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Oriol Castro on stage at Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España. Rodrigo Díaz
Embracing the Concept to Discover New Paths

Embracing the Concept to Discover New Paths

Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch, and Mateu Casañas, chefs at Disfrutar*** (Barcelona, Spain), open their kitchen to reveal their current projects and share knowledge for everyone to benefit from.

Javier Varela

Madrid

Lunes, 27 de enero 2025, 15:55

When entering the kitchen of Disfrutar*** (Barcelona, Spain), Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch, and Mateu Casañas have a clear goal: "Embrace the concept to discover new paths." This secret was unveiled by Oriol during his presentation at Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España, highlighting the immense creativity and pursuit of excellence by this trio of chefs with unparalleled technical skills. Their combination of talents and culinary artistry is a treasure of gastronomy, earning them the title of the world's best restaurant in 2024.

In their quest for new paths through a concept, Oriol revealed five new proposals from Disfrutar that have yet to be tasted by their diners, marking the beginning of this "search for new paths." "We have started working with enzymes, which we had barely used, to create a drink that we haven't served to anyone at Disfrutar and can't be called mead because it doesn't contain honey," the chef noted. This creation, called "hydrocarps, because it's water and fruit," includes almost all fruits and vegetables, and at Disfrutar, they have already experimented with "pineapple, strawberry, banana, fig, pomegranate, peach, or sweet potato."

Oriol, with one of his creations. Rodrigo Díaz

After peeling and crushing the bananas, he adds 3% pectinase to break it down, and through several cooking processes, achieves banana water "with the taste, depth, aroma, and flavor of banana." This water is reduced to achieve a texture similar to honey (from 11 kilos of bananas, 1.2 kilos of honey are obtained). "We pass the water through a centrifuge to clarify it, add water, and then beer yeast," the chef explained. "We then place it in a demijohn, cover it, and let it ferment at 20 degrees for 2-3, up to 4 weeks, depending on the sugar content."

The next proposal was a dish called 'Stalactite and Stalagmite' to achieve a dessert with specific elasticity, to which biscuit and bicarbonate are added. "We used to make it in the oven, and now we do it on the slimmer grill at 150 degrees. Then we make an opening upwards to give it a stalactite and stalagmite texture, creating an airy biscuit that is very fragile but magical," he confessed. To finish, they add coconut condensed milk and plate it on original crockery.

Can you imagine eating a steak shaped like a sausage? At Disfrutar, anything is possible. "We work with many sausages but decided to focus on the sausage, and from that idea, we work with six fats, three Spanish: retinta, morucha, and rubia gallega, and three foreign, from Poland, Germany, and Iceland," Oriol noted. "This minced meat with sausage texture is incorporated to decontextualize the steak in a raw state," and a bit of potato foam, a roasted pepper sphere, grilled escalivated pepper, and dehydrated pepper juice are added. "To finish, we add a drop of truffle oil, smoked oil, and a soufflé potato."

In this search for different paths through a concept, Oriol presented "pastas made with alginate to create pasta without any flour (ideal for celiacs) and only with potato." With this proposal, "which we haven't applied to any dish at Disfrutar," they achieve potato spaghetti.

Ferran Adrià's Creative System

Ferran Adrià took the stage at Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España many years later to talk about cooking. "Cooking was a vehicle for creating, which is what I loved," confessed the promoter of elBulli Foundation (Cala Montjoi, Girona, Spain). "I loved eating and used it for that," he added with a laugh. However, Adrià's talk on the creative system based on the experience of el Bulli restaurant did not follow any established script.

Ferran Adrià on stage at Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España Rodrigo Díaz

In his experience, it is vital to know "how creation is measured," because the difference between imagination and innovation is not easy, and these are words everyone uses when referring to gastronomy. For Adrià, of the 10 million restaurants in the world, "only 80 percent of the 200 restaurants that move the world have fought to try to open the way. This is what is called the avant-garde," he emphasized to explain what life was like at El Bulli. "We worked as a team, had a lab when workshops didn't exist, closed for 6 months a year, didn't work nights, spent 600,000 euros on innovation, and had brutal creative pressure."

A situation that led him to close the restaurant but without losing "that obsession to improve the creation process." In his words, Adrià wanted to convey "that the creation process is very tough" and tried to explain "the difference between culinary action and culinary creation." Rubén Zubiri, from the restaurant Enigma* (Barcelona, Spain), assisted him in his explanation with a digital tool being implemented in his restaurant "after two years of work." It has created a recipe catalog with a digital archive where they upload all the dishes they taste. "We organize them annually, by menu structure, and by preparation to help manage the purchasing process," Zubiri noted. With it, they manage to group "preparation system sheets as a roadmap, the main product sheet, culinary resource classification, room explanation, direct searches by terms, texture, colors, aroma, taste, or customer satisfaction," he concluded. A whole process to facilitate creation in the kitchen.

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