To eat childhood; three degrees of amazement in the kitchen

Anyone with a minimum of technical ability can be a wizard in the kitchen. The domestic chef, from whom we expect less, can amaze us with the deliciousness of a well-cooked dish. At advanced amateur (or basic professional) level we are surprised by an original recipe, a combination of flavours, or an unusual presentation.

The art of surprise for starred chefs is much more difficult. They are confronted with palates that are not exactly “virgin” – it’s hard to surprise someone who already has a galaxy of references for comparison. Here, surprise becomes a pyrotechnic battle: the international school of consistencies, siphons, foam, liquid nitrogen, alginates and the new generations of thickeners from methylcellulose to xanthan gum. It is a philosophy of stands, containers, packaging and food design: take for example the Catalan chef Martí Guixé and his techno-tapas (fooddesign. com); or the Frenchman Marc Brétillot and his vertical hors d’oeuvres created for parties – alias “Mise en éspace de la nourriture” – or the “ergonomic” millefoglie designed for “La Grande Epicerie” in Paris (marcbretillot.com). It is more than just a race between chefs anxious to amaze, to conquer the undiscovered virgin territories of the taste buds and cross new frontiers in terms of what has never been seen, eaten, or imagined before.

There are surprises that amaze, and surprises that excite. Although the first type almost inevitably rely on the never-seen-before, the unexpected, the second variety act on a mechanism described by screenwriter Tonino Guerra as follows: “We keep eating our childhoods all our lives”. Summarised in pictures, a surprise which excites is the pen dropping from the hand of egocentric Anton Ego, food critic of the cartoon Ratatouille, staggered by the memory of a flavour that suddenly took him back to a moment in his childhood.

Yet, Anton Ego himself (his character is a hotchpotch of peculiar traits of well-known food critics from various different countries), on his return to the restaurant after having experienced this emotion, issues the challenge: “Surprise me!” He doesn’t say “Excite me!”: he wants amazement. The choice of word is important. Despite the cartoon scenario, the authors of this script show that they are very familiar with the world of haute cuisine, its dynamics and its faces, just as they are familiar with the mechanisms of surprise and excitement.

Surprise, in the words penned by Panella for the songs of Lucio Battisti, is “a collection of things and non-things that happen once. They can be repeated on request and not by chance”. What has surprised us once has gone for ever. That grain of fleur de sel hiding under every flake of chocolate on the dessert Plénitude by Paris chef Pierre Hermé surprises us – the first time. It is still delicious even on the next occasion. But the essence of surprise lies in that undiscovered region of the palate that lies between the unexpected and the never-seen-before. Surprise is the orange jelly that tastes of beetroot and the purple one that tastes of orange (Heston Blumenthal, The Fat Duck, Bray-on-Thames, UK); it is the “vegetable coal” made from manioca coloured with purple corn (Andoni Luis Aduriz, Mugariz, Renteria, Spain); it is the pasta “d’uovo” (made from egg yolks) instead of the classic egg pasta (Carlo Cracco, Cracco, Milan, Italy). But surprise is also the smoking Vesuvius of maccheroni (Alfonso and Ernesto Iaccarino, Don Alfonso, Sant’Agata sui due Golfi, Amalfi Coast, Italy), the fragrance of peperoni cruschi (sun-dried peppers prepared by the Fischetti sisters, Oasis-Sapori Antichi, Vallesaccarda, a mountain region behind the Amalfi Coast, Italy); ravioli filled with cacio cheese and pears (Lidia Bastianich, Felidia, New York), the contrast between courgettes and sausage (Carme Ruscalleda, San Pau, Sant Pol de Mar, Catalunya), gnocchetti made with ricotta and semolina flour (Antonella Ricci, Al Fornello da Ricci, Ceglie Messapica, Apulia, Italy), the sweet salad of roquette and pink grapefruit (Cristophe Felder, Atélier Felder, Paris), the gazpacho of clams and cherries (Albert Ventura, Coure, Barcelona, Catalunya), the vanilla stockfish (Jordi Butron, Espai Sucre, Barcelona, Catalunya), a spoonful of chocolate flavoured with the brackish taste of sea urchin Un pezzetto di cioccolato dopo una gita in barca (Carmelo Chiaramonte, Il cuciniere, Catania, Sicily, Italy), or the beetroot and liquorice dessert (Fulvio Pierangelini, Gambero Rosso, San Vincenzo, Tuscany Coast, Italy).

A surprise that excites may lose the power of amazement it had the first time, but never its emotional charge, which is enhanced with fresh nuances, each time acquiring a depth we did not notice the first time around. The emotion similar to the instinctive amazement – and perhaps the imperative “surprise me!” of the blustering Anton Ego – alludes precisely to this, and embodies the awe inspired by remembering a childhood emotion. “Eating your childhood” implies a connection with our emotional side, not the rational side slavishly disposed to filing things away under the headings new and familiar.

If we can learn an empirical rule from all of this, it is that surprising is a technique, exciting is an art. If the aim is merely to surprise, a professional always knows how to achieve it, but a dish created in the wake of an emotion we want to share is surprising in itself, and does not lose its power after the first time. It acts on a deeper level. The dropped pen is a smirk of sentiment to the categories of reason. Thinking about it carefully, it is a pen that drops when confronted with the memory of simple flavours.
Unmistakeably close to the ingenuous goodness of a dish well cooked by an unsuspecting housewife.