Omnivore - Best cookbooks 2008: A Day at elBulli

It’s actually quite hard to characterize A Day at elBulli: An insight into the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adria (Phaidon, $49.95) as a cookbook. At least, I was not able to cook anything from this huge, fawning book covering the self-declared “best restaurant in the world”. The book does contain 30 recipes in its 600 pages, from the kitchen of the famously cutting edge chef in Northern Spain. But if any of them look doable, invariably something will trip you up.

Usually it will be a matter of equipment (what, you don’t have a candy-floss machine in your kitchen?). If not that, it will be a matter of ingredients. The two recipes I thought I might be able to cook left me stranded at the store, hopelessly staring at my shopping list. The first, samphire tempura with saffron and oyster cream, didn’t call for any machines or chemicals I was unlikely to have. Of course, I had no idea what samphire is. I was saddened to find that it is a plant that grows on rocks near the coast of the United Kingdom. Drats. My brother suggested we substitute another green vegetable - asparagus perhaps? But I felt that would be contrary to the spirit of the book, which is basically that almost all of this stuff is totally unattainable.

The second, pine nut marshmallows, looked almost easy (see recipe below). My problem was finding extra virgin pine nut oil. I looked for it in a lot of stores. I didn’t find it. If anyone has any leads, let me know and I’ll give it a shot.