I am going away until the 16th of June to Bali on a Rest/Research trip.

When I return I will have many tales of my discoveries, so keep reading to learn more.

While working with some fresh coconuts I discovered a way of making it taste and feel like white chocolate. Basically I extracted the pure fat from the coconut and put it through a series of temperature changes to alter the structure when it reset. What I ended up with is a disc which looks and feels like White chocolate, but has more the crunch of bitter chocolate and taste of coconut. The interesting points are; It is stable at room temperature, Nothing has been added and the flavour takes a while to develop in your mouth as when you it warms up and releases the flavour.

So I made a “Snack”, which is a deconstructed Laksa soup. It’s the perfect 1 bite Laksa soup!

The most stereotypical thing to do when sitting in the many Plazas around Spain is to drink a jug of Sangria with your friends in the sun. I must admit this is nice but it has also been hijacked by the scores of tourists to the point that you look like a tourist in your own city if you drink sangria. The funny thing for me is; in Australia and England it is very common to drink Pimms in the summertime (as it is so refreshing), but Spain does not know about Pimms! It is just across a very small ocean!

So I am taking it apon myself to introduce the Spainish to this summer drink. To make it fit in with the “Progressive” style of restaurant we have, I have texturized the Cocktail with a little Xanthan and suspended the normal garnish inside. The trick to this drink is keep it very cold! So I keep the liquid mix at zero, Freeze the glass and shock freeze the garnish in liquid nitrogen (which actually helps to sprinkle it inside more randomly).

Let’s see if we can’t start a trend here in Spain just in time for summer.

Whenever you receive a product live it’s always an exciting feeling. This is the ultimate sign of freshness! There are a very particular type of Prawns here in Spain called Camerones, they have a very sweet flesh and a slight crunch between your teeth. I entered the walk in chiller this morning and I heard a tapping, I thought it may be the fridge so I continued to collect my samples for the day. As I was going up in the elevator I heard it again and actually saw the bag of prawns move. I ended up spending half of the day trying to work out the best dish to create to do them justice. I found some good ways but nothing fantastic yet as the problem is they are just so good when you blanch them for 3 seconds and eat them immediately.

This theory is the simplest way to define all cooking without any other of the 100 or so definitions that exist. Since I adopted this theory I have always tormented myself to really figure out if a dish or technique is my idea or if I saw it somewhere else and didn`t remember. The theory is: if it has been already done but you change; the flavour profile, the appearance, temperature Etc. This is Interpretation and does not truly belong to you, we see many examples of this these days and hear of many wild claims of ownership with no merit or honesty. Some of the most beautiful food in the world has been interpreted and there is not shame in this as there are many classics we all know and love, all traditional restaurants of the world fit into this category and it is down to the skill of the Chef to replicate precisely (but generally it goes all wrong when they try to come with a funky idea and loose touch with the true spirit of the dish). The second theory is Creation where you take a new idea and usually a new technique which you have discovered through trial and error (more error than success) until it becomes a new dish or technical discovery that you can claim as yours and sleep soundly at night. Here in Madrid I am in charge of the lab of Paco Roncero and we are also working with Ferran Adria, we pump a lot of money and time into the lab as we are a 100% cost generating department who’s sole purpose is to make new technical discoveries and then new dishes. Granted not everyone has the funds and resources to have a laboratory and full staff to run it, but you can still be true to food and yourself in your own kitchen.In summary the world needs the 2 types of Cuisine as you do not want to eat a discovery meal every day and also it would be a crying shame if you could not eat dishes such as a true Creme brulee because everyone has add there own Flair and flavours to it and the dish is lost.

