Posts Tagged molecular gastronomy

There are a bunch of books I want to get by Hervé This on Amazon.uk/us. The exchange rate is now great for buying things online from overseas. Great, because I am leaving for Barcelona and San Sebastian in a week.

Hervé This, a French physical chemist. Nicholas Kurt, a Hugarian physicist had an interest in applying their work to culinary problems. Perhaps it was Hervé who partnered up with the renouned chef Pierre Gagnaire because I have barely heard of Nicholas. But together they coined the term “molecular and physical gastronomy” in the late 1980′s (later termed “molecular gastronomy”). It was a start of a movement in cooking that gained wider publicity in the late 1990′s and early 2000 when chefs such as Ferran Adria, el Bulli, and Heston Blummenthal, Fat duck, pushed new and experimental concepts as a major part of the dining experience.

Foams? Spherication? Hot jellies? Liquid nitrogen? Anti-cooker? microwave sponges? If you have heard of any of these terms then you have an idea of what I am talking about. Like foams or not, this is the question.

The last few years seems to be all about practicing chefs defending the molecular gastronomy movement as genuine cooking rather and sci-fi, industrial, processed, unnatural food. Thomas Keller, Heston Blummenthal and Ferran Adria all mention the ultimate goal of cooking is to transform, to find new techniques and to better them. What difference does it make whether a computer is used or not? Browning a piece of meat is transforming too. Chemical reactions – just like cooking a egg at 63 degrees for a hour

For me, as long as it taste good, I am happy with it. New experiences just adds to the excitment. But too much and you risk loosing good taste. I’ll leave it for you to decide.

Perhaps the founder of molecular gastronomy, Hervé, had the ultimate answer in his quest to improve and experiment with culinary art. He brings our attention to our motivation to coook.

“This brings us back, finally, to the question of love. Serving a meal is to give happiness to others, not to supply nutriments: fats, proteins, carbohydrates, and so on. Even the best soufflé, both in nutritional and artistic terms, will be bad if you don’t make your guests feel at home. A meal shared with disagreeable people, no matter how elaborate or well prepared it may be, will never be good either—whereas a sandwich shared with dear friends is a perfect delight. And our grandmothers, whose cooking we all adored, may not have been very good technicians, but what they gave us before everything else was love. Yes, cooking is first and foremost about love, and only then about art, and after that technique.”

No better reason why food taste fabulous