6. Ferrán Adria / Anthony Bourdain : la memoria del gusto.
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Hilos conductores:
Lo nuevo y las nuevas emociones. La memoria del gusto.
La cocina es una instancia en el proceso de transformación de los alimentos. La cocina es un taller donde se investiga en equipo.
La construcción de un “mapa” o una gramática propia.
En la cocina se encuentran arte y ciencia en una definición posiblemente parcial o posiblemente total de cada uno de los términos.
La comida vista como arte como procesos.
Todos los alimentos tienen la misma jerarquía, lo importante son los procesos de transformación e investigación.
La cocina y comer como la más extrema experiencia del arte efímero.
Lo nuevo y las nuevas emociones. La memoria del gusto.
La cocina es una instancia en el proceso de transformación de los alimentos. La cocina es un taller donde se investiga en equipo.
La construcción de un “mapa” o una gramática propia.
En la cocina se encuentran arte y ciencia en una definición posiblemente parcial o posiblemente total de cada uno de los términos.
La comida vista como arte como procesos.
Todos los alimentos tienen la misma jerarquía, lo importante son los procesos de transformación e investigación.
La cocina y comer como la más extrema experiencia del arte efímero.
El procedimiento:
Se parte del audio original del programa de Bourdain “Decoding Ferran Adria”. Se lleva a cabo una pseudosistemática transcripción del audio a texto. Luego, se realiza una traducción del texto en inglés a un texto en español. El texto en español se lee en voz alta, se graba y se transcribe otra vez. De esta forma, todos los procesos establecen un vínculo entre la palabra hablada y la palabra escrita, -y viceversa-, llevando a cabo un ejercicio pseudotécnico en la forma más pseudosistemática posible de vinculación entre las dos formas de la palabra.
La versión en español se realizará en un futuro próximo o distante o no se realizará.
Se parte del audio original del programa de Bourdain “Decoding Ferran Adria”. Se lleva a cabo una pseudosistemática transcripción del audio a texto. Luego, se realiza una traducción del texto en inglés a un texto en español. El texto en español se lee en voz alta, se graba y se transcribe otra vez. De esta forma, todos los procesos establecen un vínculo entre la palabra hablada y la palabra escrita, -y viceversa-, llevando a cabo un ejercicio pseudotécnico en la forma más pseudosistemática posible de vinculación entre las dos formas de la palabra.
La versión en español se realizará en un futuro próximo o distante o no se realizará.
Listado incompleto de elementos del menu o alusivos al menu:
Jamón de pata negra o jamón ibérico de bellota. Frappé de agua de pino. Chips de alcachofas. Polvo de fois grâs congelado con consomé de fois grâs. Tempura de limón. Ruibarbo con pimienta negra. Discos de lilas y frambuesas. Piel de erizo de mar frita (chicharrón de erizo de mar). Chucho fritos. Hojuela frita de la piel del cerdo ibérico (chicharrón de cerdo ibérico). Jamón de toro o atún curado con sabor a jamón ibérico. Yema de hueva cruda envuelta en caramelo (al soplete). Sánduche de helado de queso parmesano. Fibra única de dos metros de longitud de spaghetti en aerosol. Caviar de manzana. Beluga. Pescados envueltos en algodón de dulce. Ravioli sin piel de guisantes. Espuma de zanahoria. Polvillo de fois frâs congelado con consomé de fois gràs. Canelón de médula de hueso, trufas y sesos de conejo. Jibia en ravioli de coco. Scampi con romero. Canicas de café y rosas en [lichy]. Tierra de chocolate. Bolas de helado de limón rellenas de fresas, limón y rosas. Ostras en yogurt. Yogurt de avellana envuelto en nuez de macadamia.
(begin transcription)
Anthony Bourdain (off): What is a meal? Which is better a truffle or a peach? I thought I knew the answers to these questions. I was wrong. I´m Anthony Bourdain, and for over twenty five years I´ve been a chef in New York City. [At] the end of the twentieth century it was good to be a chef. I understood, I thought, the roots, the fundamentals, the boundaries of my trade. I was comfortable with those parameters. I knew certain things to be true: art was good, science was bad. Food in its most natural state, or [coaxed] in a submission by application of heat was good. Food that was processed was bad. Good food came from [(chaotic places where)] overheated craftsmen sweated and toiled and cursed their capricious client tell and their cool masters. Food technologists were people who only bred giant flavorless fruits and vegetables, primarily for long shelf life and consistent coloration. But could a scientist also be an artist? Could something [soulful], beautiful and delicious be produced under laboratory conditions? I didn´t think so. And then came Ferran Adria: things are different now. The recently published “El Bulli” cookbook weighing […] nearly ten pounds is perhaps the hottest most sought after-revolutionary document in the annals of cookbooks. Nearer to the black monolith in 2001 space odyssey than a cookbook is […] up, debated, poured over by chefs around the world. An object both spectacularly impressive and intimidating.
Jamón de pata negra o jamón ibérico de bellota. Frappé de agua de pino. Chips de alcachofas. Polvo de fois grâs congelado con consomé de fois grâs. Tempura de limón. Ruibarbo con pimienta negra. Discos de lilas y frambuesas. Piel de erizo de mar frita (chicharrón de erizo de mar). Chucho fritos. Hojuela frita de la piel del cerdo ibérico (chicharrón de cerdo ibérico). Jamón de toro o atún curado con sabor a jamón ibérico. Yema de hueva cruda envuelta en caramelo (al soplete). Sánduche de helado de queso parmesano. Fibra única de dos metros de longitud de spaghetti en aerosol. Caviar de manzana. Beluga. Pescados envueltos en algodón de dulce. Ravioli sin piel de guisantes. Espuma de zanahoria. Polvillo de fois frâs congelado con consomé de fois gràs. Canelón de médula de hueso, trufas y sesos de conejo. Jibia en ravioli de coco. Scampi con romero. Canicas de café y rosas en [lichy]. Tierra de chocolate. Bolas de helado de limón rellenas de fresas, limón y rosas. Ostras en yogurt. Yogurt de avellana envuelto en nuez de macadamia.
(begin transcription)
Anthony Bourdain (off): What is a meal? Which is better a truffle or a peach? I thought I knew the answers to these questions. I was wrong. I´m Anthony Bourdain, and for over twenty five years I´ve been a chef in New York City. [At] the end of the twentieth century it was good to be a chef. I understood, I thought, the roots, the fundamentals, the boundaries of my trade. I was comfortable with those parameters. I knew certain things to be true: art was good, science was bad. Food in its most natural state, or [coaxed] in a submission by application of heat was good. Food that was processed was bad. Good food came from [(chaotic places where)] overheated craftsmen sweated and toiled and cursed their capricious client tell and their cool masters. Food technologists were people who only bred giant flavorless fruits and vegetables, primarily for long shelf life and consistent coloration. But could a scientist also be an artist? Could something [soulful], beautiful and delicious be produced under laboratory conditions? I didn´t think so. And then came Ferran Adria: things are different now. The recently published “El Bulli” cookbook weighing […] nearly ten pounds is perhaps the hottest most sought after-revolutionary document in the annals of cookbooks. Nearer to the black monolith in 2001 space odyssey than a cookbook is […] up, debated, poured over by chefs around the world. An object both spectacularly impressive and intimidating.
Carrot foams, aerosol spaghetti [(skinless)] raviolis, created in secret laboratories with the help of biochemists and an industrial designer? And behind all these is a chef named Ferran Adria. Before I met Ferran Adria y dismissed him publicly as the “foam dude”, and privately hoped that he will take his weird science approach to cooking and fade away. But like a bad penny, he kept popping up. It’s no exaggeration to call Ferran Adria the most controversial chef on the planet. His restaurant –El Bulli- is hands down the most sought-after reservation. Now, I’ve come to terms with the facts that I’m getting old. I’ve come to terms with the fact that the world has changed. But none of that was helping me to understand what was going on in a restaurant in a remote area of the Costa Brava, in a laboratory in Barcelona, or inside the mind of Ferran Adria. [But] I had to find out. (3:00”)
DECODING FERRAN ADRIA
Bourdain: I first met Ferran Adria in two thousand two. A mutual friend brought me over to the lab to meet him, and first that was out of his mouth to me was something like: “tomorrow I’m going to display the entire concept of what jam is, what jam can be” and the next day we met here, this store, and he proceeded to do just that.
Bourdain (off): “Jamonísimo”, a tiny jam shop in the center of Barcelona (---) for our first meeting Ferran doesn’t take me to some high end restaurant, certainly not his high end restaurant, and he doesn’t want to hang out and show me some new [fangled] process in his lab. So, why here? Why jam? What was it about this place that so fascinated him? My curiosity was [peaked]. He introduced me to Señor Martin, owner of “Jamonísimo”, who quickly began educating me on the intricacies of making Spanish jamon, or jam. Jamonísimo is a specialty shop dealing in Ibérico de bellota. Not just any old jam but jam made from “pata negra”, a black footed Iberian pig, which is allowed to grace freely in the fall and early winter months on bellota, the sweet ate corn. Some of these jamons take over four years to make, and at just a glance, they worth the wait.
Bourdain: you know, it’s not a matter of which is better, it’s, all have unique features and strengths.
Bourdain (off): jamons from three distinct regions of Spain (---) [Extremadura, Andalucia,] and Salamanca. Each has his own unique characteristics depending on the particular conditions in which the pigs were raised and the various conditions in which they were cured. This Salamanca jamón comes from pigs raised by Senor Martin’s own family.
