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It would take El Bulli, the Spanish restaurant regularly voted the world's best, 125 years to get through its reservations backlog for this year alone. But for foodies desperate to sample its pioneering molecular gastronomy, help is at hand.
For chef Ferran Adria has distilled his secrets into
a range of ingredients that could make horseradish foams as much a staple of British Sunday lunches as overcooked roast beef and soggy Yorkshire puddings.
An East Anglia-based company has become the first in Britain to sell a line of natural food derivatives created by Ferran Adria and his brother Albert. The range, cooked up in the El Bulli laboratory in Barcelona, is initially on sale to the catering trade and that means even mediocre pub chefs can emulate Adria's brilliance.
With tins of ingredients with whacky names such as Lecite, Algin, Kappa and Metil, cooks can create sizzling fruit jellies, spaghetti for the gluten-intolerant made of pureed vegetables and water, and the solid cocktails that are El Bulli's trademark.
John Jackaman, of Infusions, which has obtained the British rights to the El Bulli line, said: "The undisputed best chef is giving up his secrets. The beauty is that it is actually very simple to reproduce much of what to many of us is unattainable - tasting the food of El Bulli."
One popular recipe is melon caviar, made using melon juice, water, two of the powders - which have been given the brand name Texturas - and a process called spherification. "It pops like caviar when you bite into it but has a fantastic melon flavour," Jackaman said. Another is a lime air that "looks like shaving foam on a plate and can be used to refresh the palate between courses".
Foams are the hottest craze to sweep professional kitchens as chefs seek to emulate Adria and his British counterpart and close friend Heston Blumenthal, whose Fat Duck restaurant vies with El Bulli for the top spot in the global culinary charts. Blumenthal's latest menu features an oyster foam meant to represent "the mist above the waves".
Proponents include Nuno Mendes, who runs the Bacchus restaurant in Hoxton, north London and Tony Flinn, of Anthony's Restaurant in Leeds. Flinn's top dish is a white onion risotto with a parmesan air. Blumenthal aside, the "cappuccino" toppings made using carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are failing to curry favour with many food critics who are unimpressed by "chemistry" cookery. AA Gill warned recently that too many restaurants were choosing froth over substance.
Amateur chefs need have no such qualms, however, and come Christmas they may get the chance to whip up some culinary alchemy. Jackaman has plans to launch a Texturas gift pack he hopes Harrods and Fortman & Mason will stock.
The Texturas range is the closest Adria has come to sharing the DNA of his dishes, which have more than a million people every year clamouring for one of the 50 seats in his restaurant.
El Bulli is only open for six months a year and is already booked up through 2008.
- INDEPENDENT