I am very sorry for the inconsistant and very turbulent few weeks on Madridlab.net.

All I can say is this is down to a poor selection of hosting companies. My host has been under constant attack from hackers and this has given all of us clients nothing but headaches for the past month or so. I have just signed up with a more secure host which guarantees no down time! So you can expect nothing but new stories and info to be posted here!

The transfer process will take some days but definitely well worth the effort!

Thanks For your patience,

Adam Melonas

I am sorry for the unavailability of the pages in my blog, I am having a technical difficulty that I can’t seem to fix.

I am doing my best to have them functioning again as soon as possible, but it is a little difficult as I am currently in Croatia on a consulting trip.

Thank you for your patience………….

Just a quick not to say HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you are reading this I am currently making the journey back home to Australia from Madrid for a long overdue Vacation!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you very much for continuing to read Madridlab during 2009 and making it what it is today.

I hope all your dreams come true in 2010 as I have a strong feeling this is going to be a year to remember!

As for myself, I am officially finished in my position here in Madrid as I will be concentrating on making my own dream a reality! 2010 Will be the year that I open my Restaurant and Bar in Midtown Manhattan for which I have an amazing team in place to continue the evolution of food and Cocktails on a daily basis in our new Manhattan Lab. Stay tuned as well for a planned US National TV show which we intend to expose our daily developments to the public.

I wish you a safe and happy holidays and a successful 2010

Remember……………… EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

Christmas is here again!!!!!!!!!!

I hope you all have a safe and happy Christmas and New Year!

Madridlab has seen a huge growth in 2009 with an immense amount of regular readers from more than 92 different countries. 2010 promises to be an amazing year for madridlab with the website team becoming bigger and the development of 2 sister sites which I will announce at a later date.

2010 Is also going to bring some amazing new projects which is sure to have an impact on the food world.

Thank you for continuing to read the stories of my work here, it is because of you that this website exists.

Feliz Navidad desde España!

For those of you who don’t already know the blog whitejacket.net it is well worth a look. Ben used to work for me during my short time in Burj al Arab in Dubai, he is a very well accomplished Chef with a similar philosophy to food as I have.

Below you will find a link to a professional review he gave my career and my site, Check it out.

http://www.whitejacket.net/blog/category/chefs-restaurants/

The concept of an “Anti plancha” is not a new one, but just in case you are not sure what it is or how it works I will give you a brief explanation. It works on the exact opposite principles as a regular plancha (teppan) but instead of using heat you use extreme cold to achieve a “freezer burn” which gives a similar texture to cooked. So basically I made a very basic version here as I had a few ideas where I needed it.

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On my recent trip to Denmark I was taken to my friends family Cafe which is called Royal Copenhagen cafe, and I was very pleasantly surprised, which gave me the inspiration for this Post. There is a 3rd type of cuisine I have not mentioned in this blog yet and it is called “Re-invention” (the other 2 are Creation and Interpretation), this is a very interesting one which generally gets done very badly. Think about a favorite song from your past that some new band you have never heard about have attempted to re-do by putting a dance beat and a few half naked ladies in the film clip (which is the only positive point). But instead of making it better they have actually made you start hating a song you once loved, ever happened to you? Well the same goes for food, we have all tasted the work of some Chef who thinks he/she is being creative by taking a dish from traditional cuisine and putting some funky ingredients or using a new technique and in fact they end up butchering the dish. Well every so often you get the chance to taste the work of a restaurant which has paid attention to the past and tradition and conceived what can only be called a Modern day classic . In this case I am talking about Smushi’s (Sm from the danish work “smørrebrød” ( open sandwich ) Ushi from sushi), which are basically a remake of the very classic Danish open sandwich. Attention has been paid to tradition by taking classic sandwiches which have been served all over Denmark for many years and making them simply elegant. They will be Launching a book in the very near future, lets be honest who doesn’t love a great sandwich

As my friend and mentor Paul Pairet (one of the greatest Avant Garde Chefs in the world) of Jade on 36 in Shanghai taught me very well was there needs to be a certain level of humor in food, be it tounge in cheek or just outright funny it needs to be there in certain parts of the meal. An Example of this which I have developed here in Madrid is I will serve a savory deconstructed Tomato mozarella salad (sorry I could not rotate the picture, you will have to look sideways) just before the main course to clean the palete and lighten the meal then after the main course I serve a 1 bite dish with all the same flavours but sweet including crystalized Ketchup cone and sweet mozarella mousse.

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

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My next round of Swedish Tapas were tasted today in Ikea, all went VERY well with every one of them being approved! One of the more interesting developments which we made this time was the introduction of the Savory Ice cream cone……… We have been working on this concept for some time now and finally we have a result which is not sweet and tastes like bread spiced with Fennel and Anise seeds. But yet paper thin Read the rest of this entry »

I will be out of touch and unable to write stories as often for the next 10 days.

We are going to Milano to prepare special menus  for 1 week with Carlo Cracco. For those of you who are unfamiliar with his restaurant of style, find the link here to his 2 Michelin Star restaurant. I am sure to come back with many stories, so stay tuned!

http://www.ristorantecracco.it/

As some of you may remember I reached the 100 posts mark about 6 months ago, but sadly while changing hosts I lost all of the data which I could not retrieve from Google Cache. But the up-side is I learnt a very good lesson in “Back-up” so this will not happen again.

For those of you who have stuck with my blog THANK YOU! For those of you who are new WELCOME!

My blog is about to enter a very interesting phase as there are many many interesting projects and amazing things coming up (I will let you know very shortly).

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Probably the most loved product in Spain (alongside Jamon) is Olive oil. In most of the food you eat here in Spain you will find the familiar flavor of olive oil either as a main component or hiding in the background. I have to admit I have tasted some extremely good olive oils all over the world but Spain pretty much comes out on top, the flavors are so special and unique that you cant help but love them.

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