harold McGee of Palo Alto, a conference moderator and author of the seminal "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen," explains that the gelatin in the cod released during cooking creates an emulsifier that binds with the olive oil to create the sauce.

Part science. Part "magic." Part wonder. It's what molecular gastronomy is all about.

Adria's extreme push-the-envelope sensibility began with an epiphany in 1986. He was listening to a lecture by acclaimed French chef Jacques Maximin when someone posed the question, "What is creativity?"

Maximin's reply was short and sweet: "Creativity is not copying."

For Adria, who up until that time had been recreating dishes from the masters, that answer forever changed his approach.

Only 8,000 people are fortunate enough to dine at the three-Michelin-star El Bulli each year for its 35-course, 5-hour, $215 tasting menu. The restaurant's Web site already states that 2007 is fully booked. Thousands more call for reservations annually to no avail. That's because Adria opens El Bulli for only six months a year (April through September). The other six months he is sequestered in his laboratory, where he and his staff create new techniques and dishes for next year's menu.

"With creative cuisine, the main characteristic is the risk, because you never know what will come out," Adria says. "Even I don't know what we will come up with each year."

A documentarian to a fault, he can tell you the year _ oftentimes even the exact date _ he came up with a dish. At www.elbulli.com, photos of his creations are catalogued from 1983 through 2005.

Many were precursors to dishes and techniques now found on menus around the globe. In 1984, he started making savory ice creams. In 1994 came the flavored foams, which became so imitated by others they bordered on cliche.

Call his cooking space-age high-tech, though, and he will take offense.

"You think this is technology?" Adria asks the crowd at his cooking demonstration while holding up a whipped cream siphon he uses to make foams. "Come on! It was invented a hundred years ago to make sodas. This is not high-tech cuisine. It's not true."

None of the additives used in molecular gastronomy should pose alarm, either, McGee says. Lecithin, used by chefs like Adria as an emulsifier, comes from soybeans and egg yolks. Alginates, used as gelatins, are made from seaweed. Calcium chloride, also used to help foods gel, already exists in our bodies in large quantities. Although no one has done a study on the long-term effects of xanthan gum, a gluten-free starch commonly used as a thickener, McGee notes that the amount the Spanish chef puts in a dish is minute.

To demonstrate just how accessible his cooking is, Adria showed off a few techniques that can be done at home.

Take the best vanilla bean ice cream you can find, and let it melt to get creme anglaise. Pour it into a whipped cream siphon, and squirt out clouds of what Adria calls the best whipped cream ever.

"Think if you serve that to your guests instead of a scoop of ice cream," he says with glee.

He shows how freshly squeezed carrot juice, with its high pectin level, can be whipped with a hand blender to create carrot "air." The taste of the sweet root vegetable shocks the taste buds, while its soap bubble-like froth vanishes instantaneously in your mouth as if it were never there.

And he gives a new way to cook fresh clams in their shells. In the conventional method, you'd drop them into a pot of simmering water and cook until their shells open. But when you do, Adria says, all the clam juices escape into the water. In his method, he cooks the clams in a pot of water for mere seconds. He fishes them out of the pot before their shells have opened. Then he uses a paring knife to shuck them.

He holds up both the conventionally cooked clam and his barely cooked clam, which is clearly plumper. And he squeezes. Juice dribbles out of his clam; none comes out of the conventionally cooked clam. Adria's barely cooked mollusk has retained all its flavor and natural juices.

It's all very simple, Adria declares about what he does, knowing full well that when it comes to the avant garde, some people naturally get skeptical or skittish.

But as Andres implores, we need only remember: "The tradition of today was avant garde 300 years ago. So what's avant garde today will eventually become tradition. The bad things will go away, but the good things will continue to stay."