There always has to be a certain level of humor in food, be it tongue in cheek or just outright funny it needs to be there in certain parts of the meal. The job of a Chef is a very serious one, but this doesn’t mean that the plates he or She produces have to always be serious. The Guestscome to your restaurant to have a good time, there is nothing better as a Chef than walking through your restaurant and hearing guests openly laughing when a plate is presented and they are surprised, there is nothing worse for me than eating in a serious restaurant where the ambiance is too tense to have a good time. An example of this which I have developed here in Madrid is a savory deconstructed Tomato mozzarella salad Which is served just before the main course to clean the palette and lighten the meal. This first salad is basically 2 balls; The first one has a white skin of mozzarella and cold liquid tomato on the inside, the second has a red tomato skin and a warm liquid mozzarella inside. After the main course I serve a 1 bite dish with all the same flavours but sweet including a crystalized pure Ketchup cone and sweet mozzarella mousse.

I have been wanting to do a replication of a Zen rock garden for a long time but was not able to achive the right effect. I have now discovered a technique using a Gum and Liquid Nitrogen, this coupled with Mycryo (cocoa butter from Cacao Barry) gives a result which looks like small stones or Even potatoes but contain liquid on the inside. This is another version of Fruit salad! the powder which I rake depending on my mood is Yoghurt with Dextrose. There are 2 different versions pictured

As a Chef temperatures are critical, and don’t just think this is only applicable for the kitchen this also extends to the bar after work for that first glass of Champagne or beer. Generally your first beer of the night is always guaranteed to taste pretty damn good but I have discovered the perfect temperature to serve beer. I was in a bar in Bali in the middle of a hot day so I ordered a beer, when I drank just the neck of the beer I proclaimed that it was the best beer of my life! Now this is no easy feat I have had the finest beers from around the world in some very exotic settings and this was only a corona but by far the best. I glanced over to the fridge designed solely for the beer and it was set on -6 degrees celsius, the thing with beer is if it is too cold than it looses its carbonation and too warm, just tastes bad. So this bar found the exact degree point not to loose any gas and serve the best beer in the world, how easy it is to make an impact when you know your product and how to treat it.

There are some flavor combinations that exist which go so well together and sometimes you can break your head to make a technical dish with the same flavors that tastes as good as the original. listed below are some perfectly matched flavors which exist today;

• Strawberries and cream
• Licorice and lime
• Tomato, mozzarella and basil
• Dulce leche, green apples and olive oil
• Bitter Chocolate and Foie gras
• Miso, burnt butter and Salmon
• Balsamic vinegar and strawberries
• Lime and coconut
• Goats cheese, figs, port and rosemary
• Tomato, passion fruit and caramel
• And my personal favorite Whiskey on Ice

So basically this week I have been exploring one of my favorites, a variation on a pear crumble and how I love to eat blue cheese from a cheese board which was a Caramelized pear, blue cheese, walnuts, rosemary and custard. So I pan roasted the halved and cored pears in a burnt butter which was infused with aromatics, then added demera sugar and some fresh whole butter to make a strong caramel. I then made a Ball of liquid custard (using spherification) and put this in the place where the core used to be and closed the pear using the caramel to stick together. The top of the pear is a rosemary stalk, I then dipped it into liquid nitrogen and then into Bitter chocolate and defrosted it. I served this with a sorbet (blue cheese, honey and rosemary), some walnut sable crust, a walnut and toffee praline and caramelized walnuts. End result was the exact flavor profile that I wanted (and brought back all the right memories) and a good balance of textures.

Many people really don´t know what a nut looks like in its raw form, or even in some cases not even know what the shell of the nut looks like There is such an interesting experience in tasting the nuts in there soft state as the texture is obviously different and so is the taste. They are all truely unique in one way or another; the walnut is soft but incredibly bitter, the almond has a very strong purfume which is almost synthetic in taste, hazelnut is crunchy like a pear, Etc. But the award for the most effort for the Smallest yield goes to the Pinenut (for those of you who don´t know it comes from the green pinecone) as when I was up in El Bulli last time it took 25 Chefs 30 minutes to produce 2 shot glasses full of pinenuts and belive me being 1 of the Chefs removing the kernals with them it is hard work! But the effort is worth it as pinenuts in there raw form are a real treat, they are translucent and springy on the tooth. I recommend you try and find what available fresh nuts you have in your cities as they are a very underutilized resource that can add that unique point of difference to a dish.