Sr. Martin: y mi padre les ha dado toda la bellota que han querido...
Bourdain (off): Martin points out to me that his father fed these pigs all the [eat corns] they could eat.
Sr. Martin: ¡Toda!
Bourdain: Oh, you know that’s good!
Sr. Martin: y por lo tanto al ponerle menos sal...
Bourdain (off): Salamanca’s jams take a longer time to cure because they have less salt and more fat. You can tell when they are ready when they begin to sweat.
Bourdain: simplification, but […] lots of information there.
Bourdain (off): curing these jams takes skill and patience: knowing when they are ready: that’s centuries of trial an error at work.
Sr. Martin: donde se le nota es en la parte de la punta...
Bourdain (off): another way to determine the correct degree of curing and flavor is the “cala”, a thin bone spike.
Sr. Martin: puede detectarse en su en su alimentacion... (6:00”)
Bourdain (off): the sweet bitter smell of the stake determines a lot.
Bourdain: into the [thigh] where the salt drips down, you can tell –no, I can’t tell, you can’t tell- he can tell all. Everything you need to know about this jam. Is the bone properly formed? What was it fed, was it stored properly? Is it ready? Is it good? Is it enough… I mean, everything, it´s all there.
Sr. Martin: experiencia y tradición...
Bourdain (off): experience and tradition tell him when it’s ready. It is a little it of a secret…
Sr. Martin: un poco el secreto ahí ¿no?
Bourdain: you know, this stuff, you know, you don’t throw on the slicer. That would be heretical. Look at that fat.
Sr. Martin: aquellos jamones eh…
Bourdain (off): listening to Martin and watching that magnificent jam being sliced I was beginning to understand why Ferran brought me here. Why Jamonísimo might be a good starting point. Making jam after all is a process. It’s all about the transformation of one food into another. Obviously there was something about this transformation that Ferran was […] to.
Bourdain: the place to be, when eating a good meal is have someone who knows what the hell they are talking about, take you by the hand and take you on a ride. You sort of close your eyes and go with it… Oh, yes!
Martin: este... el jamón ibérico de bellota, o jamón ibérico, se debe comer con los dedos...
Bourdain: he just pointed out that the jam should be eaten with the fingers. I was very happy to hear that. So this jam has been under his family’s control for birth until this point, which is my idea of quality control. Oh yes! Look at this fat. And the smell… Oh man! Just beautiful!
Martin: el animal lo consigue a partir de los sesenta días de estar en el campo andando libremente.
Bourdain: We are discussing the fat. This is one of the few animals in the world that do this naturally. The fat just doesn’t pile alone on the outside, it ripples through the meat. (…) is achieved only on an animal that spends sixty days running around free.
Martin: si un secadero está rodeado pues de árboles frutales...
Bourdain: when you are drying the leg, the air, the microorganisms in the air, what’s in the particular soil, all of that is heart of the eventual flavor…
Martin: ...como producto vivo…
Bourdain: beautiful! And the flavor, you can taste… what it ate, where it came from, the wonderful confluence of natural forces, the wind, the [pole], the altitude, the diet. Beautiful thing. (9:00”)
Bourdain: (off) it’s this knowledge and attention to detail that reminds me an observation Ferran made when we ate here together for the first time. He said. “what’s wrong with transforming food? The making of jam is a process, ibérico jam is better than fresh pork, no? just as good sherry is better than the grapes it’s made with”. After all (---) having tasted fatty ate corn fed cured pork and all it’s fresh slice glory I find it hard to disagree.
Bourdain: I wish you cold smell this. The smell in this room is incredible. Do you think that is I stuff one of these […] down my pants I can make a few customs? I want one. I Just want to have it hanging in my kitchen, or my living room, and gaze upon it. I think I understood a few vital and important points about Ferran Adria at this first meeting. At least I understood one thing: this is a guy who likes food.
(edited sponsors)
Bourdain: people say that when you are talking about cooking, you are talking about cuisine, that there’s nothing new under the sun. That you can’t reinvent the wheel, that you basically are reinventing the same thing over, and over and over, maybe adding a spoke here and there… but when you mention Ferran Adria and what he’s doing at his restaurant “El Bulli” people tend to get confused.
Bourdain: (off) I am headed to Ferran´s workshop to try to make sense of it all.
Bourdain: so, through these doors, in what was once a gothic era palace, a bunch of talented chefs and cooks developing new menus, or a portal to another dimension.
Bourdain (off): the controversy about Ferran [(Adria it’s focused on his approach)]. To the outside world it seems distant, analytical, scientific, […]. Even for me, and old school French […] bistro cook of middling abilities, I don’t like the sound of a guy who experiments in a workshop, whose kitchen [---] flames; no, I don’t like the sound of that at all.
Boudain : this is the taller. [---] as the laboratory for those barely in the new but really a workshop.
Bourdain (off) : when you walk into the taller´s main workstation there are backlit clear glass jars, hidden induction burners, and […] placed equipment everywhere. There’s a definite element of “Doctor No” secret laboratory at play. It’s here in “El taller”, or the workshop, where Ferran, his brother Alberto, their partner, Oriol Castro, a chemist, Pere Castel, and an industrial designer Luki Huber, work together to push old concepts from last season (12:00”) forward to [create] new concepts. There’s one concept at the heart of everything that is unchanging and truly revolutionary. While the world writes and speaks of Ferran Adria, within the taller there’s and environment of team work. Results are what matters. Ideas are freely discussed and credits shared. And earlier in this visit, through our interpreter, Lucy García, Ferran made sure I understood this.
Ferran: ...lo más importante que, que hay…
Lucy: …one of the very important things is the team. Normally the chef is the center of the universe in the kitchen. I might be the media star…
Ferran: ..pero en verdad…
Lucy: …they are part of the history of El Bulli. They participate in the creativity in the same level as Ferran does…
Ferran: …Alberto dos días seguidos...
Lucy: …if you spend two days with Alberto…
Ferran: ...o Oriol…
Lucy: …or with Oriol, you would realize that in normal circumstances they should have their own restaurants…
Ferran: ...la gran diferencia entre el Bulli…
Lucy: …this is the great difference between El Bulli and other creative restaurants. They never say “I”, “I do”, “I made”, it’s “We”.
Ferran: el equipo…
Lucy: . ... it’s the team…
Bourdain (off): let’s be clear here. Ferran is the guiding light and undisputed spiritual leader of this revolution, but the free exchange of ideas is based on this respect for the team.
Bourdain: what is the question of the day? What are they investigating?
Lucy: he’s looking at the sensation of grilling a peach.
Bourdain: and what is he [pressing]?
Lucy: he’s [pressing] smints, peach flavored smints.
Bourdain: the [ground up] candy is sprinkled on the peach and used as a caramelizing agent.
Lucy: the treatment he is trying to give it is like a fois grâs…
Bourdain: seared on the outside and soft in the middle…
Lucy:…seared..
Bourdain: it looks like (…) fois
Ferran: que lo pruebe!
Lucy: try it...
Bourdain: it does feel like it. Doesn’t?
Ferran: si, eh... demasiado cocido...
Lucy: it’s a bit too cooked...
Bourdain: now, making peaches eat like fois grâs is a [cute] trick but the team [I learnt] is also examining a deeper set of issues.
Lucy: ..then the kitchen was like for a lot of cooks…
Ferran: fois grâs…
Lucy: fois grâs…
Ferran: langosta, trufas…
Lucy: lobster , truffles…
Ferran: ...y un día...
Lucy: …and one day...
Ferran: ...nos preguntamos “¿por qué?”
Lucy: …“why?”, we asked ourselves, “why?”
Ferran: por el precio!
Lucy: the price! And we decided…
Ferran: ...una pera...
Lucy: a pair…
Ferran: ...es igual a una [...]
Lucy: …is the same as any of the best fish.
Ferran: ...no mejor ni peor...
Lucy: …not better or worst...
Ferran: igual.
Lucy: …it’s the same.
Bourdain (off): and this it seems is the crux of Ferran Adria´s philosophy. Here he’s working on transforming and assigning value to foods (15:00”) that we would normally underrate as less important than others. In developing new dishes and concepts (---) and here every element, every technique is [pain-stakingly] recorded. In order to transform a food one needs to know why food behaves the way it does, and quantify that. To do that they developed a system of symbols and classifications for products and procedures. This information is used to create and continuously evolve a blue print of culinary products, technologies, preparations and styles they refer to as simply: “the map”.
Lucy: you are the first people to see this … They started this collaboration to ask the whys of things…
Ferran: científico…
Lucy: they want to know about the science…
Bourdain: right. So, any item that comes in you examine it from all of these aspects. I see… mechanics… acoustics!
Ferran: formulas…
Lucy: they just don’t want people to think that they sit here and create chemical formulas…
Bourdain: This is not science class…
Lucy: no.
Bourdain: this is cooking.
Ferran: es fantástico!
Bourdain: Ferran [(once said to me)] “if a make you a Spanish omelet, I’m doing something I already know how to do. Here we try to do things we don’t know how to do. Who ever created the first omelet created a technique, and a concept. The taller exists to create new techniques and new concepts, sometimes small, sometimes big, but always “new” ”.
Team member: el pepino se come con limón, no? O con vinagre.
Lucy: cucumber is eaten with lemon or vinegar. What happens when you exaggerate the proportions?
Bourdain: I’ve been exaggerating proportions for years, but these guys are working on a different plane. Just trying to catch up here.
Lucy: it could be a cucumber that has no flavor or taste…
Team member: o bien es lima con textura.
