Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

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Dani García’s book was the first cookbook
to devote an extensive section to liquid
nitrogen, showing multiple techniques.
T HE HISTORY O F
Modernist Cuisine in France
software package (used extensively in the creation
of this book), wrote an article in Popular Science
magazine in which he described in detail how to
make liquid nitrogen ice cream.
Another event in 2003 had a more direct impact
on the food world. Adrià ate the nitro foam dish at
The Fat Duck. He also saw Blumenthal give a
series of liquid nitrogen demonstrations at the
Madrid Fusión conference in early 2004.
These experiences prompted him to add liquid
nitrogen to the elBulli menu for the 2004 season.
Spanish chef Dani García had also been experimenting
with liquid nitrogen (at the restaurant
Tragabuches) and gave a liquid nitrogen demonstration
at the San Sebastián conference in late
2003. García’s cookbook Dani García: Técnica y
Contrastes, published in 2004, is the first book to
have an extensive section devoted to cooking
with liquid nitrogen. In it, he credits Blumenthal
as his inspiration. García was also assisted by
Raimundo García del Moral, a serious gourmand
who is also a professor of pathology at the
University of Grenada. Unlike previous chefs,
García does not focus primarily on ice cream or
even on tableside presentations. Instead, he uses
liquid nitrogen for many other purposeslike
freezing olive oil, then shattering it and using the
glasslike shards as a garnish.
So whom do we credit with bringing liquid
nitrogen into the world of cooking? Marshall was
clearly the visionary who published the idea of
using cryogenic liquids for myriad cooking tasks,
including making ice cream tableside in front of
diners. It is hard to give her all the credit, however,
for several reasons.
First, she never seems to have actually made it.
Second, and far more important, her visionary
ideas were so far ahead of their time that they
became a dead end. Marshall does not seem to
have influenced any of the future developments in
Spain may be the world leader in Modernist cuisine (see
page 57), but innovative French chefs, including Marc
Veyrat, Pierre Gagnaire, Thierry Marx, Pascal Barbot,
Alexandre Gauthier, and others, have broken through the
boundaries of traditionalism.
Veyrat, who opened his first restaurant in 1978, was an
early trailblazer. Before his retirement in 2009, he pushed the
culinary envelope with dishes like “yesterday’s, today’s, and
tomorrow’s vegetables cooked in a clay pot” and “caramelized
frogs, wild licorice, strange salad, and orange vinaigrette.”
His thoughts about the French culinary establishment
were, in the words of Food & Wine magazine, “unprintable.” In
2003, he was awarded the Gault Millau restaurant guide’s
first-ever perfect score (20/20) for his two restaurants,
L’Auberge de l’Eridan and La Ferme de Mon Père.
Gagnaire, meanwhile, has been called “the most out-there
Michelin three-star chef in France.” In 1980, he opened his
eponymous restaurant in St. Étienne, his hometown, and
quickly distinguished himself with a provocative, modern,
ever-changing menu. Today, Gagnaire has a small empire of
restaurants around the globe, from Southeast Asia to the
Middle East.
Marx is also known for shaking up French culinary traditions.
At his restaurant, Château Cordeillan-Bages, outside of
Bordeaux, he creates whimsical dishes like liquid quiche
Lorraine, “virtual sausage,” sweetbread spaghetti, and
bean-sprout risotto. While this food is not an everyday
experience for most people, Marx nonetheless says that one
of his goals is to democratize cuisine in France. “Much of
what I do is about trying to set French cooking free from its
bourgeois cage,” he told Gourmet.com in 2009.
Barbot’s style of cooking is perhaps simpler than Marx’s or
Gagnaire’s, but he shares their emphasis on creativity and
culinary reinvention. In the tiny kitchen of his Paris restaurant,
L’Astrance, Barbot produces minimalist dishes like
tomatoes with white chocolate and wild sorrel and vacherin
with figs and green-tea whipped cream. Reservations at
L’Astrance have become so sought after that it’s nearly
impossible to get one. Gauthier represents the new generation
of French chefs and is famous for dishes such as shellfish
with seawater and “a handful of sand” parsley cream with
banana powder. His style echoes that of his Danish contemporary,
René Redzepi. His creativity thrives while showcasing
local products in unexpected combinations of flavors and
textures, and an insightful ability to juxtapose the familiar
and the exotic.
