ICC2011: Coverage of Spanish Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz's Mainstage Presentation

150 Minutes to Feel at Spain's Mugaritz

The ultra-creative Andoni Luis Aduriz explains his inspiration

Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz is a seasoned presenter; he travels to four or five congresses a year, so he knows how to put on a good show.  He's also committed to being a role model for young chefs in search of a dream. Chef Luis Aduriz (the first of his two last names is Luis) opened Mugaritz in 1998 near San Sebastián.  The restaurant has since become a laboratory for Experiential Cuisine. At Mugaritz, guests have "150 Minutes to Feel." Choice is taken off the table, as guests are served a 22-course tasting menu, with no à la carte options. And as Chef Luis Aduriz explains, their palates can't choose how they'll perceive taste. But each guest can choose how they will interact with the experience. Says the chef, "At Mugaritz, we want people to feel."

Chef Luis Aduriz demonstrated some of the exciting work that his team has developed at the restaurant, particularly experiments with heat-resistant molds and calcium carbonate. And together with his head of R&D, Javier Vergara, he tossed an example of those experiments, an egg constructed from mannitol sugar out, into the audience. The shells were part of a five-year Mugaritz quest to perfect a "broken egg" dessert, composed of the shell, cured egg yolks, egg yolk ice cream, and a mad scientist's zeal for innovation.

"We don't show this here to say, "look what we´ve done,'" said Luis Aduriz. "We do this so that anybody who wants to can pick up the thread. The possibilities are endless."

Click here to read on StarChefs.com

ICC2011: Coverage of Spanish Chef Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz

Feast and Feeling at Mugaritz

"Walnut" made with a silicone mold at Andoni Luis Anduriz's Feast and Feeling Interactive Demo

Andoni Luis Aduriz’s workshop was essentially a recreation (or translation) of the context that defines Mugaritz (a highly anticipated stamp on the passport for many a chef traveling to Spain). With only a few products and techniques, Chef Luis Aduriz sought to share a few examples of the innovations coming out of the Mugaritz kitchen in the past year through a demonstration of his experiments with stocks, calcium lime, and wax molds. He showed how Iberian pork stock, when blended with a boiled down kudzu solution (kudzu root, whose transparency when boiled and elasticity when brought to high temperature, impressed Luis Aduriz’s team) and a little sugar, could be dehydrated to form a “crunchy sauce,” which goes from pork-cracklin’ crispy to a nourishing, brothy sip with one bite. Aduriz also discussed a method for making molds with mannitol; the molds—which produce realistic copies of walnuts, eggs and nails—are so strong they can be heated to 140˚C, meaning that food can be cooked inside the sugar shell. Chefs from across the country, including Johnny Iuzzini, Iacopo Falai, and Alex Talbot, and Canada’s Patrice Demers had plenty to take away.

Click here to read on StarChefs.com