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The Books!

With the publication of El Bulli 2005-2011 the world of "normal" food enthusiasts was presented with the opportunity to get a look at just what it was that made El Bulli a seemingly perpetual candidate for "Best Restaurant in the World". (Spoiler: it's in the volume with no recipes.)

To the surprise of some, it turns out that a lot of the dishes can be made with ordinary kitchen skills and tools. Of the 125 recipes in the 2005 volume 81 can be made in an ordinary kitchen (leaving aside issues with sourcing ingredients like Warty Venus Clams). Some will take an individual cook several days to prepare and others require "molecular" ingredients. There are plenty of costly or hard to source ingredients not to mention  expensive equipment such as Pacojets, freeze drying machines, liquid nitrogen, and the hard-to-get-in-the-USA ThermoMix. (If anyone wants to send me one they're not using, feel free.) Even so...

On this blog my intention is to present the dishes that can be made in any well equipped home kitchen and can be served at a party without a bunch of fiddly finishing or fancy serving gear. There will, however, be quite a few "molecular" ingredients. In most cases these are used in very small quantities; grams or tenths of a gram. I'll provide links to sources for both "experimenter" quantities as well as "enthusiast" amounts.

So anyway...

Come on in, have a cocktail and a snack!



Cocktail: 1090 - Margarita 2005

Margarita 2005 from the El Bulli General Catalog

Images on the web show this cocktail in two forms: as above in a molded nearly transparent ice glass and as specified in the recipe with the "glass" formed from crushed ice pressed into a custom made mold.

Fun for all ages...

Having no interest in making (or ability to make) nesting plexiglass molds, I took the easy way out and ordered a silicone ice shot mold. (You can also use this mold to make little mugs for "Milk and Cookie Shots".)

Water & Simple Syrup, Cointreau, Tequila, Lemon Juice

Like many El Bulli recipes, the margarita requires some advance planning for those of us with ordinary home equipment. We're making a margarita granita here and it takes a while to freeze something with this much alcohol in it.

So... The night before I planned to serve 'em I made up the margarita mix (nothing special - just fresh lemon juice (I suppose you can use lime juice if you're that sort), simple syrup, Cointreau, Tequila and a little water). Then I dumped everything into a glass bread pan so it wouldn't be too deep, cover ed it with foil, and popped it in the freezer with the ice mold.

Soy Lecithin and Salty Water

The salt air also easy. Mix water, salt and a little soy lecithin and whiz it up with an immersion blender. I covered the bowl and stuck it the 'fridge for safe keeping.

Slippery Ice Shots

Serving time! First I whizzed up the surface of the salt water with my trusty immersion blender to make the salt foam.  While it was settling a bit I got out the ice glasses and margarita granita. Spooned some of the slushy mixture into them, topped it with some foam (I knew it was going to be salty so I skipped the grating of Himalayan Pink Salt.) and handed 'em out with little spoons to scoop out the slush.

How it tastes: Like a margarita. Cointreau is Cointreau so the quality of this cocktail is entirely dependent on the quality of your tequila. The glasses are slippery but fun. We both like them a lot and the recipe makes plenty of Margarita "slush" for subsequent slurping.

Snack: 1345 - Parmesan Soufflés 2007


These are nothing more than little rice puffs flavored with Parmigiano Reggiano and a sprinkling of sesame seeds. This is probably the cheapest  El Bulli recipe to make: rice, water, a couple eggs some Parmigiano and a few sesame seeds.

Rice and LOTS of water

The first step is to cook the heck out of the rice. It pretty much turns to mush. While it cools to room temperature...

Clinton's El Bulli Craft Corner!

Let's Craft!

The recipe wants the soufflés to be 5 mm thick. At El Bulli I imagine they used pastry frames and tiny accordion cutters, both of which are expensive and would see little use in my kitchen. Fortunately the good old foam core project board you used in junior high for the science fair is 3/16 of an inch thick. Pretty near 5mm. The recipe makes 20 6x3 cm. soufflés so I need a 12x30 cm. frame.

I cut out a pair of 18x35 cm. pieces of foam core. Then cut a 12x30 cm. rectangle out of the middle of one of them. They're stuck together with a little wood glue since that's all I happened to have handy.

Back to our regularly scheduled program...

The Raw Materials

The Finished Paste

You're supposed to beat the ingredients together by hand. That did not particularly appeal to me. So after letting the rice cool I dumped about a third of it into the food processor, added the grated Parmigiano Reggiano and the egg white and whizzed it into a thick paste. (The recipe makes far too much rice goop - you could probably save the extra and make congee or something.)


Then I spread a sheet of plastic wrap over the mold and smoothed in the rice mixture. It's ridiculously sticky. Wetting the offset spatula helped - a little. I covered it with another sheet of plastic and put it in the freezer to give the ice mold and margarita mix some company and make it possible to cut the little rectangles.

When the dough is frozen solid I started the oven warming to 320 F. I marked the measurements on the sides of the frame and scored the frozen dough. After lifting it out of the mold and peeling off the plastic wrap I cut out the 20 little rectangles, spaced them out on a Silpat lined sheet pan and put 'em back in the freezer while the oven warmed up.

Ready to Eat

Finally I topped the soon-to-be soufflés with a pinch of sesame seeds and put 'em in the oven.They bake for about an hour - until just golden. You have to resist eating them so they can cool and crisp up a little.

How it tastes: Like the lightest, most parmigiano-y cheese cracker you can imagine.

Equipment and Ingredients

The Books: El Bulli 2005-2011 - Yes, freakin' expensive. Check with your local library - they may well be "in the system" and available to be reserved.

Silicone mold for the ice shot glasses
Immersion Blender
Food Processor
Silpat or other non-stick baking mat - Note the various sizes.
A scale accurate to .01 gram
Offset Spatula
3/16 inch Foam Core Project Board

Himalayan Pink Salt - frankly optional, but kind of cool. You can get it in a grinder bottle at Trader Joe's or Costco.
Soy Lecithin - experimenter, enthusiast

Important Note: I'm not going to be reproducing full recipes for the simple reason that I'd basically be stealing about a third of the books' content. A surprising number are available online and at sites such as the Adria's e-commerce site, Molecular Recipes, Chef Steps and many others. Google is your friend (at least for this purpose).