Modernist Cuisine: Defending the Spaceman
Nathan Myhrvold's magnum opus might be the most important culinary book ever. Why do so many people hate it?
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Photo: Helen Rosner
That something, as most everyone knows by now, is Modernist Cuisine, a 2,400-page, six-volume guide to the science of contemporary cookery that's been variously hailed as the most important culinary volume to be published in the last decade, the last century, the last 150 years, and ever. It's not hyperbole – and once you know Myhrvold, it's also not a surprise. He's an extremely interested person, and he's also an extremely wealthy one, which in combination means that he pursues his interests on an epic scale. When Myrhvold was into dinosaurs, he funded bone-hunting expeditions that turned up more T. rex skeletons than any endeavor in history; when he started getting into food, he funded and led a lab that produced a world-changing book – but with its scientific slant and gleeful support of culinary technology, it's one that not all of the world seems ready to embrace.
I went to the Kitchen Lab for dinner last week, joining chef Thomas Keller, Culinary Institute of America president Tim Ryan, Seattle restaurant emperor Tom Douglas, and a spectacular man known only as Oyster Bill at a white-tableclothed folding table tucked in a narrow pass between a prep counter and industrial shelves packed with scrap machinery and cases of wine. Over four hours and 29 courses, we ate things few people have eaten before: paper-thin dill pickle chips, blood-red "rare" beef broth, centrifuged pea butter, short ribs cooked sous-vide for 72 hours, super-crispy "ultrasonic" french fries made via a wave-pulsing method that Myhrvold has patented. [See photos from the dinner in our gallery »]
The dinner, one of several Myhrvold is hosting in February, was many things: a celebration, after years of research, of the book's completion; a thank-you to the chefs, writers, suppliers, and well-wishers who supported the project; and, maybe more than anything else, a live-action demo of the importance of Myhrvold's no-holds-barred experimentation. Much of what we ate was delicious, but all of it was extraordinary: the meal was a greatest-hits compilation of Modernist Cuisine's strangest, coolest, and most innovative techniques.
Of the twenty-nine courses, a few – while technical successes – were, on the palate, misses: gummy (but shelf-stable!) cheese soufflés; a foie gras rocher whose sweet, livery taste was lessened by its frozen temperature, and then overwhelmed by a wedge of meyer lemon; and a mignardise of olive oil-flavored gummy worms flecked with vanilla bean. But then there were the moments of transcendence: my tablemates looked askance at the tiny quail eggs poured out, raw, onto porcelain soup spoons dotted with yellow chili paste. "Shoot it all down in one bite," Myhrvold directed us; as soon as the yolk hit the tongue, it exploded into a sweet bath of fruit and heat. This was no egg at all: it was spherified passion fruit suspended in a lime broth thickened to mimic albumen. Myhrvold laughed, watching our faces light up: "The really hard part was cleaning out all those quail eggs!"
Laura
http://www.hippressurecooking.com
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