Lucy: or it’s a lime with texture. If I told you this was a citreous fruit from Tasmania, you would say that…
Bourdain: ahá, yeah I might find that.
Ferran: cítrico…
Bourdain: that is water and lactic acid. It’s meringue like in texture (---) Next you, you are going […] to think what flavor to put in without destroying the texture. Truffles you think “yes, that would work”. So the Ph, the acidity is going to be very important on this.
Bourdain (off): the team is concerned with all aspects of the eating experience. Textures, colors and taste. Not just how something tastes, but how taste is experienced differently by each individual.
Ferran: es perfecto!
Lucy: we all think our taste the, is perfect, is the best…
Ferran: es nuestro, no?
Lucy: it’s ours… but… Pere´s brought something. There are people who genetically detect this and people who genetically can not detect it.
Ferran: amarga, amargo…
Lucy: it’s a bitter taste. (18:00”)
Team member: ¿no lo notarás?
Ferran: no.
Lucy: no lo notás...
Lucy: he, for example, doesn’t notice it.
Ferran: y esto es increíble…
Bourdain: no
Lucy: sí. Uy sí, sí, sí, sí, sí. It’s very bitter. Imagine what this means: we all taste in a different way.
Bourdain: so two people out of ten at a table might find something bitter [(part of the work in the lab)] is about perception, how thing may not be what they appear.
Lucy: he’s going to cook it but he’s going to try to make you get the impression that it’s raw.
Bourdain : ah!
Ferran: fíjate que, qué color más bonito de sardina.
Lucy: look at the color, that’s really beautiful.
Team member: yo necesito comer para…
Lucy: he has to eat it. Hum! You like it?
Bourdain: hum!
Team member: flavor roast?
Bourdain: right!
Team member: but... cuando lo ves dices “poco hecho”...
Lucy: It looks undercooked but its cooked.
Bourdain: no, no, it’s perfect! We are about to see something that has never been shown on television and in fact there has been some controversy within the ranks here […] whether they want to show us at all. They are not going to explain what they’re doing, but, they are going to do it, whatever it is.
Bourdain (off): Ferran and his team had developed a technique where they can make certain flavor liquids congeal at precisely the perfect temperature (…) today’s experiment is an attempt to making mango caviar. Some experiments end in failure.
Ferran: está bien pero está muy espeso.
Lucy: it’s still too thick.
Ferran: pero está bien.
Team member: ¿qué dices?
Ferran: denme un segundo...
Bourdain: sometimes most experiments end in failure and need to be readdressed.
Pere (?): es muy mejorable, eh?
Lucy: can be very much improved. They are going to try it more.
[?] : osea que…
Bourdain: that’s exactly why the taller is so important.
Ferran: el año pasado vino Luki...
Lucy: last year Luki joined the team…
Ferran: un diseñador industrial…
Lucy: an industrial designer...
Bourdain (off): given that you can’t just pop down your local k-mart and pick up aerosol spaghetti dispensers or glassware for serving carrot foams, Luki Huber, the industrial designer, is a pretty busy guy. Not every item’s purposes is self evident however.
Bourdain: the rubber glove…
Lucy: this is for the end of the meal.
Ferran: (blowing into the glove and then moving it from left to right and backwards, goodbye) …[hacer goodye]
Bourdain: ha!
Lucy: well, we’re a little bit wild
Ferran: todo el trabajo que hay…
Lucy: all the work gives an image of being quite cold and distant…
Ferran: todo esto…
Lucy: we only do this to serve people and make them happy.
Ferran: … para que la gente sea feliz.
Bourdain (off): el taller is a place where questions are asked. About the physical properties of food: can we do this? (21:00”) Can we do that? Questions about dinning, about the fundamental nature of cuisine and gastronomy. In here they work together as a team, experimenting, testing, and dreaming. Trying and failing, and trying again to make things once again new.
(edited sponsors)
Bourdain (off): two hours north of Barcelona, Spain, along the Costa Brava [nestled] by a small coast, surrounded by trees is “El Bulli” Ferran Adrian´s tradition defined trend setting restaurant.
Bourdain: do I look nervous? I am nervous. I’ve seen the book, I’ve heard the theories, I’ve been to the lab… now to eat the food. I’m nervous. Do I look nervous? I’m scared. I feel inadequate to the task. This is a bit a kind of a life changing experience so far and [hell] I haven’t even eaten the food yet. Do I have a kind of a frightened, ner… nervous, neurotical look on my face? [(My dog had it)] when I yelled at him. I need a drink.
Bourdain (off): the first thing one notices when entering “El Bulli” is that it is indeed a restaurant. Not a palace, a spaceship, a temple or the culinary equivalent to euro disney. The dinning areas reminiscent of the kind of up skilled restaurants found around the world these days. The kitchen, however, is quite a different story. If the taller is defined by the free willing exchange of ideas in a collegial environment, this is a disciplined army of food professionals, putting on the equivalent of a broadway show in thirty-two acts. (…) The production of each dish has been work out to the last detail. The success or the failure of the technique or procedures underlying these dishes can come down to a drop, a degree, or a second too much or too little. And while failure is not an option here there’s a remarkable lack of chaos for a large kitchen. Less banging and yelling, certainly not the mush pit environments I am used to. Cool, elegant, quiet, modern. Fifty five cooks serve one sitting per night of fifty-five guests. It’s more like the spirit of mission (24:00”) control, or the bridge of the enterprise, you know, […] going where no kitchen has gone before. Ferran comes out to greet me and our mutual friend and book editor Anik Lapointe. And introduces me to Oriol Castro, the one member of the taller who was absent the day before.
Ferran: …atelier…
Bourdain (off): we sited in the kitchen at the chef’s table. Right in the middle of [(the kitchen)]. “All right, feed me”. One hardly expects to begin this meal with a cocktail and a basket of rolls, so a frappe of green pine water served with artichoque chips isn’t so much surprising as it is surprisingly appropriate.
Ferran: salud!
Anik: chin!
Bourdain: that was water of pine tree. This is great. You would think of it overpowered or [over aromatic], no, no, no, it’s clean and astringent, and goes well with this: artichoque chips. So did I understand him correctly when he said this is only like the third time he has eaten in the kitchen?
Anik: (to Ferran then to Bourdain…) […]
Ferran: no, no, no… pero solo
Anik: (to Bourdain) no, no, he eats a lot in the kitchen but alone, and just around seven, he eats…
Ferran: me como un menú, entero…
Anik: he eats all the plates
Bourdain: does he think he will be able to relax and enjoy or he… is the radar on?
All (almost at the same time): the radar is on
Bourdain (off): (…) strange and wondering textures emerging from the kitchen. A series of a small tapas like plates that I’ve never seen before. Lemon tempura with licorice, raspberry lily pans?
Bourdain: ruibarb with black pepper, it’s great!
Bourdain (off): there’s no shyness in the flavors here, maybe […] but shyness, no! Ah! a fried chip of the skin of the sea cucumber . And we’ll eat the inside of the sea cucumber later, and it’s just… hum!
Ferran: ...y esto es…
Bourdain: pork skin is always one of my favorite things, with yogurt. These aren’t like the pork […] that you buy at your local seven eleven…
Anik: they do them like in Mexico
Bourdain: aha! “chucho fritos”.
Bourdain (off): these pork scratchings are made from iberical jam fat. The best in the world. Salty, crunchy, flavored fat, complemented by a creamy sour yogurt. Wonderful.
Bourdain: this is not a combination that would [have] occurred to me, but man, it’s good.
Bourdain (off): even in these opening dishes, the preface to main courses, what Ferran calls snacks, you can begin to sense the innovation, and impious sense of humor at work. “Jamon de toro” arrives next. Upon un “toro” for bull, it’s in fact fatty tuna belly cured and flavored like iberical jam, served with silver pincers designed to pick up the theorily thin slices without bunching or tearing. (27:00”)
Ferran (to Anik, pinpointing Bourdain´s use of the pincers): es muy importante como lo come, mira, mira, mira…
Ferran (to Anik, holding one of the pincers with his right hand): dile que esto es una pijería…
Anik (to Bourdain): [this is a […] thing] this is at the limit of snobbery for him.
Bourdain: it’s outrageous.
Bourdain (off): Adria is combining elements that I never imagined that could go together.
Anik (exclaiming excited, when a cook brings some rounded white shape): con jamón! (to Bourdain) cherries with jam.
Bourdain: cherry with, cherry with jam (as he rises the white rounded shaped artifact). It looked like a cherry in white fondant. It’s a cherry […] in iberical jam fat. So you get this full iberical jam fat flavor, already a good thing, and then a cleansing cherry explodes in the center. Ah! Outrageous.
Bourdain (off): and when you are an innovator like Adria, it’s not only about the thoughtful combination of elements that is new, but the process in which they are combined that’s so unique. The next course is called “golden egg”. A single raw egg yolk [shell laqued] in caramel. A tiny golden pillow. Like a number of Adria dishes registers flavors on the tongue in distinct sequence. First shock, disorientation, then comforting reassurance.
Bourdain: what’s that flavor?
Ferran, Anik (at almost the same time): egg yolk.
Bourdain: caramel.
Ferran: caramelo. Es una técnica de caramelo con...
Anik: in 1996... it’s a technique they discovered. They can caramelize everything they want.
Bourdain: (…) two or three distinct flavors
Bourdain (off): cheese, what’s next? A cheese ice cream sandwich?
Anik: helado de queso…
Bourdain (off): a tiny parmeggiano ice cream sandwich is an extreme example of playing on comfort food.