B IOG R APHY O F
Jeffrey Steingarten
Every avant-garde movement has its critics,
whose job is to explain, interpret, clarify, and
chronicle as much as to attack. Jeffrey Steingarten,
one of the most influential American
food writers, played all of these roles for
Modernist cuisine (he calls it “hypermodern”).
He has covered this culinary movement in
scores of articles for Vogue magazine and
elsewhere, and in his books, including The
Man Who Ate Everything (1997).
Steingarten, a graduate of both Harvard College and
Harvard Law School, worked as a lawyer before becoming
the food columnist for Vogue in 1989. His articles are informed
by tireless research and kitchen experimentation,
characterized by The Wall Street Journal as “obsessional,
witty and authoritative … brisk and self-mocking … unrivaled
in the completeness of its basic research.”
Steingarten’s articles in Vogue have discussed many of the
influential ideas and figures in the Modernist movement.
From nearly the beginning, Steingarten participated in the
Molecular and Physical Gastronomy conferences in Erice,
Sicily (see page 45), and he was the first journalist to write
about the event’s co-organizer, Hervé This. Steingarten has
written extensively about Heston Blumenthal (see page 49),
Grant Achatz (see page 68), Wylie Dufresne, and José Andrés
culinary applications of liquid nitrogen. In retrospect,
her idea was a brilliant mental exercise, but
ultimately, it did not make much of a difference
like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no
one there to hear it.
Within the world of serious cuisine, Daguin
clearly seems to have been the first chef to use
liquid nitrogenat least as far as we know. He
deserves enormous credit for independently
coming up with much the same vision as Marshall,
with only bull semen as his inspiration. Yet it is
striking that neither he nor the rest of the haute
cuisine world seems to have grasped the myriad
other ways in which liquid nitrogen could be used
in the kitchen.
The world was not ready to accept the idea, it
seems. Indeed, much the same thing occurred in
1996, when Adrià, Bras, and likely many others
(see page 67), and contributed an essay to
Achatz’s groundbreaking cookbook. Steingarten
has known Ferran Adrià, whom he described
as “the Catalan genius and pioneer of
hypermodern cooking,” before Adrià became
famous beyond the borders of Spain.
Steingarten’s role is more than that of a
writer; his research and experimentation have
also made him a participant. In one early
Vogue column, Steingarten achieved a breakthrough
in the preparation of the perfect mashed potato,
which has since found its way into the cooking of Blumenthal
and Dufresne. In a 2006 column devoted to sous vide
cooking, Steingarten revealed his technique for preparing
sous vide salmon using a bathtub. With Blumenthal, he has
prepared vanilla ice cream in a continuous process from
udder to cream separator to a bowl of liquid nitrogen. He is
probably the only food critic who keeps a large Dewar of
liquid nitrogen in his home kitchen.
The Chicago Tribune has referred to Steingarten as “our
most original investigative food writer.” In a marked contrast,
London’s Independent newspaper has called him “the
world’s wittiest food writer.” For our purposes here, we can
say that more than any other food critic, Steingarten has
become an integral part of today’s culinary avant-garde.
were first exposed to culinary uses of liquid
nitrogen via the Kurti and This article or the
French TV show featuring This and Bras. Even
Adrià, who at that point was already more than 10
years into his program of reinventing cuisine, did
not immediately see a use for liquid nitrogen.
Ultimately, it was Blumenthal’s use of liquid
nitrogen that seems to have struck a chord in the
culinary world. Perhaps this was because it
seemed to be an integral component of his unique
approach to cuisine rather than an isolated parlor
trick. Or maybe it was simply that the Modernist
revolution had advanced enough that the time was
finally ripe. Whatever the reason, Blumenthal’s
use of liquid nitrogen directly inspired García and
Adrià to use it in their cuisine, which started a
trend among other Modernist chefs.
It is equally possible that there are other unsung
64 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
HISTORY 65