Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Liquid olives and other marvels

The name of José Andrés cropped up in a random conversation with Scott the other day, and V spent the rest of the morning watching clips of his cooking on her iPod Touch. The end result: a delicious tortilla española with frijoles colados for lunch.

It looks like José Andrés's agent has instructed him to play the clown for American audiences. This had unfortunate consequences for him on the douchey David Letterman show, but he was treated with a bit more respect by Craig Fergusson.



Those liquid olives look very yummy and easy enough to reproduce, but where are we going to find a reliable source of liquid nitrogen here in Antigua?


2 comments:

elgordo said...

I have been to his MiniBar in DC. The food is amazing. Nevertheless, once is enough. His food is clever and mostly good, in bite-sized portions.

Inner Diablog said...

Agreed. Bite-sized food makes much more sense in Spain where they have long lunches, a siesta and then come out of their places of work around 7 or 8 and then - especially during the summer - still wait 2-3 hours before dining.

Quality bar snacks thrive in a culture where a lot is drunk, but slowly, in the warm evenings. Tapas often come free with 'Cañas'. Yet as soon as they are transfereed to the English-speaking world it becomes a dinner menu consisting of multiple (often overpriced) plates.

Anyway, Jose Andres tends to cook much bigger dishes on his TVe show, because that's what the Spanish actually eat at home. But abroad a lot of ethnic cooking such as Indian and Korean favours the small plate format, so I guess that is how he's decided to prosper in DC.