Bourdain: I never had anything like for me.
Ferran: mire que un dia...
Anik: In some years you’ll see it in the supermarket.
Ferran: no mías…
Anik: not his, but somebody will just pick it up.
Bourdain (off): again and again things are not what they seem. He [suckles] you in and then gives you something else. Apple caviar: tiny beautiful globules of an earthly apple essence are served in a caviar tin. Looks like caviar, but tastes like pure apple. A revelatory and [therely] delicious practical joke.
Anik: trade mark imitation Bulli.
Bourdain: it’s fabulous.
Ferran: todos los…
Anik: all the cooks in the world are going crazy to know how this can be done. This is the only one we haven’t explain to anybody.
Bourdain: it’s got the same feel as, as caviar, it explodes in your mouth just like caviar, like beluga.
Bourdain (off): cotton candy carcass of tiny fish. Fish cocooned by sweet sugar gauze. It’s like an eatable dust bunny that you found under your bed, only delicious!
Bourdain: it is the scariest looking dish I’ve ever seen…(as he bites the bunny)
Ferran: ciencia ficción, ciencia ficción... (30:00”)
Anik: this is science fiction
Bourdain: an amazing eating sensation. I know people who would get very upset [of] seeing that dish. That was frightening and it brought up memories of, you know, corpses, and, and Edgar Allan Poe, and childhood and cotton candy at the same time. Not juxtapositions that you you… that would immediately come to mind; as soon as you bite the end it makes immediate sense.
Bourdain (off): Adria watches me closely as I eat each course. Things [read] as they appear. His face lights up again and again as my face registers surprise, confusion, astonishment.
Bourdain (off): a ravioli filling miraculously suspended in space, without [nothing] to contain it. This pea ravioli is a seemingly physically impossible concoction in which liquid essence of fresh bright baby peas is wrapped only in itself.
Bourdain: it’s outrageous. It’s ravioli without ravioli skin. It’s as if you had… no, there’s no “as if “, there’s nothing like it. It just kind of… it immediately dissolves into liquid essence of green pea, […] entire dish is essentially green pea, there’s no, no pasta on the outside, there’s nothing holding it together, it’s just kind of…
Bourdain (off): carrot air is an intensely flavored truly lighter than air froth of carrot and tangerine served in a cut glass bowl.
Bourdain (off) : (…) bringing an spoonful to my mouth, aspirating some into my lungs. Delightful but dangerous.
Bourdain: […] you know they say “I inhaled that dish”: I really did.
Ferran: ...para estar detrás...
Bourdain: I had no idea how light it was going to be. And I inhaled as I was putting in my mouth. (..) kind of having the childhood that I never had here. There’s definite a sense of wonder, yes, there is, yes, I don’t think he minds hearing that. A lot of the dishes have an initial flavor, and then a secondary and then a tertiary and then, and then an aftertaste. Oh, pardon me, more surprises to come. I’ve heard about this. This is another kind of revolutionary process here.
Bourdain (off): the improbable, even inconceivable sound of ice powder of fois gras with fois grass consommé is truly one of those important ideas Adria spoke of back at the taller. How the frozen finely ground fois gras powder maintains its structural integrity in a bowl of hot gras consommé defies physics.
Bourdain: this powder melts. It’s cold, it’s frozen, and it melts immediately (33:00”) into the, into the hot. (to Anik) You know? I live in […] fois (…) all new. That was like eating it for the first time. This was one of those two or three great ideas he was talking about at the taller, right?
Ferran: pero si tu quieres de verdad emociones nuevas...
Anik: if really.. if you want new emotions…
Ferran: de verdad fuertes, fuertes… solo...
Anik: and really big emotions, you need new techniques…
Ferran: nuevas!
Bourdain: these are smart and useful techniques. Not just a pose or technique for technique’s sake. Ferran […] surprise and wonder with honest innovation and process. What he does is a direct challenge to the perceived wisdom of centuries of classical cooking.
(edited sponsors)
Bourdain (off): a high risk, high wired act like “El Bulli” restaurant demands questions of it’s dinners as well. Is it food or novelty? Is it dinning in any sense of what a meal should be? And is it good, in the traditional sense of that word when applied to what is presumable a meal? The constantly evolving thirty-two courses offering nearly five hour meal at “El Bulli” seems to gleefully invite furious debate. Two pristine oysters in their own essence. Oysters with oysters in yogurt. Hazelnut yogurt cream rolled with macadamia nut and then a dot of lemon relish. When eaten in sequence it takes the tongue in a wild yet strangely familiar trip around the world and then right back to your first oyster. I fell like I’ve eaten that dish [(my whole life)]. Pace and rhythm, Adria says, are important. One mustn’t eat too slowly or one gets sluggish and tired. A shimmering translucent globe of […] tuna bone marrow with caviar. It’s like top quality Edo style sushi, from another planet.
Bourdain: wow!
Bourdain (off): like all the courses I tried it has a progression of clean, intense and precise flavors and a pleasurable aftertaste that never intrude on the course to follow. Cuttle fish in coconut ravioli are two tight pillows of cuttle-fish which explode in the mouth, rudely and unexpectedly flooding it with coconut liquid.
Bourdain: there’s no fusion here, you know there’s no blending of flavors into a muddy sort of a general crowd of flavors all combining to make one flavor. There are individual clean flavors that are […] put together, either all at the same time (…) or in rapid succession.
Bourdain (off): scampi with rosemary is scampi in it’s own sauce made largely from the good stuff found in the head. The rosemary is a sprig of fresh rosemary served on the side to be sniffed and discarded so as not to blow out the palate by actually eating this strong highly aromatic herb.
Bourdain (to Ferran): why does this make sense? Why is this working for me?
Ferran: porque el, el olor…
Anik: because seventy percent of the plate is scent. If you eat the rosemary everything will taste rosemary.
Bourdain: right… no, no!
Anik: so you smell, and you eat the scampi. We never use the scent to eat. If your wish was to drink wine, socially it’s not well received.
Bourdain: he sees it like an obligation, get, get people smelling food again.
Bourdain (off): nothing seems to go to waste in this kitchen. Earlier in the meal we ate the deep fried skin of the sea cucumber, and next up is it’s meat interior garnished with rhubarb and a […] type condiment.
Ferran: pero… (36:00”)
Anik: you remember the skin you ate before?
Bourdain: yes. Oh, that’s great. So this is inspired by Rafas, a place that I have yet to eat by the way, but, it’s his favorite restaur… I’m guessing, his favorite restaurant on earth. […] restaurant, in town, right? We’ll find out tomorrow.
Ferran: con lo único que me enfado, de cocina, es cuando dicen que en El Bulli hay cosas raras.
Anik: (...) what angries him is when people say that there are strange things en “El Bulli”.
Ferran: no! hay cosas nuevas…
Anik: there are new things, but they are not strange.
Ferran: en nuestra memoria tenemos siempre...
Anik: we have the memory of these tastes…
Bourdain (off): two meters of parmeggian cheese spaghetti as one long strand of cheese flavored consommé, suspended with agar-agar, coiled in the bowl like a small portion of spaghetti carbonara…
Bourdain (speaking straight to the camera): the future is here… very […]
Bourdain (off): to be slipped off and into the mouth in one long, loud sucking movement.
Ferran: he, he…
Bourdain (off): as he demonstrates…
Bourdain: I’m a loser, what can I say? He can eat the whole roll in one strand […] I have structural integrity problems…
Bourdain (off): even traditional dishes and obvious kitchen have been reproached and made new.
Ferran: […]
Bourdain: it’s a cannelloni of bone marrow and truffle?
Anik: and rabbit brains…
Bourdain: with rabbit brains… O yeah! It’s over the top. Oh wow!
Bourdain (off): I sit and eat what is for me by turns a delicious, shattering, wondrous, confusing, strangely comforting, frightening, and always wonderful meal. And then, the desserts. Marble soup: delicate marbles of coffee and rosewater floating in lichy soup. Something called chocolate soil is next. Looking like a pile of dirt an pebbles it’s actually pure [choc lately] goodness. A wonder bread appearing […] called the morfe virtually disappears on the tongue leaving no residue or trace of having once being there.
Bourdain: where did it go?
Bourdain (off): and finally snowballs, shavings of lemon ice with the consistency of new snow, with the surprise feeling of strawberries, lemon and roses. A delightful remembrance of a snowy day.
Anil: snow balls! Oh!
Bourdain: I love the little chips.
Anik: (…) too…
Ferran: no hay nada…
Bourdain: and it has, it has the same consistency of these snowballs of my youth… (36:00”) if, if the school bully ever through up a snowball like he will hit you right in the mouth, the consistency was just like this, only this is much more delicious.
Bourdain (off): was it good? I don’t know if that’s a word one should use when describing El Bulli experience. It’s challenging, fun, constantly entertaining, a fantastic shock to the system, and amusement park ride, and a bold, bold statement. A work of art in every sense of that word.
Bourdain: he goes at food, he goes at the dining experience like a film director. It’s about timing, pace, and thrills and surprise and showmanship and science. All of these things. But at it’s core this is food that tastes good. Is it good? Yes, yes, it’s really good. Does it make sense? Yes, yes, it, it makes sense.
Bourdain (off) Adria likes the word “magic” and that’s exactly what it felt like.
Bourdain (off): if the experience at el Bulli [(worked)] to give an insight of Ferran Adria´s mind, philosophy and food, the next day he asked me to meet him in the center of a small town of Rosa, Spain, to have lunch at one of his favorite restaurants in the world.
