September 30, 2011 in Healthy Eating by empoweringwellness

Lessons from the greatest chef in the world

If you are not a foodie, his name may be unfamiliar to you.  But, Ferran Adria is arguably the greatest chef in the world. His former restaurant, el Bulli has been named the world’s top restaurant five times.

Last night, I heard Adria speak at George Washington University. And for about 90 minutes, Adria talked about his ideas on cooking, he shared his vision of the future for el Bulli, which closed in July 2011, but will reopen as a creativity center in 2014. All interesting stuff, but what really captivated me was were his thoughts about the family meal and simple cooking. What can the man who created “culinary foam” teach us about everyday cooking. Well, as it turns out, quite a lot.

Adria has a new cookbook out called “The Family Meal: Home cooking with Ferran Adria.” Taking nearly 3 years to develop, the cookbook contains menus based on the evening staff meal at el Bulli. There are 31 menus, one for each day of the month. Each menu has 3 courses – a starter, a main, and a dessert. The requirement for the meals was that they be nutritious, cost no more than $5-$6 / person to prepare, could be prepared in 40 minutes or less (not counting cooking time), that they use easy-to-find ingredients, and that most people liked them.

I love that recipes are presented for 2 people. Adria joked last night, “I don’t understand why all cookbooks are for four when 54% of the western world is a household of 1-2 people. If you have children, they still don’t eat that much.”

I love the cookbook, and I love the notion of creating simple meals and sharing them with friends and family. It’s not about “diet.” It’s about knowing what goes into your food and preparing simple meals with largely local ingredients. Love it, love it, love it. And the book has great photos too. Rather than a written list of steps, each step in the preparation is photographed, making it incredibly easy to follow.

What are the lessons I learned?

• Good food does not have to be complicated. These are very simple recipes.
• Good food involves using good ingredients that are best when they are in-season
• Good food can be affordable

Take a look at The Family Meal, in the words of Ferran Adria himself.