Modernist-Cuisine-Vol.-1-Small

1
Some people have speculated that
James Dewar might have demonstrated
liquid nitrogen ice cream
and that Mrs. Marshall was just
writing down what she saw. In the
course of our research, we uncovered
a book on cryogenics published
in 1899 that describes in
detail the demonstrations that
Dewar and others did in that era.
The only food item frozen was
whiskey. Seeing whiskey frozen
solid was likely enough to inspire
Mrs. Marshall.
T HE HISTORY O F
Ideas in Food
heroes in the liquid nitrogen story. A bit of research
has uncovered the facts presented here,
including the role of some surprising playersbut
we may have overlooked others.
This tangled web of developments is typical of
what you find whenever you ask the question “Who
was first?” As discussed above, the histories of sous
vide cooking and of “molten” chocolate cake have
similar twists and turns, including false starts and
parallel invention. Many of the techniques and
ingredients in Modernist cuisine have very similar
stories. This is particularly true when the technique
evolved first in the context of science or
industrial food production.
The most unusual aspect of the liquid nitrogen
story is that someone had the deep insight to
understand the technique in the abstract first and
then the technology caught up. In most cases, the
reverse is truea technique or ingredient is used
unwittingly, and only later does someone conceptualize
what it is and what it could become.
A good example of this latter pattern is the
egg-based fluid gel. For centuries, chefs have been
stirring eggs (whites, yolks, or whole eggs) into
sauces while heating them, with the knowledge
that thickening would result. Michel Bras took the
process one step further by lightly poaching eggs
before mixing them into sauces. We now understand
that eggs can form fluid gels that have a
number of interesting properties. Once you realize
that eggs can create fluid gels, it broadens the
possibilities enormously and helps you understand
what else they can be used for. But it is also
possible to use eggs to create fluid gels without
ever knowing that you are doing so. Usage can
precede full understanding; indeed, in the kitchen,
this happens more often than not.
In this case, I have a personal perspective
because I realized that eggs could form fluid gels
while learning about hydrocolloids in 2004. I have
discussed this idea with many Modernist chefs,
including Adrià, Blumenthal, Achatz, and Dufresne,
and it was news to them. We have not
found any other references to it in the academic
literature; as far as we know, this book is the first
publication of the idea. But it’s entirely possible
that there are food scientists or chefs who discovered
this property of eggs much earlier and either
In late 2004, while working at Keyah Grande, a remote
hunting lodge in Colorado, chefs H. Alexander Talbot and
Aki Kamozawa launched their food blog, Ideas in Food
(IdeasInFood.com), to chronicle their explorations in Modernist
cuisine. The lodge was an inauspicious place to
launch anything. It was deep in the wilderness, miles from
the nearest town. It had only eight rooms, which were
mostly used by elk hunters who viewed dinner as a time to
refuel rather than as a gastronomic adventure. These guests
were more often looking for familiar comfort food than
spectacular Modernist cuisine. Many of them were shocked
to sit down to a table, often in camouflage gear, only to be
served dishes like smoked trout roe over parsnip ice cream.
Nevertheless, Talbot and Kamozawa were committed to
Modernist food, and they saw their blog as a way to communicate
with kindred spirits across the globe. They used the
website to catalog their experiments in the kitchen and took
turns jotting down their thoughts in this new online notebook.
The premise was simple, but the subject matter was radical:
Talbot and Kamozawa wrote about working with ingredients
like methylcellulose, transglutaminase, and liquid
nitrogen, and with equipment like dehydrators and Pacojets.
The pair also openly discussed recipes and techniques that
would have been trade secrets in many restaurants.
Alongside the main blog entries, they published PDF files
with additional notes about current and future projects. No
one had done this before—at least not in a way that emphasized
the ideas that undergird Modernist cooking as much as
the novel techniques. Ideas in Food quickly developed a cult
following among Modernist chefs, both amateur and professional.
The power of the Internet to connect people let
Talbot and Kamozawa reach an audience that they never
could have otherwise. Today, in addition to maintaining the
blog, the team runs Ideas in Food, LLC, a consulting business
based in Levittown, Pennsylvania. They also wrote a column
called “Kitchen Alchemy” for the Popular Science web site.
Their cookbook, Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They
Work, was published in 2010.