Bourdain: ok, so we are going to probably Ferran´s favorite restaurant on earth, it’s called Rafas, it’s all about fish, cooked very simply by a dedicated maniac who tells me he doesn’t want anymore business, he, he… there’s not enough great fish in the world to handle the business he has, so I am not going to tell you exactly where this place is. Eat your heart out.
Bourdain: and it is here I think that the true nature of Adria revealed itself. Rafas is a simple, informal, twenty seat restaurant that serves impeccable fresh but decidedly straightforward seafood. Almost always cooked with only sea salt and a little olive oil. A one man operation consisting of Rafa, [(his wife)], a grill, a few burners, and a glass counter displaying the catch of only a few hours ago.
Adria (to Rafa): […]
Bourdain : people are […], fiercely dedicated to this restaurant and Rafa is a guy who if he doesn’t have ultra fresh fish, he’s not open […] highest and most impeccable standards. Most of this stuff was flopping around in the water just a few hours ago, and if it wasn’t, he is not opening the doors. A purest, eh, perfectionist, hem, and it’s all about fish presented in it’s simplest and in it’s most unadul… unadulterated form.
Ferran: no, no, no… pide, pide!
Bourdain (off): one would think that there’s an incongruity between the food we ate last night and the food that we are eating today (39:00”). But I don’t think so. I think it’s all of a part.
Bourdain: these are beautiful, unbelievable fresh […] in a little vinaigrette, and.. hum. Look at that […]
Ferran: [caviarina]
Bourdain: […] with a little white wine. I think [I might[…]] some garlic near at some point, but it’s sweet, unadulterated. A plate that incorporates just langoustines and water, and nothing else and gets, gets to the heart of the matter, which is…
Ferran: [la mémoire du goût]
Bourdain: the me... the memory of taste. In the end this is what is all about, what goes on in there. You know, this is sauce that god made… oh, yeah!
Ferran: […]
Bourdain: he loves fish, he tells me. And he uses the fish at Rafas as a reference for his sense memory. His work, at he sees it us to [try] to understand and to see if he can do something new with this and [yet] still remind a person of their first taste of fresh fish. In it’s own [way that’s] exactly what he’s doing.
Bourdain: the great French chef [Carême] who sought to blend gastronomy and architecture, was said to believe that gastronomy is a blending of art, food and science. Was he right? I don’t know but he has a distant cousin perhaps, in Adria´s. Before I met him I didn’t know what to think of Ferran Adria. To tell you the truth, what little I knew about him, the conceptual and [revolutionary] nature of his work, it was deeply threatening to me and I think to a lot of other old school chefs and cooks. This is not your ordinary food. You ask yourself at the end of this experience: what is a meal? What should a meal be? What can a meal be? Should food be science? Should food be art? I don’t know. But I think these are questions that, (42:00”) that Ferran Adria asks everyday and explores everyday. What he does is a challenge to the very foundations of what we do. The realm of the possible becomes suddenly much larger, in strange, fabulous, and slightly scary new ways. Things are different now.
Produced and directed by : Cristopher B. Collins / Lydia Tanaglia. Host : Anthony Bourdain. Co-producer and editor: Cristopher Martínez. Associate producer: Diane Schutz. Camera: Cristopher B. Collins / Lidya Tanaglia. Field Production Manager: Lucy García. Translators: Lucy García / Anik Laponte. Soundtrack: Pro Music / Non Stop Music / 615 Music. Photos provided courtesy of : FranÁese Guillamet. Post Production Facility: Photo Mag. On – Line editor: Steve Begany. Audio Post Mixer: Lou Teti / Matt Haasch. Special Thanks : Ferran Adria / Alberto Adria / Juli Solar / Oriole Castro / Aintzane EndemaOo / Silvia Fernadez / Pere Castells / Luki Huber / Pedro Hernández Martín / Rafael Cantero Rodriguez / Rosa Riera Casanovas / Juan Bayam at Bar Pinotxo / Boqueria Market / Anik Lopointe / Gourmand Books / Jonathan Epner / Joe Caterini. Produced by Zero Point Zero Productions inc. (copyright), 2004.
(End of transcription)
Transcripción: Pantalla scroll / Pablo Batelli
Bourdain (off): “Jamonísimo”, a tiny jam shop in the center of Barcelona (---) for our first meeting Ferran doesn’t take me to some high end restaurant, certainly not his high end restaurant, and he doesn’t want to hang out and show me some new [fangled] process in his lab. So, why here? Why jam? What was it about this place that so fascinated him? My curiosity was [peaked]. He introduced me to Señor Martin, owner of “Jamonísimo”, who quickly began educating me on the intricacies of making Spanish jamon, or jam. Jamonísimo is a specialty shop dealing in Ibérico de bellota. Not just any old jam but jam made from “pata negra”, a black footed Iberian pig, which is allowed to grace freely in the fall and early winter months on bellota, the sweet ate corn. Some of these jamons take over four years to make, and at just a glance, they worth the wait.
Bourdain: you know, it’s not a matter of which is better, it’s, all have unique features and strengths.
Bourdain (off): jamons from three distinct regions of Spain (---) [Extremadura, Andalucia,] and Salamanca. Each has his own unique characteristics depending on the particular conditions in which the pigs were raised and the various conditions in which they were cured. This Salamanca jamón comes from pigs raised by Senor Martin’s own family.
Sr. Martin: y mi padre les ha dado toda la bellota que han querido...
Bourdain (off): Martin points out to me that his father fed these pigs all the [eat corns] they could eat.
Sr. Martin: ¡Toda!
Bourdain: Oh, you know that’s good!
Sr. Martin: y por lo tanto al ponerle menos sal...
Bourdain (off): Salamanca’s jams take a longer time to cure because they have less salt and more fat. You can tell when they are ready when they begin to sweat.
Bourdain: simplification, but […] lots of information there.
Bourdain (off): curing these jams takes skill and patience: knowing when they are ready: that’s centuries of trial an error at work.
Sr. Martin: donde se le nota es en la parte de la punta...
Bourdain (off): another way to determine the correct degree of curing and flavor is the “cala”, a thin bone spike.
Sr. Martin: puede detectarse en su en su alimentacion... (6:00”)
Bourdain (off): the sweet bitter smell of the stake determines a lot.
Bourdain: into the [thigh] where the salt drips down, you can tell –no, I can’t tell, you can’t tell- he can tell all. Everything you need to know about this jam. Is the bone properly formed? What was it fed, was it stored properly? Is it ready? Is it good? Is it enough… I mean, everything, it´s all there.
Sr. Martin: experiencia y tradición...
Bourdain (off): experience and tradition tell him when it’s ready. It is a little it of a secret…
Sr. Martin: un poco el secreto ahí ¿no?
Bourdain: you know, this stuff, you know, you don’t throw on the slicer. That would be heretical. Look at that fat.
Sr. Martin: aquellos jamones eh…
Bourdain (off): listening to Martin and watching that magnificent jam being sliced I was beginning to understand why Ferran brought me here. Why Jamonísimo might be a good starting point. Making jam after all is a process. It’s all about the transformation of one food into another. Obviously there was something about this transformation that Ferran was […] to.
Bourdain: the place to be, when eating a good meal is have someone who knows what the hell they are talking about, take you by the hand and take you on a ride. You sort of close your eyes and go with it… Oh, yes!
Martin: este... el jamón ibérico de bellota, o jamón ibérico, se debe comer con los dedos...
Bourdain: he just pointed out that the jam should be eaten with the fingers. I was very happy to hear that. So this jam has been under his family’s control for birth until this point, which is my idea of quality control. Oh yes! Look at this fat. And the smell… Oh man! Just beautiful!
Martin: el animal lo consigue a partir de los sesenta días de estar en el campo andando libremente.
Bourdain: We are discussing the fat. This is one of the few animals in the world that do this naturally. The fat just doesn’t pile alone on the outside, it ripples through the meat. (…) is achieved only on an animal that spends sixty days running around free.
Martin: si un secadero está rodeado pues de árboles frutales...
Bourdain: when you are drying the leg, the air, the microorganisms in the air, what’s in the particular soil, all of that is heart of the eventual flavor…
Martin: ...como producto vivo…
Bourdain: beautiful! And the flavor, you can taste… what it ate, where it came from, the wonderful confluence of natural forces, the wind, the [pole], the altitude, the diet. Beautiful thing. (9:00”)
Bourdain: (off) it’s this knowledge and attention to detail that reminds me an observation Ferran made when we ate here together for the first time. He said. “what’s wrong with transforming food? The making of jam is a process, ibérico jam is better than fresh pork, no? just as good sherry is better than the grapes it’s made with”. After all (---) having tasted fatty ate corn fed cured pork and all it’s fresh slice glory I find it hard to disagree.
Bourdain: I wish you cold smell this. The smell in this room is incredible. Do you think that is I stuff one of these […] down my pants I can make a few customs? I want one. I Just want to have it hanging in my kitchen, or my living room, and gaze upon it. I think I understood a few vital and important points about Ferran Adria at this first meeting. At least I understood one thing: this is a guy who likes food.
(edited sponsors)
Bourdain: people say that when you are talking about cooking, you are talking about cuisine, that there’s nothing new under the sun. That you can’t reinvent the wheel, that you basically are reinventing the same thing over, and over and over, maybe adding a spoke here and there… but when you mention Ferran Adria and what he’s doing at his restaurant “El Bulli” people tend to get confused.
Bourdain: (off) I am headed to Ferran´s workshop to try to make sense of it all.
