Combining Michael Ruhlman's post on the meaning of molecular gastronomy with Jeremy's post about miracle fruit brings me to an interesting problem. How can we be living in a moment where both haute barnyard (earthy, back to the farm, fresh, local) and "molecular gastronomy" (chemical, forward looking, industrial) are the two dominant food paradigms? A world where one can get reservations to neither WD-50 (Wylie Dufresne's molecular gastronomy mecca) or Blue Hill at Stone Barns (Dan Barber's fanatically farm driven simplicity)? To me, they are nemesis, and yet people talk about both phenomena as if they are part of the same world.
I don't discount Adria, Dufresne, Achatz, and the rest of the molecular gastronomers, by the way. Assuredly, many of their methods will fade away, because they are flawed. But to the extent what they are doing is using modern cooking methods on traditional foods, like all innovators, other novelties are going to stand the test of time. I don't doubt that there is a place in this world for agar as a stabilizer, especially in dessert, for example. But I am willing to put my money on haute barnyard as the more lasting trend, because, fundamentally, it's not a trend. It's how everyone used to eat, and hopefully will eat once more.
5/28/2008
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4 comments:
I haven't even tried any molecular gastronomy yet. I like to order things at restaurants that I can't make at home, but I prefer that the inability be based on my mediocre cooking skills and not on lack of technology. If your cooking is superior to mine only because you have fancier toys ... shrug.
I pretty much agree, PG, but I don't discount the possibility that some of this new stuff is just what will one day be a standard cooking technique. After all, we don't want to be the barbarian standing at his spit mocking the silly person boiling things with the pot, right?
Yes, I'm with you on this issue.
Last week I read an article in a Spanish newspaper written by a "traditionalist" chef saying that some of these molecular gastronomers use chemical ingredients in the food they serve which are not regulated by health inspectors. I am not an interventionist to that magnitude but I do agree that they might not be held to the same standards just because the ingredients they use and their food might be something new. I believe most of these chefs are very serious when it comes to their ingredients, how they manipulate them and so on, but do diners know that the apple caviar they are eating has been made with calcium chloride?
I don't know where the limit is. I do believe though that like you said, eating local, sustainable and minimally processed food is the way we ought to be eating and the way nature is made. My two cents.
The article aran read gets picked up by the NYTimes.
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