Why All The Fuss

Chef Ferran Adria of el Bulli is an astonishing pioneer of molecular gastronomy but sometimes, one has to ask, why?

In this article, Chef Adria is asking physists and scientists for help pushing the boundries of what is food. Interesting idea.

However, in the article he describes what he does with a strawberry....

One video presentation showed the recreation of a strawberry: The fruit's juices were mixed with gelatin-like agar, then molded and stuffed with strawberry sorbet frozen with liquid nitrogen, a method Adria pioneered.

The end product looked like a strawberry and Adria said diners who ate with their eyes closed could not tell it from a natural strawberry. It's this new frontier of food and science that Adria asked the audience to ponder.

"What is natural?" he asked.

The original strawberry is what is natural, chef.

I've seen this cooking technique with the strawberry, it is fascenating. But again one has to ask, Why? All that fuss and technology to create somethng that a blindfolded taster can not distinquish from a natural strawberry?

I tend to lean more towards Chef Thomas Keller's approach. At his The French Laundry restaurant, he doesn't deconstruct and reconstruct, he intensifies until when you eat his strawberry, it is the purest form and flavor of the fruit possible.