El Somni Is Truly a Culinary Opera Dream Come True

For over a year now the famed Roca Brothers of Spain have been crafting a unique culinary presentation, El Somni, a culinary opera.

Their truly amazing creation is a stunning collaboration of cuisine, form, music and wonder – worthy of the esteemed name, ‘Opera’.

The universality of this 'great work' (for that is what the word ‘opera’ actually means), is reflected in the diversity of the first 12 individuals invited to experience the work.

The premiere guest list included an HIV researcher, a fellow chef, an anthropologist, an actress, a theoretical physicist, a poet, an artist, a film director, a research biologist, a conductor, a food writer and a robotics researcher.

The composition of the work is divided into 12 concepts or courses that wrap the viewing diner in The Dream that is the experience’s title translated.

The courses pay homage to the great French chef François Vatel, who killed himself in 1671 when his concept for a vital banquet that was to be served to the French King Louis XIV was destroyed by the late delivery of fresh fish from the coast.

Such was the temperament of a dedicated artist when art was an expected part of the 'noble' life.

EL SOMNI MENU

•  Prelude: Water Nymph (Vegetable soup at low temperature, sprouts, flowers and light)
• The Dream Begins (Moon)
• Space (Foams frost Indian figue) 
• Ophiucus (Electric eel)
• Under the Sea (Shrimps, plankton, and anemones, sea urchins, cockles, seawater, crustaceans)
• Garden of the Hesperides (Anarkia)
• The Courtship (Ying yang Palo Cortado oysters with garlic and white all black)
• The Carnality (Pueblano pigeon breast with mole, grilled strawberries and roses)
• Apple/Brittle (Golden apple)
• War (Royal hare roial with blood orange and beet)
• Mercy/Death (Parmentier potatoes with purple bone marrow,caviar, purple flowers and incense smoke)
• Glory (Dessert mass mother, mother dough ice cream)
• Awakening (Sweet spring)

Yet the wonder of the evening does not rest solely on the event's innovation cuisine. Expanding on the talents developed in the three brothers’ world famous restaurant, El Celler de Can Roca, these three creative chefs also collaborated with a diverse group of visual artists, including Franc Aleu, Daniel Molina, Pere Grife, and Peret, to create an experience that defies the limits of culinary classification.

After its initial premiere in Barcelona, this unique work will be hosted at 12 different locations around the world, followed by a documentary book, exhibit and finally a film by Mediapro.

If possible, do all you can to attend.  Like listening to great opera performed well for the first time, afterwards you will never view the world in quite that same way as before. And that is, truly, the definition of great art. 

 Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013

Magical Food

Authors from Joanne Harris to Laura Esquivel have described food as part of a magical process that the world engages in each and every day yet often overlooks..

At one of the recent TED lectures focusing on creativity, Chefs Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche demonstrated just how far that magic can go in the hands of some of the world's most insightful and daring chefs.

It's almost alchemy! 

Absolutely Amazing!

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013

Why a Pork Chop is No Longer a Pork Chop

In an effort to make meat more glamorous, the National Pork Board and the Beef Checkoff Program, with the blessing of officials at the United States Department of Agriculture, have changed more than 350 cuts of meat names.

These revised terms have also been accepted by the Uniform Retail Meat Identification Standards, or URMIS, which is used voluntary by most U.S. food retailers.

The new nomenclature emerged after two years of consumer research, which found that the labels on packages of fresh cuts of pork and beef are confusing, said Patrick Fleming, director of retail marketing for trade group National Pork Board.

There is only one problem – many of the new names simply aren’t accurate.

Take for example the conversion of “Pork Chop” to “Porterhouse Chop”. The term “porterhouse”, as every chef knows, has always been associated with a thick-cut steak.

And there’s a reason why. That reason is history, not a marketing decision by a well meaning committee.  

During the 1800’s, regional cattle pens, located outside of Boston near present day Cambridge, supplied the City with its meat. The hardy and hard-working cattlemen, who drove their cattle there, needed a place to wheel-and-deal their final selling price as well as a place to celebrate the dollars earned.

In 1837 Zachariah Porter answered their lodging and dining needs by opening the Porter House Hotel. His decision to do so was further strengthened, when in 184,3 the Fitchburg Railroad built direct tracks to the nearby cattle yards.

More cows meant more men, more hungry cattlemen (not pork men). Searching for a menu item, Porter thought of all the beef available so close at hand and so very fresh. The resulting cut was and is the large and very filling Porterhouse BEEF Steak – Beef, not pork.

Simply changing a name should not be a reason to discard culinary history. Perhaps an award should go instead to National Register of Historic Places for acknowledging this portion of American culinary history. Because the Hotel had been demolished in 1909, the NRHP had to look elsewhere for a representative symbol.  

They decided the best substitute site was the recently discovered Walden Street Cattle Pass. The Fitchburg Railroad built this underground tunnel in 1857 to discreetly move the growing herds of cattle from their railhead to the waiting holding pens without disturbing the developing gentility of the expanding neighborhood. 

Perhaps the National Pork Board and the Beef Checkoff Program should follow the National Historic Register's guidelines and learn to check history before they try to make history. 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013

Hong Kong Ferran Wine Auction a Great Success

Sotheby’s has just completed their Hong Kong auction of Ferran Adrià’s wine from the world famous elBulli Restaurant. When the evening’s sales were totaled, the coffers of Ferran’s future Barcelona culinary research center were US$1.82 million richer.

