Bulldog, Bulldog, Bow Wow Wow

For those of you who wonder what I do at work all day, it varies.  Today involved examining NMR spectra and assigning peaks to different metabolites.

While I could visualize my data in several forms, the prettiest and most dramatic were pretty much the least useful.  Still, it was like a puzzle that I spent all day solving, weighing the possibilities to find the best fit.  Probably not what you picture when you think of science, but don’t worry – we just keep the glass vials and bubbling vats in the other room.

There comes a time in a foodie’s life when one must pay homage to the greats.  For me, that came after work today when, exhausted from the weekend, I tried to decide what low-key adventure suited my mood.  I had hoped to see the El Bulli exhibit at Palau Robert, but was worried that it would be far away.  In fact, it was right at my doorstep; I can literally see it across the intersection from the end of my tiny street.  And so there was no excuse not to go to the man that inspires food fantasies along the world.

As a chemist, a biochemist, and a foodie, I am in awe of the work of Ferran Adria and the El Bulli team. [Note: I do not use the term “molecular gastronomy,” because Adria found it inaccurate and disliked it immensely]

For those of you that haven’t heard of Ferran Adria or El Bulli, let me fill you in: El Bulli was started by Dr. Hans Schilling and his wife Marketta from Germany, who fell in love with Cala Montjoi on Spain’s Costa Brava and set up a restaurant in 1961.

It grew from a modest space to one with a beach bar and patio to one that boasted incredible chefs with boundless culinary imagination.  Ferran Adria was the last head chef until El Bulli shuttered its doors in July 2011 at the peak of its renown.  In the time that he worked at El Bulli, Ferran Adria and his partner, Juli Soler, revolutionized cooking.  To them, the techniques were concepts that should be created and then applied to foods.  Eating wasn’t just about consuming food, it was about living an experience.  It was about memory, surprise, irony, and humor.  But they also broke down other barriers: they made cooking an open, demystified experience (while, of course, simultaneously creating wonder and amazement) by sharing all of their techniques and ideas with other chefs.  They organized conferences, produced books at the levels of Average Joe cooks and culinary geniuses,

and started a conversation that continues today.

Fascinating facts about El Bulli:

1. The name “El Bulli” is a term that the founders (the Schillings) used to collectively describe their bulldogs. (Rah rah Yale!)
   
2. The El Bulli team is responsible for such wonders as smoke foam, melon drop caviar, layered asparagus and truffle Irish coffees, and other strange pairings and preparations.
3. Liquid nitrogen is par for the course in the kitchen [for even more extreme kitchen hardware, see THIS BOOK produced by a former Microsoft VP that I plan to one day buy when I have a football stadium-sized kitchen. And when that day comes, you’re all invited for dinner.]
4. At El Bulli, they also used silicon to make molds of fruit and nuts (that they could later fill with other substances to create the appearance of fruit/nuts but the unexpected flavor of something else), PVC pipe to create snaking noodles, a screwdriver to create cylinders of flavored floss, and syringes to create fruit beads.

Incredible photos from the exhibit:

 May I present Ferran Adria, the Simpsons character

 Self-explanatory and fabulous.

 A wall of tiny pictures of the thousands of dishes they created over the years

NOMNOMNOM

 Read these captions:

 Irish coffee of green asparagus and truffle

 White bean foam with sea urchins

 Caramelized quail's egg

 Smoke foam

 Textured chocolate

 Carrot air with bitter coconut milk

 Beetroot ribbons with vinegar powder

 Oyster leaf with vinegar dew

 Dowww bulldog pride!

Note: the exhibit will be touring the US, Japan, and a few other countries next year.  Then, in 2014, the El Bulli Foundation will begin its work to push the frontiers of food still further.

After looking at so much fascinating food, what else could I do but eat?  I walked a few blocks through the beautiful Mediterranean weather to Turris

another one of Barcelona’s top five bakeries.  I managed to sneak a few photos

before they brusquely informed me that photography was not allowed inside the bakery.  After I complied, they warmed up and fed me delicious bread (or rather, I fed myself from the heaping bowl of samples on the main counter).   I got a barra classic (a fresh loaf of bread, slightly wider than a baguette), a pizze de verduras variadas (pizza with various fresh vegetables), and a trona de full (a pastry of two twirled strands with apple and honey between them and roasted nuts and powdered sugar decorating the top).

After gobbling down my dinner, I can tell you that their bread is divine.  There’s nothing like that first crunch (does anyone else think of that seen in Ratatouille when they talk about the crunch of fresh bread?)

Spotted: the Spanish hand truck shopping bag!

These were first pointed out to me in Madrid by Diana, but they seem to be ubiquitous across Spain.  When Spaniards set off to do their weekly grocery shopping, they bring these cloth bag hand trucks with them, fill them up, and return home toting their bounty.