Bourdain: so, through these doors, in what was once a gothic era palace, a bunch of talented chefs and cooks developing new menus, or a portal to another dimension.
Bourdain (off): the controversy about Ferran [(Adria it’s focused on his approach)]. To the outside world it seems distant, analytical, scientific, […]. Even for me, and old school French […] bistro cook of middling abilities, I don’t like the sound of a guy who experiments in a workshop, whose kitchen [---] flames; no, I don’t like the sound of that at all.
Boudain : this is the taller. [---] as the laboratory for those barely in the new but really a workshop.
Bourdain (off) : when you walk into the taller´s main workstation there are backlit clear glass jars, hidden induction burners, and […] placed equipment everywhere. There’s a definite element of “Doctor No” secret laboratory at play. It’s here in “El taller”, or the workshop, where Ferran, his brother Alberto, their partner, Oriol Castro, a chemist, Pere Castel, and an industrial designer Luki Huber, work together to push old concepts from last season (12:00”) forward to [create] new concepts. There’s one concept at the heart of everything that is unchanging and truly revolutionary. While the world writes and speaks of Ferran Adria, within the taller there’s and environment of team work. Results are what matters. Ideas are freely discussed and credits shared. And earlier in this visit, through our interpreter, Lucy García, Ferran made sure I understood this.
Ferran: ...lo más importante que, que hay…
Lucy: …one of the very important things is the team. Normally the chef is the center of the universe in the kitchen. I might be the media star…
Ferran: ..pero en verdad…
Lucy: …they are part of the history of El Bulli. They participate in the creativity in the same level as Ferran does…
Ferran: …Alberto dos días seguidos...
Lucy: …if you spend two days with Alberto…
Ferran: ...o Oriol…
Lucy: …or with Oriol, you would realize that in normal circumstances they should have their own restaurants…
Ferran: ...la gran diferencia entre el Bulli…
Lucy: …this is the great difference between El Bulli and other creative restaurants. They never say “I”, “I do”, “I made”, it’s “We”.
Ferran: el equipo…
Lucy: . ... it’s the team…
Bourdain (off): let’s be clear here. Ferran is the guiding light and undisputed spiritual leader of this revolution, but the free exchange of ideas is based on this respect for the team.
Bourdain: what is the question of the day? What are they investigating?
Lucy: he’s looking at the sensation of grilling a peach.
Bourdain: and what is he [pressing]?
Lucy: he’s [pressing] smints, peach flavored smints.
Bourdain: the [ground up] candy is sprinkled on the peach and used as a caramelizing agent.
Lucy: the treatment he is trying to give it is like a fois grâs…
Bourdain: seared on the outside and soft in the middle…
Lucy:…seared..
Bourdain: it looks like (…) fois
Ferran: que lo pruebe!
Lucy: try it...
Bourdain: it does feel like it. Doesn’t?
Ferran: si, eh... demasiado cocido...
Lucy: it’s a bit too cooked...
Bourdain: now, making peaches eat like fois grâs is a [cute] trick but the team [I learnt] is also examining a deeper set of issues.
Lucy: ..then the kitchen was like for a lot of cooks…
Ferran: fois grâs…
Lucy: fois grâs…
Ferran: langosta, trufas…
Lucy: lobster , truffles…
Ferran: ...y un día...
Lucy: …and one day...
Ferran: ...nos preguntamos “¿por qué?”
Lucy: …“why?”, we asked ourselves, “why?”
Ferran: por el precio!
Lucy: the price! And we decided…
Ferran: ...una pera...
Lucy: a pair…
Ferran: ...es igual a una [...]
Lucy: …is the same as any of the best fish.
Ferran: ...no mejor ni peor...
Lucy: …not better or worst...
Ferran: igual.
Lucy: …it’s the same.
Bourdain (off): and this it seems is the crux of Ferran Adria´s philosophy. Here he’s working on transforming and assigning value to foods (15:00”) that we would normally underrate as less important than others. In developing new dishes and concepts (---) and here every element, every technique is [pain-stakingly] recorded. In order to transform a food one needs to know why food behaves the way it does, and quantify that. To do that they developed a system of symbols and classifications for products and procedures. This information is used to create and continuously evolve a blue print of culinary products, technologies, preparations and styles they refer to as simply: “the map”.
Lucy: you are the first people to see this … They started this collaboration to ask the whys of things…
Ferran: científico…
Lucy: they want to know about the science…
Bourdain: right. So, any item that comes in you examine it from all of these aspects. I see… mechanics… acoustics!
Ferran: formulas…
Lucy: they just don’t want people to think that they sit here and create chemical formulas…
Bourdain: This is not science class…
Lucy: no.
Bourdain: this is cooking.
Ferran: es fantástico!
Bourdain: Ferran [(once said to me)] “if a make you a Spanish omelet, I’m doing something I already know how to do. Here we try to do things we don’t know how to do. Who ever created the first omelet created a technique, and a concept. The taller exists to create new techniques and new concepts, sometimes small, sometimes big, but always “new” ”.
Team member: el pepino se come con limón, no? O con vinagre.
Lucy: cucumber is eaten with lemon or vinegar. What happens when you exaggerate the proportions?
Bourdain: I’ve been exaggerating proportions for years, but these guys are working on a different plane. Just trying to catch up here.
Lucy: it could be a cucumber that has no flavor or taste…
Team member: o bien es lima con textura.
Lucy: or it’s a lime with texture. If I told you this was a citreous fruit from Tasmania, you would say that…
Bourdain: ahá, yeah I might find that.
Ferran: cítrico…
Bourdain: that is water and lactic acid. It’s meringue like in texture (---) Next you, you are going […] to think what flavor to put in without destroying the texture. Truffles you think “yes, that would work”. So the Ph, the acidity is going to be very important on this.
Bourdain (off): the team is concerned with all aspects of the eating experience. Textures, colors and taste. Not just how something tastes, but how taste is experienced differently by each individual.
Ferran: es perfecto!
Lucy: we all think our taste the, is perfect, is the best…
Ferran: es nuestro, no?
Lucy: it’s ours… but… Pere´s brought something. There are people who genetically detect this and people who genetically can not detect it.
Ferran: amarga, amargo…
Lucy: it’s a bitter taste. (18:00”)
Team member: ¿no lo notarás?
Ferran: no.
Lucy: no lo notás...
Lucy: he, for example, doesn’t notice it.
Ferran: y esto es increíble…
Bourdain: no
Lucy: sí. Uy sí, sí, sí, sí, sí. It’s very bitter. Imagine what this means: we all taste in a different way.
Bourdain: so two people out of ten at a table might find something bitter [(part of the work in the lab)] is about perception, how thing may not be what they appear.
Lucy: he’s going to cook it but he’s going to try to make you get the impression that it’s raw.
Bourdain : ah!
Ferran: fíjate que, qué color más bonito de sardina.
Lucy: look at the color, that’s really beautiful.
Team member: yo necesito comer para…
Lucy: he has to eat it. Hum! You like it?
Bourdain: hum!
Team member: flavor roast?
Bourdain: right!
Team member: but... cuando lo ves dices “poco hecho”...
Lucy: It looks undercooked but its cooked.
Bourdain: no, no, it’s perfect! We are about to see something that has never been shown on television and in fact there has been some controversy within the ranks here […] whether they want to show us at all. They are not going to explain what they’re doing, but, they are going to do it, whatever it is.
Bourdain (off): Ferran and his team had developed a technique where they can make certain flavor liquids congeal at precisely the perfect temperature (…) today’s experiment is an attempt to making mango caviar. Some experiments end in failure.
Ferran: está bien pero está muy espeso.
Lucy: it’s still too thick.
Ferran: pero está bien.
Team member: ¿qué dices?
Ferran: denme un segundo...
Bourdain: sometimes most experiments end in failure and need to be readdressed.
Pere (?): es muy mejorable, eh?
Lucy: can be very much improved. They are going to try it more.
[?] : osea que…
Bourdain: that’s exactly why the taller is so important.
Ferran: el año pasado vino Luki...
Lucy: last year Luki joined the team…
Ferran: un diseñador industrial…
Lucy: an industrial designer...
Bourdain (off): given that you can’t just pop down your local k-mart and pick up aerosol spaghetti dispensers or glassware for serving carrot foams, Luki Huber, the industrial designer, is a pretty busy guy. Not every item’s purposes is self evident however.
Bourdain: the rubber glove…
Lucy: this is for the end of the meal.
Ferran: (blowing into the glove and then moving it from left to right and backwards, goodbye) …[hacer goodye]
Bourdain: ha!
Lucy: well, we’re a little bit wild
Ferran: todo el trabajo que hay…
Lucy: all the work gives an image of being quite cold and distant…
Ferran: todo esto…
Lucy: we only do this to serve people and make them happy.
Ferran: … para que la gente sea feliz.
Bourdain (off): el taller is a place where questions are asked. About the physical properties of food: can we do this? (21:00”) Can we do that? Questions about dinning, about the fundamental nature of cuisine and gastronomy. In here they work together as a team, experimenting, testing, and dreaming. Trying and failing, and trying again to make things once again new.
(edited sponsors)
Bourdain (off): two hours north of Barcelona, Spain, along the Costa Brava [nestled] by a small coast, surrounded by trees is “El Bulli” Ferran Adrian´s tradition defined trend setting restaurant.