The most sought after wines were in three lots of Romanée Conti wines from various years.  The Romanée Conti 1990 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti lot fetched top dollar, commanding US$72,708 for just three bottles. 

The lot's final bid surpassed its original estimate auction value of US$33,547, certainly signaling many smiles from Sotheby’s wine staff. However, perhaps the most esteemed item auctioned off was an evening for four lucky guests with Chef Ferran Adrià himself in beautiful Barcelona, Spain. 

The bid packet consisted of a meeting with Chef Adrià at his culinary test kitchen El Bulli Taller, followed by dinner at his brother’s acclaimed tapas restaurant, Tickets La Vida Tapa.  The final winning bid for this evening of discovery and delight was an amazing US$28,451.

The funds generated by the auction will be well needed as the future elBulli Foundation is projected to cost US$7.7 million to build and another US$3.85 million annually to operate.

But Ferran need not fear. On April 26^th Sotheby’s will auction off the remaining elBulli 10,000 wines in New York City to what will surely be another recording breaking evening for wine lovers from around the world. Additionally, Spanish telecom and broadband provider Telefonica SA has signed on as a Foundation sponsor.

Ferran has also committed to prepare what are sure to be a legendary series of meals once a year for the 100 to 200 supporting Foundation members. 

The accumulated funds will result in a Foundation that, as Ferran recently told members of the press, will be "a mix of Cirque du Soleil, the Museo Dali and MIT’s media lab." Once completed, Ferran will most likely amazing the culinary world - yet once again.

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013

Milton Hershey, Caramels and Baseball Cards

Today when people hear the word “Hershey’s” they think instantly of chocolate. But that was not always the case. In fact, Milton Hershey’s first fortune was crafted from caramels and baseball cards.

Hershey began his rags-to-riches life story in Derry Church, Pennsylvania, the son of religious Mennonite parents. Yet it was his mother Veronica “Fanny” who was the guiding light of his childhood. She taught him the value of hard work and the Bible’s Golden Rule, remembering always to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

He learned to work hard for what he wanted and what he wanted more often than anything else was something his family’s limited means did not allow - candy.

He saved the few pennies he made each week running errands just so he could make a special trip to the local candy shop.

By the time he was 13, those candy shops were located in the seven different towns his family had moved to and from.

As a result, his grades were very poor in school. It is not difficult to understand why he failed at his first apprenticeship to a newspaper editor (try absolutely no spelling skills).

But he found his calling as a confectionery apprentice. He work hard, very hard, and in four short years mastered the creation of sweets from hard candies to chocolate fudge.

At the early age of 18 he was ready to start his own company.

Years of failure followed as he moved from Philadelphia to Colorado to New Orleans and finally to New York City always trying to find the candy that would make his fortune.

Penniless and discouraged, he returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania so broke he couldn’t even buy ingredients. 

Everyone he tried to borrow money from to restart once again his business turned him down. He was, in short, a known loser.

Yet as he pleaded for additional funds at bank after bank, even with a major order from England for caramels in hand, one person only saw the opportunity that everyone else was overlooking.

That person was a lowly bank cashier at the Lancaster County National Bank.

Hershey was so grateful for this man’s support that he ran down the street in Lancaster, still in his work apron, with the English company’s check in hand to repay the loan that had saved (and started) his legendary career.

Soon orders were poring from around the world for his softer milk caramels, making him millions of dollars. But to his amazement, the largest orders seem to always come from Great Britain.

So at 37 years of age, he traveled to England and was amazed at what he found there.  British candy merchants were discarding the American baseball cards he enclosed with his pound blocks of caramel candies. They then cut the blocks into individual pieces, dipped them in chocolate and sold them for a per-piece price that by far exceeded the profit margins that Hershey was making Stateside.

Hershey quickly understood that chocolate, not caramels, was the future. He returned to America and sold the caramel division of his company to American Caramel Company for $1 million dollars (roughly $25 million dollars in today’s currency).

The funds generated by the sale lay the foundation for the Hershey chocolate empire, which still produces and sales chocolate around the world. 

American Caramel continued to produce caramels, packed with baseballs from 1909-1911. Baseball cards packed with caramels, instead of cigarettes or chewing tobacco, were popular with many mothers during this baseball-crazy era.

In fact, one of the most desired (and expensive) baseball cards sought after by modern collectors was produced during this period. Most recently the Shoeless Joe Jackson card released with the American Caramel Company sold for a stunning $79,000 at auction.

So when you're next at a game (or planning a sports related menu), remember caramels along with hot dogs and Cracker Jacks as part of baseball cuisine. They're sweet, versatile and definitely part of the all-American game of hope and challenge even in the bottom of the ninth or in life itself.

For as Shoeless Joe Jack would himself have been the first to say, "People will come!" if we but have the courage to believe that life is a Field of Dreams that we can make real - just as Hershey did with a little sugar and determined skill.

POST NOTE, April 8, 2013

No Smoking Please!

If you still have doubts that baseball cards (and caramels) still hold a place in America’s favorite game, just considerate that over the weekend a rare 1909 card sold for US$2.1 million.

Yes, that’s right – US$2.1 million! Wow! That card was of Honus Wagner, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Only 50 of the rare cards were produced by the American Tobacco Company before Wagner, who had never authorized their release, demanded the Company stop production.

Like Hershey, he did not approve of smoking and was concerned children would buy (and possible use tobacco) just to get the sport card.

In the future, his image on baseball cards was produced by the far healthier (and much sweeter) American Caramel Company. Bravo to an early baseball legend with a conscience ahead of his time, who cared more about children than self promotion! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013