I sincerely believe that most contemporary cookery seeks something more than taste and visual satisfaction, just as haute cuisine and confectionery has been doing for a long time. Today Carême’s eighteen culinary constructions may seem very grandiose but in his day they had a great impact, and came as a surprise to the most seasoned gourmets of the time. Currently, as a plus to the inventiveness of culinary creations, the same idea is being pursued more vigorously, since, although it may seem that nothing is new, we have to maintain both actively and passively the intention to surprise, and the desire to be surprised. Some time ago, with the evocative and magical title Disappearances, we opened a chapter of recipes that almost makes us magicians, using succulent tricks that, far from being secret, we have made public.
The inspiration for this topic arose some time ago in one of the best-known creations that certainly stunned more than one person. It is ‘Mutant Soup’. Despite its name, it is not, of course, a work of science fiction, but a delight for the palate and, above all, a pleasant surprise. It would arrive at the table in a bowl, where a few small black bundles (coated in squid ink jelly) later revealed slices of pumpkin within, themselves filled with strips of squid and vegetables. The waitress poured a transparent broth of baby squid and lime over the black ‘packets’. As soon as the broth touched the bundles, the orange pumpkin was revealed and the transparent broth transformed into a black stock. Despite seeming very modern, this cannot really be called whimsical or quirky, as there have been all kinds of curiosities in the history of soups and stocks, not only in oriental, but also in some European cookery.
A more recent surprise of this kind is a dessert called Intxaursaltsa with Mutant Red Cabbage. Its striking name is due to the broth which changes colour because of the vegetable at the base of the dish.
In the gestation of this recipe, there was also something very surprising, inspired by the discovery that a drop of a washing-up liquid on a greasy plate, looked like it had ‘eaten’ it, and the plate (or pan) changed colour. This mutation was achieved by the addition of an ingredient with a different pH. If you add a few drops of lemon juice, egg white, tangerine juice or bicarbonate to red cabbage broth, the broth changes colour, becoming more pink or more violet, depending on the pH that it possesses.