The Family Meal – Ferran Adrià – The Best Chef in The World

You can cook like the best chef in the world! All you have to do is buy the most popular cook book of the season; “The Family Meal/ Home Cooking with Ferran Adrià”. I received the cook book for my birthday a few weeks ago but it’s already one of my favorites! Chef Adrià is known as the best chef in the world and often referred to the as the father of molecular gastronomy and a Picasso of culinary art.

His first cook book for the home chef has beautiful step by step photos which will guide you through each recipe and it’s very easy to follow. This hardcover edition is destined to become a classic for all home cooks as well as chefs. Each of the 100 recipes in the book are inspired by the meals prepared for the elite chefs who worked at his restaurant;  El Bulli in Spain, also known as the greatest restaurant in the world for many years.

More than 2500 articles and 14,ooo pages  have been written about El Bulli which was only open for six months of the year.  It served only 50 guests per night, 8,000 per season but it received over 2 million reservations per year. This of course meant that only a small percent of exclusive guests were able to experience the best gourmet meal of their lifetime. In July of 2011 El Bulli closed and in 2014 but it will reopen as a creativity center for chefs. A documentary; El Bulli: Cooking in Progress is screening around the country including dates in December at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Portuguese Michelin star Chef, George Mendes was an apprentice at El Bulli in 2007 and talks about his experience below.

Excerpt from:

Chefs Assess El Bulli’s Legacy – Diners Journal NY Times by Julia Moskin…July 14, 2011

George Mendes, chef at Aldea in New York City and an apprentice at El Bulli in 2007
” So many young chefs come into the restaurant and want to learn to use xantham gum, but they don’t even know how to use salt yet. When I was training I felt it was my responsibility as a chef to learn the basics, and that is what Adrià did. He was a creative genius, but at the end of the day, he was also a Spanish chef and he knew that with all the foams and textures in the world, the food had to taste good. I took what he did and tried to cook from my Portuguese background. My duck and rice wouldn’t be as refined as it is without him, or my bacalao à Brás, a Portguese lunch of salt cod scrambled with eggs, crispy potatoes and black olives. Instead of serving it in a bowl as a lunch dish, I made a snack out of it and served it in an eggshell with a tiny wooden spoon. It makes people smile. Sometimes people forget about that playful, humorous side of Ferran and his food. I never forget what he would say every day at the morning meeting of all the chefs: “We are in what some people call the best kitchen in the world, about to embark on a 14-hour workday, and serve 50 people a meal they have waited years to eat. But please,à remember to have fun. It’s only cooking.”

Anthony Bourdain – No Reservations had a great segment on El Bulli that can explain what El Bulli was all about!… Enjoy the show! ……..

El Bulli Part I

El Bulli Part II

El Bulli Part III

Get the book or put it on your Christmas list and start cooking like the “Best Chef in the World”

Tia Maria!