Modernist Cuisine, rediculous toys for men?

Before today's serious topic, just a few words about last Sundays's post. As I mentioned there, I am planning to test Heston's Hot and Iced tea. I found out that I can get Gellan F which is needed for that recipe at my local pusher here in Oslo (http://sousvidenorge.no/). But I also need a few other things that I found that they did not have. These are sodium citrate, malic acid and calcium chloride. But I have now found a place on the internet where they seem to have everything one could possibly want. This is the Modernist Pantry, http://www.modernistpantry.com/ and many of you will already know it.

So my Christmas gift from me to me this year is a substantial order from them which is currently making its way here. But to anyone out there living in the Oslo area: Do you know of any other stores here who may stock these things? Nice as the Modernist Pantry is, and as good as they service seems to be, it would have been practical to be able to trot down to a local store to replenish missing items.

So the Hot and Iced is coming.

But now to something different. The other night my wife and I were attending a dinner party. The hostess is a very good cook. She is culinary educated and also a well established food journalist in Norway. Against this backdrop, I thought an inspiring conversation about modernist cuisine would be in order, so I said "Oh, by the way, I have started studying and testing out modernist cuisine lately".

That did not go down well. I felt a cold front sweeping over me. I got a distinct impression that this was not a good thing. "Modernist cuisine is just a toy and mainly for men". "It is just about making things look different than it tastes". The word molecular came up rather quickly. I made a huge social blunder by suggesting that these negative thoughts were brought about by lack of knowledge in the field. Not a good idea.

I said I have a Sous Vide machine. This was met with heavy frowning of eyebrows, so I tried to explain that Sous Vide is nothing else  than a new way of cooking food. The reply was that there is nothing new about it. Slow cooking has been done for ages, and you can do the same by vacuum sealing the food (she has a vacuum sealer) and cooking it on a low temperature in the oven. I really doubt that her oven is that stable and possibly cannot be set to a low enough temp, but I did not say so.

To me, Modernist Cuisine is about re-thinking the old ways and using a bit of science to see if we can take food a step further and perhaps avoid some of the compromises that is inherent in traditional cooking. In addition it opens up for more creativity and even humour in cooking. I decided to skip creativity and humour and played the "taking cooking one step further, purifying tastes and textures"-card. Did not work. She did not totally forbid it from the face of the earth, but told me several times that I should be cautious and keep my feet on the ground. I said "I really do not know what you mean", and she said "Yes, you do". She even warned me that I should be cautious about to who whom I spoke about this.

In the book Modernist Cuisine there is a chapter about the resistance that this trend has experienced, but I have never actually experienced it myself. I was quite blown away with something that I almost conceived a (mild) hatred towards the topic. Why? What is so wrong with it?

We (or they, actually, I was not into cooking then) saw the same thing with nouvelle cuisine in the 60's and 70's. Julia Child was not at all positive to that. That movement moved away from the classic French cuisine that had been codified by Escoffier at the start of the century and started investigated lighter sauces, fresher ingredients, less involved recipes and more simplicity and creativity. Like then, modernist cuisine is in part about not trusting inherited rules, but finding new ones. I think that this may feel threatening to people that are well established in the culinary world. People who's existence rely upon their knowledge of the old ways. I think the resistance is based on a combination of lack of knowledge and a fear for the unknown.

After establishing that modernist cuisine is just a passing whim and a toy for men, she said: "I create food trends in Norway". I found that quite scaring.

I will invite her to dinner in a little while. I will serve her a number of well tasting dishes that will not necessarily look very modern at all. I will keep foams to a minimum (they were snorted at). And then, when she has (hopefully) praised the food, I will tell her: "This, my friend, has been a modernist meal, and you liked it". And then I will write a blog post about it.

Wish me luck!