Washington - A seven-volume tome titled elBulli 2005-2011 that chronicles more than 750 recipes served during the last six years of Ferran Adria’s world-famous restaurant has been published by Phaidon Press.
It offers a revealing glimpse into virtually every aspect of the team’s creative process.
The wildly inventive dishes at elBulli weren’t merely cooked but constructed, often from multiple components. The restaurant’s team used special utensils, scavenged or invented, to execute complex techniques, and commissioned custom tableware on which to serve up its singular creations.
One of the most charming discoveries the book offers is how, after untold hours of research and development to create the restaurant’s never-before-seen dishes, the great chef made sure his team was able to faithfully reproduce perfectly plated dishes with exacting precision night after night.
“We resorted to photographs at one point; however, they were not a satisfactory solution to the problem. These solved the matter of arrangement, but not that of the size of each component of the dish,” the book states.
“One day it occurred to us that we could make moulds of each component or of each dish, and we found that this was very easy using plasticine. Such a simple idea… gave us peace of mind and ensured consistent production.” – Slate/The Washington Post News Service