What chefs feed their minds on

If it is true, as Ariane Batterberry, director of “Food Arts”, says that «food is the art of the twenty-first century», then why not approach haute cuisine as you would study art or literature? We are starting to do this in a double interview with Mathieu Viannay and Andoni Luis Aduriz. From Lyon to San Sebastián, two young chefs, who are also two rising stars in Europe, describe how they feed their imaginations to create new recipes. In each chapter of the history of literature book which shaped my generation, there was a paragraph about what the author used to read: did he prefer Virgil? Did he read the Attic orators?
Did he like satire? Was he influenced by Quintilian? They seemed to be dusty questions, like the books that remained on the shelves for centuries. Yet with a good teacher, the anthology would come to life, and the echo of those readings would reverberate through the passages we read. So you could feel that those thoughts had nourished a mind that had digested and incorporated them, in times when plagiarism was not an offence, when legend was a collective heritage from which everyone drew freely and actively developed. We were taught history of art in the same way. What pictures had influenced the artist? Even here, the teacher’s role was essential to help us understand, for example the structure of “The Raft of the Medusa” by Géricault assimilated into “Liberty Leading the People” by Delacroix. Today, I am grateful for that approach to learning, which has traced a line of continuity in Western thought.

Ariane Batterberry is the former co-founder and director, with husband Michael, of the well-known American monthly “Food & Wine” magazine. Now at the helm of a review for catering professionals “Food Arts”, she has several art history publications to her credit (art history is one of her passions along with the history of cooking and fashion), and edited the “Discovering Art” series. Ariane says that “the art of the 21st century is food”. We think this is an exciting theory, as she also reminds us of the historian Livy, «who mentioned that even in ancient Rome, cooking had been transformed from something that slaves did to an art form». Ariane tells us that a similar thing «happened in the United States, where until the 1970s, chefs were classified under “domestic help” in libraries, and have only recently been awarded “professional” status». With our classical education, we cannot help but interpret our era using Roman satire. Horace, Persius and Juvenal echo an imperial age in which food, no longer just about nourishment, had become a kind of art and performance, in which gastronomes were elevated to the status of philosophers. Today, two thousand years later, such gastronomic opulence is back in vogue, now that we all agree on the fact that cooking is not so much a technique as a form of art, we thought it would be interesting to explore an approach that goes beyond the food itself, towards the inspiration behind it.

We have chosen two young chefs, Mathieu Viannay from Lyon, with one Michelin star, Meilleur Ouvrier de France in 2004, and the Basque chef Andoni Luis Aduriz, two Michelin stars at Renteria, close to San Sebastián and his maestro, Martín Berasategui. Both representatives of a modern European school of thought which aims at simplicity, they have very different ways of going about it.

Some chefs eagerly devour ancient cookery books, to reinterpret tradition in a modern way. What do you read?

M.V. I’m not an avid reader of recipe books. Apart from Escoffier, my Bible, and a few books by Alain Ducasse, I read very little about cookery. I like to draw my inspiration from other sources. It is life itself which “feeds” my thoughts, a walk, the wild flowers I see in the meadows. Then there are the products. My ideas always start from there. The product is central to my cooking: it’s the taste and simplicity of a single, key ingredient that creates my dishes. I never combine more than three or four secondary flavours around a central one.

A.L.A. There are instructive, educational books which are clearly designed to teach. Then there are others that let you dream, allow your mind to wander, reflect. I alternate these two types of reading, and not only about cooking. But I like to transfer these two aspects into the kitchen. There’s a time to learn, study and experiment, and a time to unwind and reflect. But I also agree about the motto «natura magistra artis»: I draw my inspiration for a dish from nature. Plants, flowers, animals, landscapes… all brought together by human intervention.

You both look for simplicity. Yet you have two very different traditions behind you, on the one hand great French cuisine with its bases and sauces; on the other, the Basque tradition, formed of strong, decisive flavours. What’s your approach to your history?

M.V. I’m a great fan of pot-au-feu, for example, although it’s a dish which I don’t serve in my kitchen. I don’t use bases or sauces. I like the technique of emulsifying to reinterpret classic French food in a lighter, modern style. The Lyonnaise salad with poached egg, bacon and croutons gave me the inspiration for a rocket sauce which I serve cold, with the poached egg sitting on top, Parmesan cheese, cubes of Serrano ham and a round slice of bread with olive oil. The main ingredient is the rocket, while the other flavours speak of a more united Europe, with ingredients from other nations which are coming into our culture.

A.L.A. At Mugaritz, we do a time-consuming, meticulous task. Human interference with nature has to be carefully balanced. In 2000, one of my dishes based on stockfish was highly acclaimed by critics. It’s an ingredient which has always had a role in my country’s gastronomic history. I like to know about the taste and flavour qualities of each product as well as the history. But then I like to go further. Experiment. Incorporate memories from travelling into the dish. That’s
why in my kitchen you’ll find non-traditional ingredients like tofu skin and cassava.

How long do you spend on perfecting a new dish?

M.V. On my menu, there are lots of dishes with the words “tested in my head”: this means I thought up the idea then immediately put it into practice. It’s an extremely important test, when the idea is successful at the first attempt. It happened to me recently with a chaud-froid of chestnuts with lobsters, mushrooms and hazelnut sauce. Four flavours: I designed them and put them together. When you need to work too much on a dish, when you need many attempts before finding the right balance, the immediacy is lost, the simplicity is compromised – even if there are still only four ingredients, you end up by noticing the work that went into it, while I look for a spontaneous effect. Also, my creativity improves when I’m under pressure. The week before I change the menu, I’m like a pressure cooker. My best ideas come when I’m under pressure. I just need to go to the market to visualise a whole new menu.

A.L.A. At Mugaritz we work around themes, but we’re open to coincidences. For example, we were working on anthocyanins and amides. In the kitchen, I had a piece of coal brought back from a recent trip to Japan. By colouring a cassava with blue American corn – which is possible because of its starch content – we ended up with a cassava that was surprisingly similar to Japanese coal. So we included the dish on the menu with the name “vegetal coal”, basing ourselves on what is essentially a dish of potatoes and eggs, things that are found everywhere in our culture, starting with the famous tortilla.

Technology and chemistry at the service of creativity?

M.V. More than technology and chemistry, I’d say: sight, smells, sensations, instinct. My cooking is aimed at capturing glimpses of the present. I’m working on a recipe book that’ll be more than just recipes, there’ll be stories and real life experiences. Each recipe tells a little bit about the situation in which it was created.

A.L.A. With technology and chemistry, like the much-debated liquid nitrogen, we can do practically anything we want. A landscape, a moment, a poem, can all transform themselves into sensations for the palate – like a dessert which I called meltdown, where the “snow” of lychees obtained with liquid nitrogen thaws on the plate like snow in the springtime. In this sense, neither the ingredient nor the technique is an end in itself, but a means. What really counts is the reason why we do it, what we want to say. This is what we should never lose sight of.