Chapter three
New Food
Much of the experimentation with food, ingredients and cooking techniques has come out of Spain — San Sebastián in particular — in recent years. There’s little surprise, then, that the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, always interested in the currents and eddies of the greater food world, has featured leading proponents of this new Spanish style like Elena Arzak and Andoni Luis Aduriz. And while their recipes and techniques might be a stretch for the home cook in a domestic kitchen, the challenge of attempting to re-create the magic of these fearsomely talented and intelligent chefs may be hard for some to resist.
But Spain is not the only place in the world pushing boundaries as the roll call at MasterClass has proved. Sat Bains, ‘the most wildly inventive chef to emerge from Britain since Heston Blumenthal’s according to The Daily Telegraph, bravely mixes flavours and influences to brilliant effect, while Quay’s Peter Gilmore can, through artistic technique make magic out of even the most prosaic ingredients.
Probably the most amazing thing about these new food proponents is that they are still able to surprise and delight us with their take on flavours and textures. And there’s nothing quite so satisfying as the shock of the new.