Bourdain: do I look nervous? I am nervous. I’ve seen the book, I’ve heard the theories, I’ve been to the lab… now to eat the food. I’m nervous. Do I look nervous? I’m scared. I feel inadequate to the task. This is a bit a kind of a life changing experience so far and [hell] I haven’t even eaten the food yet. Do I have a kind of a frightened, ner… nervous, neurotical look on my face? [(My dog had it)] when I yelled at him. I need a drink.
Bourdain (off): the first thing one notices when entering “El Bulli” is that it is indeed a restaurant. Not a palace, a spaceship, a temple or the culinary equivalent to euro disney. The dinning areas reminiscent of the kind of up skilled restaurants found around the world these days. The kitchen, however, is quite a different story. If the taller is defined by the free willing exchange of ideas in a collegial environment, this is a disciplined army of food professionals, putting on the equivalent of a broadway show in thirty-two acts. (…) The production of each dish has been work out to the last detail. The success or the failure of the technique or procedures underlying these dishes can come down to a drop, a degree, or a second too much or too little. And while failure is not an option here there’s a remarkable lack of chaos for a large kitchen. Less banging and yelling, certainly not the mush pit environments I am used to. Cool, elegant, quiet, modern. Fifty five cooks serve one sitting per night of fifty-five guests. It’s more like the spirit of mission (24:00”) control, or the bridge of the enterprise, you know, […] going where no kitchen has gone before. Ferran comes out to greet me and our mutual friend and book editor Anik Lapointe. And introduces me to Oriol Castro, the one member of the taller who was absent the day before.
Ferran: …atelier…
Bourdain (off): we sited in the kitchen at the chef’s table. Right in the middle of [(the kitchen)]. “All right, feed me”. One hardly expects to begin this meal with a cocktail and a basket of rolls, so a frappe of green pine water served with artichoque chips isn’t so much surprising as it is surprisingly appropriate.
Ferran: salud!
Anik: chin!
Bourdain: that was water of pine tree. This is great. You would think of it overpowered or [over aromatic], no, no, no, it’s clean and astringent, and goes well with this: artichoque chips. So did I understand him correctly when he said this is only like the third time he has eaten in the kitchen?
Anik: (to Ferran then to Bourdain…) […]
Ferran: no, no, no… pero solo
Anik: (to Bourdain) no, no, he eats a lot in the kitchen but alone, and just around seven, he eats…
Ferran: me como un menú, entero…
Anik: he eats all the plates
Bourdain: does he think he will be able to relax and enjoy or he… is the radar on?
All (almost at the same time): the radar is on
Bourdain (off): (…) strange and wondering textures emerging from the kitchen. A series of a small tapas like plates that I’ve never seen before. Lemon tempura with licorice, raspberry lily pans?
Bourdain: ruibarb with black pepper, it’s great!
Bourdain (off): there’s no shyness in the flavors here, maybe […] but shyness, no! Ah! a fried chip of the skin of the sea cucumber . And we’ll eat the inside of the sea cucumber later, and it’s just… hum!
Ferran: ...y esto es…
Bourdain: pork skin is always one of my favorite things, with yogurt. These aren’t like the pork […] that you buy at your local seven eleven…
Anik: they do them like in Mexico
Bourdain: aha! “chucho fritos”.
Bourdain (off): these pork scratchings are made from iberical jam fat. The best in the world. Salty, crunchy, flavored fat, complemented by a creamy sour yogurt. Wonderful.
Bourdain: this is not a combination that would [have] occurred to me, but man, it’s good.
Bourdain (off): even in these opening dishes, the preface to main courses, what Ferran calls snacks, you can begin to sense the innovation, and impious sense of humor at work. “Jamon de toro” arrives next. Upon un “toro” for bull, it’s in fact fatty tuna belly cured and flavored like iberical jam, served with silver pincers designed to pick up the theorily thin slices without bunching or tearing. (27:00”)
Ferran (to Anik, pinpointing Bourdain´s use of the pincers): es muy importante como lo come, mira, mira, mira…
Ferran (to Anik, holding one of the pincers with his right hand): dile que esto es una pijería…
Anik (to Bourdain): [this is a […] thing] this is at the limit of snobbery for him.
Bourdain: it’s outrageous.
Bourdain (off): Adria is combining elements that I never imagined that could go together.
Anik (exclaiming excited, when a cook brings some rounded white shape): con jamón! (to Bourdain) cherries with jam.
Bourdain: cherry with, cherry with jam (as he rises the white rounded shaped artifact). It looked like a cherry in white fondant. It’s a cherry […] in iberical jam fat. So you get this full iberical jam fat flavor, already a good thing, and then a cleansing cherry explodes in the center. Ah! Outrageous.
Bourdain (off): and when you are an innovator like Adria, it’s not only about the thoughtful combination of elements that is new, but the process in which they are combined that’s so unique. The next course is called “golden egg”. A single raw egg yolk [shell laqued] in caramel. A tiny golden pillow. Like a number of Adria dishes registers flavors on the tongue in distinct sequence. First shock, disorientation, then comforting reassurance.
Bourdain: what’s that flavor?
Ferran, Anik (at almost the same time): egg yolk.
Bourdain: caramel.
Ferran: caramelo. Es una técnica de caramelo con...
Anik: in 1996... it’s a technique they discovered. They can caramelize everything they want.
Bourdain: (…) two or three distinct flavors
Bourdain (off): cheese, what’s next? A cheese ice cream sandwich?
Anik: helado de queso…
Bourdain (off): a tiny parmeggiano ice cream sandwich is an extreme example of playing on comfort food.
Bourdain: I never had anything like for me.
Ferran: mire que un dia...
Anik: In some years you’ll see it in the supermarket.
Ferran: no mías…
Anik: not his, but somebody will just pick it up.
Bourdain (off): again and again things are not what they seem. He [suckles] you in and then gives you something else. Apple caviar: tiny beautiful globules of an earthly apple essence are served in a caviar tin. Looks like caviar, but tastes like pure apple. A revelatory and [therely] delicious practical joke.
Anik: trade mark imitation Bulli.
Bourdain: it’s fabulous.
Ferran: todos los…
Anik: all the cooks in the world are going crazy to know how this can be done. This is the only one we haven’t explain to anybody.
Bourdain: it’s got the same feel as, as caviar, it explodes in your mouth just like caviar, like beluga.
Bourdain (off): cotton candy carcass of tiny fish. Fish cocooned by sweet sugar gauze. It’s like an eatable dust bunny that you found under your bed, only delicious!
Bourdain: it is the scariest looking dish I’ve ever seen…(as he bites the bunny)
Ferran: ciencia ficción, ciencia ficción... (30:00”)
Anik: this is science fiction
Bourdain: an amazing eating sensation. I know people who would get very upset [of] seeing that dish. That was frightening and it brought up memories of, you know, corpses, and, and Edgar Allan Poe, and childhood and cotton candy at the same time. Not juxtapositions that you you… that would immediately come to mind; as soon as you bite the end it makes immediate sense.
Bourdain (off): Adria watches me closely as I eat each course. Things [read] as they appear. His face lights up again and again as my face registers surprise, confusion, astonishment.
Bourdain (off): a ravioli filling miraculously suspended in space, without [nothing] to contain it. This pea ravioli is a seemingly physically impossible concoction in which liquid essence of fresh bright baby peas is wrapped only in itself.
Bourdain: it’s outrageous. It’s ravioli without ravioli skin. It’s as if you had… no, there’s no “as if “, there’s nothing like it. It just kind of… it immediately dissolves into liquid essence of green pea, […] entire dish is essentially green pea, there’s no, no pasta on the outside, there’s nothing holding it together, it’s just kind of…
Bourdain (off): carrot air is an intensely flavored truly lighter than air froth of carrot and tangerine served in a cut glass bowl.
Bourdain (off) : (…) bringing an spoonful to my mouth, aspirating some into my lungs. Delightful but dangerous.
Bourdain: […] you know they say “I inhaled that dish”: I really did.
Ferran: ...para estar detrás...
Bourdain: I had no idea how light it was going to be. And I inhaled as I was putting in my mouth. (..) kind of having the childhood that I never had here. There’s definite a sense of wonder, yes, there is, yes, I don’t think he minds hearing that. A lot of the dishes have an initial flavor, and then a secondary and then a tertiary and then, and then an aftertaste. Oh, pardon me, more surprises to come. I’ve heard about this. This is another kind of revolutionary process here.
Bourdain (off): the improbable, even inconceivable sound of ice powder of fois gras with fois grass consommé is truly one of those important ideas Adria spoke of back at the taller. How the frozen finely ground fois gras powder maintains its structural integrity in a bowl of hot gras consommé defies physics.
Bourdain: this powder melts. It’s cold, it’s frozen, and it melts immediately (33:00”) into the, into the hot. (to Anik) You know? I live in […] fois (…) all new. That was like eating it for the first time. This was one of those two or three great ideas he was talking about at the taller, right?
Ferran: pero si tu quieres de verdad emociones nuevas...
Anik: if really.. if you want new emotions…
Ferran: de verdad fuertes, fuertes… solo...
Anik: and really big emotions, you need new techniques…
Ferran: nuevas!
Bourdain: these are smart and useful techniques. Not just a pose or technique for technique’s sake. Ferran […] surprise and wonder with honest innovation and process. What he does is a direct challenge to the perceived wisdom of centuries of classical cooking.