T HE HISTORY O F
Modernist Cuisine in America
Compared to Spain and France, the U.S. discovered culinary
Modernism relatively recently. This budding American
movement has been spurred by innovative chefs, including
José Andrés, Grant Achatz, Wylie Dufresne, Homaro Cantu,
David Kinch, Daniel Patterson, Sean Brock, and Sam Mason.
Andrés is probably the best known of these American
Modernists (though he was actually born and raised in
Spain). He apprenticed at elBulli under Ferran Adrià for two
years before moving to the U.S. In 1993, Andrés opened his
first restaurant, Jaleo, in Washington, D.C., and helped
popularize Spanish cuisine in the U.S.
His major contribution to American Modernism is his fifth
restaurant, minibar, also in D.C. The New York Times dubbed
the tiny, six-seat spot “a shrine to avant-garde cooking.”
Andrés’s latest project, called The Bazaar, has introduced
this taste to Los Angeles on a larger scale. With minibar and
Bazaar, he runs both the smallest and the largest Modernist
restaurants in the world.
At Alinea in Chicago, Grant Achatz (see next page) creates
some of the most inventive food in the U.S. Alinea frequently
tops lists as the best restaurant in the country. Both Achatz
and Homaru Cantu—another chef in Chicago’s flourishing
Modernist culinary scene (see page 69)—are keenly interested
in design and food technology, and both men have made
major breakthroughs in these areas.
Cantu and his restaurant, moto, became famous for his
“printed food”: edible paper on which images of dishes or
other objects are printed with food-based inks. His company,
Cantu Designs, has filed patent applications for printed
food and many other dining and cooking implements that
he and his colleagues have created. He also stars in Future
Food, a reality TV show that shows the moto team in the
process of coming up with new Modernist dishes.
David Kinch, who runs the Silicon Valley–area restaurant
Manresa, focuses less on equipment and more on ingredients,
while still using Modernist techniques. He often
combines seemingly dissonant flavors, such as broccoli and
foie gras, or turnips, plums, and vanilla. The signature
amuse-bouche at Manresa is his take on Alain Passard‘s
soft-boiled egg with sherry vinegar and maple syrup.
But the American Modernist movement’s real “egg man”
is Wylie Dufresne, who is famous for his obsession with eggs
(and his signature deconstructed eggs Benedict, which
includes deep-fried hollandaise sauce). Dufresne’s New
York City restaurant, wd~50, was perhaps the first major
fine-dining establishment in that city to focus so singularly
on Modernist cuisine. As he told Esquire in 2005, “I might be
the only chef in Manhattan who can tell you what methylcellulose
does.”
Well, perhaps the only chef except for Sam Mason, Dufresne’s
former pastry chef. In 2007, Mason opened his own
New York City restaurant, Tailor, where he created a daring
menu full of unexpected flavor combinations, like pork belly
with miso butterscotch. Mason closed Tailor in the summer of
2009. But he continues to showcase Modernist cuisine on his
TV show, Dinner with the Band, where he invites musicians
into a kitchen and builds a creative menu around their tastes.
Sean Brock, the chef at McCrady’s in Charleston, South
Carolina, is probably the only chef in his city who regularly
uses methylcellulose. He told Food & Wine that he believes
hydrocolloids (including gellan gum, carrageenan, and
pectin) should be in every pantry. But the young chef is
equally committed to fresh, locally grown ingredients—in
fact, he owns a one-hectare (2.5 acre) farm, where he grows
90% of the produce used in his restaurant. “I want to be
completely respectful to in-season ingredients and elevate
them with science and knowledge,” he says.
Daniel Patterson has a similar sensibility. Located in San
Francisco, his two-Michelin-star restaurant, COI, showcases
California’s bountiful produce, often in unexpected and
playful ways. “We brine, cure, and smoke, as cooks have
been doing for thousands of years,” the COI website explains,
“but we also embrace modern cooking methods, like
sous vide.” And in his frequent columns in The New York
Times Magazine, Patterson explains basic food science to
the home cook.
Other influential figures in American avant-garde cuisine
include Will Goldfarb, who sells specialized equipment and
ingredients through his website, WillPowder.net; and H.
Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa, who have done much
to disseminate Modernist techniques through their blog,
Ideas in Food (see previous page).
66 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
HISTORY 67