More than a year ago I created a new meat called Ibericon, in short it is Pressa Iberica (A very highly marbled part of the neck of a black Spanish pig which only eats Acorns) and a very low temperature bacon which gets “Glued” together. Here in Spain it was not my biggest success as they do not believe in eating Bacon in a Michelin star restaurant, they have the belief that its a cheap breakfast item. I personally love to use it in certain places as in small doses it has such a particular flavour that lends itself to many things. So me being stubborn I stopped all testing on this plate as I refused to change it.

That is until now, after being in Singapore a few weeks ago I have now regained my Asian taste buds. So I was thinking to change the bacon for a fresh Pork belly which was scalded then painted with a mix of Chinese 5 spice and sweet soy. I air dried this for 3 days then cooked it at a very low temp to keep it tender then blasted it for the last moments of cooking to burn the marinade (as the bitter balances the fat).

To cut a long story short, I then did the same process with sticking the Pressa Iberica and cooking the whole thing in Vacuum. I had some of my teriyaki sauce in the fridge which I have been ageing for about a year now, so I laquored the meat and I must admit it is far superior than the version I did a year ago. This was then confirmed by my Spanish colleagues. Finally Ibericon might make it’s well deserved debut in Spain.

I started work today on an oyster “Cocktail plate” which I will write about at a later date. I needed the oyster flavour without anything else but in a sauce so the flavour hits you immediately before you have even chewed the oyster. So what better than pure oyster with the second water (the first water is when you just open the oyster which is usually more salty and dirty, when you cut the oyster out of the shell and leave it the second water comes when it relaxes). When I pureed the 2 elements together it made a cream which is not the discovery, but as the mix settled it started to reform and coagulate. This is useful as it is not necessary to add any gums or stabilizer’s, which I prefer as gums tend to take out a percentage of the fresh taste. Stay tuned for the Cocktail plate which will be finished by next week.

In Australia we have a beetroot called a “Target Beet”, it basically looks like a target board. I have been searching for this product here in Spain for about a year with no luck. So I decided to make my own luck with a sweet version.

The picture you see is NOT FINISHED! But basically it is vanilla, beetroot, rose and raspberry. I am now working on the temperature and viscosity to achieve layers which are uniform and equal in texture, plus the next trial will be aerated so you can cut through with a spoon and taste every layer.

The beauty of living in a free world is that we can choose to do or not to do something. So why is it that people still feel the need to post stupid or abusive comments on blogs when they can simply choose not to continue reading?

I say this out of frustration as I have tried many times to get my friends who are some of the best Chefs in the world with a wealth of knowledge to send me some stories which I will post under their name. The answer is always the same ” we don’t want to do it as there are so many people out there who find it entertaining to comment on things they know nothing about in an abusive way”. I used to say this was untrue and try to convince them otherwise, but as the time goes on I have spoken to more of my friends with Blogs and I realize that this is happening everywhere. Why do people find it necessary to abuse others who are giving something for free? I am sorry for writing this negative post but I too have a Blog stalker and it’s just getting boring to keep deleting the stupid comments every morning. If you are bored, please GET A HOBBY!

As I am working on a “Flavor Profiling” graph, I always find it interesting to find 2 flavours which just work together so well. All of my life I used to hate papaya as it has a very distinct and almost dirty flavor, that is until my friend in Bali introduced me to the idea of adding fresh limes. I was reminded of this last week in Singapore where I was eating 2 plates per morning. The more lime you add the better, the papaya cancels out the acid from the lime and the lime cancels the dirty flavor. All of this while still being perfectly balanced, you can taste the characteristics of both of the fruits. This only works with Tahitian style limes as I tried the same with the local “Calamansi” lime and it was awful.