(edited sponsors)
Bourdain (off): a high risk, high wired act like “El Bulli” restaurant demands questions of it’s dinners as well. Is it food or novelty? Is it dinning in any sense of what a meal should be? And is it good, in the traditional sense of that word when applied to what is presumable a meal? The constantly evolving thirty-two courses offering nearly five hour meal at “El Bulli” seems to gleefully invite furious debate. Two pristine oysters in their own essence. Oysters with oysters in yogurt. Hazelnut yogurt cream rolled with macadamia nut and then a dot of lemon relish. When eaten in sequence it takes the tongue in a wild yet strangely familiar trip around the world and then right back to your first oyster. I fell like I’ve eaten that dish [(my whole life)]. Pace and rhythm, Adria says, are important. One mustn’t eat too slowly or one gets sluggish and tired. A shimmering translucent globe of […] tuna bone marrow with caviar. It’s like top quality Edo style sushi, from another planet.
Bourdain: wow!
Bourdain (off): like all the courses I tried it has a progression of clean, intense and precise flavors and a pleasurable aftertaste that never intrude on the course to follow. Cuttle fish in coconut ravioli are two tight pillows of cuttle-fish which explode in the mouth, rudely and unexpectedly flooding it with coconut liquid.
Bourdain: there’s no fusion here, you know there’s no blending of flavors into a muddy sort of a general crowd of flavors all combining to make one flavor. There are individual clean flavors that are […] put together, either all at the same time (…) or in rapid succession.
Bourdain (off): scampi with rosemary is scampi in it’s own sauce made largely from the good stuff found in the head. The rosemary is a sprig of fresh rosemary served on the side to be sniffed and discarded so as not to blow out the palate by actually eating this strong highly aromatic herb.
Bourdain (to Ferran): why does this make sense? Why is this working for me?
Ferran: porque el, el olor…
Anik: because seventy percent of the plate is scent. If you eat the rosemary everything will taste rosemary.
Bourdain: right… no, no!
Anik: so you smell, and you eat the scampi. We never use the scent to eat. If your wish was to drink wine, socially it’s not well received.
Bourdain: he sees it like an obligation, get, get people smelling food again.
Bourdain (off): nothing seems to go to waste in this kitchen. Earlier in the meal we ate the deep fried skin of the sea cucumber, and next up is it’s meat interior garnished with rhubarb and a […] type condiment.
Ferran: pero… (36:00”)
Anik: you remember the skin you ate before?
Bourdain: yes. Oh, that’s great. So this is inspired by Rafas, a place that I have yet to eat by the way, but, it’s his favorite restaur… I’m guessing, his favorite restaurant on earth. […] restaurant, in town, right? We’ll find out tomorrow.
Ferran: con lo único que me enfado, de cocina, es cuando dicen que en El Bulli hay cosas raras.
Anik: (...) what angries him is when people say that there are strange things en “El Bulli”.
Ferran: no! hay cosas nuevas…
Anik: there are new things, but they are not strange.
Ferran: en nuestra memoria tenemos siempre...
Anik: we have the memory of these tastes…
Bourdain (off): two meters of parmeggian cheese spaghetti as one long strand of cheese flavored consommé, suspended with agar-agar, coiled in the bowl like a small portion of spaghetti carbonara…
Bourdain (speaking straight to the camera): the future is here… very […]
Bourdain (off): to be slipped off and into the mouth in one long, loud sucking movement.
Ferran: he, he…
Bourdain (off): as he demonstrates…
Bourdain: I’m a loser, what can I say? He can eat the whole roll in one strand […] I have structural integrity problems…
Bourdain (off): even traditional dishes and obvious kitchen have been reproached and made new.
Ferran: […]
Bourdain: it’s a cannelloni of bone marrow and truffle?
Anik: and rabbit brains…
Bourdain: with rabbit brains… O yeah! It’s over the top. Oh wow!
Bourdain (off): I sit and eat what is for me by turns a delicious, shattering, wondrous, confusing, strangely comforting, frightening, and always wonderful meal. And then, the desserts. Marble soup: delicate marbles of coffee and rosewater floating in lichy soup. Something called chocolate soil is next. Looking like a pile of dirt an pebbles it’s actually pure [choc lately] goodness. A wonder bread appearing […] called the morfe virtually disappears on the tongue leaving no residue or trace of having once being there.
Bourdain: where did it go?
Bourdain (off): and finally snowballs, shavings of lemon ice with the consistency of new snow, with the surprise feeling of strawberries, lemon and roses. A delightful remembrance of a snowy day.
Anil: snow balls! Oh!
Bourdain: I love the little chips.
Anik: (…) too…
Ferran: no hay nada…
Bourdain: and it has, it has the same consistency of these snowballs of my youth… (36:00”) if, if the school bully ever through up a snowball like he will hit you right in the mouth, the consistency was just like this, only this is much more delicious.
Bourdain (off): was it good? I don’t know if that’s a word one should use when describing El Bulli experience. It’s challenging, fun, constantly entertaining, a fantastic shock to the system, and amusement park ride, and a bold, bold statement. A work of art in every sense of that word.
Bourdain: he goes at food, he goes at the dining experience like a film director. It’s about timing, pace, and thrills and surprise and showmanship and science. All of these things. But at it’s core this is food that tastes good. Is it good? Yes, yes, it’s really good. Does it make sense? Yes, yes, it, it makes sense.
Bourdain (off) Adria likes the word “magic” and that’s exactly what it felt like.
Bourdain (off): if the experience at el Bulli [(worked)] to give an insight of Ferran Adria´s mind, philosophy and food, the next day he asked me to meet him in the center of a small town of Rosa, Spain, to have lunch at one of his favorite restaurants in the world.
Bourdain: ok, so we are going to probably Ferran´s favorite restaurant on earth, it’s called Rafas, it’s all about fish, cooked very simply by a dedicated maniac who tells me he doesn’t want anymore business, he, he… there’s not enough great fish in the world to handle the business he has, so I am not going to tell you exactly where this place is. Eat your heart out.
Bourdain: and it is here I think that the true nature of Adria revealed itself. Rafas is a simple, informal, twenty seat restaurant that serves impeccable fresh but decidedly straightforward seafood. Almost always cooked with only sea salt and a little olive oil. A one man operation consisting of Rafa, [(his wife)], a grill, a few burners, and a glass counter displaying the catch of only a few hours ago.
Adria (to Rafa): […]
Bourdain : people are […], fiercely dedicated to this restaurant and Rafa is a guy who if he doesn’t have ultra fresh fish, he’s not open […] highest and most impeccable standards. Most of this stuff was flopping around in the water just a few hours ago, and if it wasn’t, he is not opening the doors. A purest, eh, perfectionist, hem, and it’s all about fish presented in it’s simplest and in it’s most unadul… unadulterated form.
Ferran: no, no, no… pide, pide!
Bourdain (off): one would think that there’s an incongruity between the food we ate last night and the food that we are eating today (39:00”). But I don’t think so. I think it’s all of a part.
Bourdain: these are beautiful, unbelievable fresh […] in a little vinaigrette, and.. hum. Look at that […]
Ferran: [caviarina]
Bourdain: […] with a little white wine. I think [I might[…]] some garlic near at some point, but it’s sweet, unadulterated. A plate that incorporates just langoustines and water, and nothing else and gets, gets to the heart of the matter, which is…
Ferran: [la mémoire du goût]
Bourdain: the me... the memory of taste. In the end this is what is all about, what goes on in there. You know, this is sauce that god made… oh, yeah!
Ferran: […]
Bourdain: he loves fish, he tells me. And he uses the fish at Rafas as a reference for his sense memory. His work, at he sees it us to [try] to understand and to see if he can do something new with this and [yet] still remind a person of their first taste of fresh fish. In it’s own [way that’s] exactly what he’s doing.
Bourdain: the great French chef [Carême] who sought to blend gastronomy and architecture, was said to believe that gastronomy is a blending of art, food and science. Was he right? I don’t know but he has a distant cousin perhaps, in Adria´s. Before I met him I didn’t know what to think of Ferran Adria. To tell you the truth, what little I knew about him, the conceptual and [revolutionary] nature of his work, it was deeply threatening to me and I think to a lot of other old school chefs and cooks. This is not your ordinary food. You ask yourself at the end of this experience: what is a meal? What should a meal be? What can a meal be? Should food be science? Should food be art? I don’t know. But I think these are questions that, (42:00”) that Ferran Adria asks everyday and explores everyday. What he does is a challenge to the very foundations of what we do. The realm of the possible becomes suddenly much larger, in strange, fabulous, and slightly scary new ways. Things are different now.
Produced and directed by : Cristopher B. Collins / Lydia Tanaglia. Host : Anthony Bourdain. Co-producer and editor: Cristopher Martínez. Associate producer: Diane Schutz. Camera: Cristopher B. Collins / Lidya Tanaglia. Field Production Manager: Lucy García. Translators: Lucy García / Anik Laponte. Soundtrack: Pro Music / Non Stop Music / 615 Music. Photos provided courtesy of : FranÁese Guillamet. Post Production Facility: Photo Mag. On – Line editor: Steve Begany. Audio Post Mixer: Lou Teti / Matt Haasch. Special Thanks : Ferran Adria / Alberto Adria / Juli Solar / Oriole Castro / Aintzane EndemaOo / Silvia Fernadez / Pere Castells / Luki Huber / Pedro Hernández Martín / Rafael Cantero Rodriguez / Rosa Riera Casanovas / Juan Bayam at Bar Pinotxo / Boqueria Market / Anik Lopointe / Gourmand Books / Jonathan Epner / Joe Caterini. Produced by Zero Point Zero Productions inc. (copyright), 2004.
(End of transcription)
Transcripción: Pantalla scroll / Pablo Batelli
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