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Science and artistry
Freezing froth

James Viles is quietly excited. “In the last two weeks we’ve made paper out of fruits and vegetables,” he says. “Edible paper. We’ve been rolling sushi in it instead of seaweed.” Inventive cooking intrigues James. The executive chef of The Chedi has a chemistry set at home – when he gets back late at night from the hotel kitchen, he’s unlikely to rustle up more than a Vegemite sandwich, but with time on his side he’ll pull out the pipettes and test tubes.

Molecular gastronomy is the brainchild of Hervé This, a French physical chemist, and the late Nicholas Kurti, a Hungarian physicist, who promoted the idea that knowledge of chemistry, and science in general, can be used to enhance culinary experiences. Other famous exponents of this scientific approach include Ferran Adrià, proprietor of the world-famous El Bulli restaurant in Spain, and Heston Blumenthal, whose Michelin-starred restaurant, The Fat Duck, gave the world bacon-and-egg ice cream and snail porridge.

“Adrià was a pioneer,” says Australian-born James. “I heard about him when I was 21 years old and he came to Australia and stayed in the hotel for a week, eating in our restaurant. At that time no one knew about that type of cooking.”

The proximity of the maestro awakened James’s interest in the science behind cookery. “Molecular cooking looks at the composition of food. Take mayonnaise, which is made by emulsification – protein solids bind with the fat solids. It’s a simple thing
and easy to make but an advanced scientific process.” Molecular cooking pulls things apart and builds new things: using different ingredients, a chef might replicate the scientific process underpinning the making of mayonnaise to create something new. “It’s taking cooking to another level but also bringing out the essence of what cooking is. Why does acid cook fish for instance? What is the scientific process behind it?”

This type of cuisine affords chefs tremendous scope for creativity. For example, James enthuses about what can be done with froth, which is inspired by the way in which milk foams when heated. According to a posting on the New Scientist website, air bubbles are not stable within water, but milk proteins can unfold when heated, enabling them to form a film on the surface of the air bubbles, thereby stabilising the foam. James explains that if you add Lecit, a soy extract, to milk, the protein content rises, increasing the frothing capacity. “It becomes a pile of air. You can add an essence such as pea or lobster to the froth and it’s so airy it’s like having nothing in your mouth, just a taste sensation. If you put the froth into a plastic-lined cup in the freezer, when it comes out you have frozen bubbles so light you can’t even feel them, but you can see them.”

Visual trickery
Food to confound

For Oman Today, James and Benjamin Rambaud, patissier français at The Chedi, create dishes that combine conventional ingredients with unconventional components such as Algin, which is derived from algae, and Calcic, a calcium deposit. Rubbing dry Calcic between your palms turns the granules hot as a hot-water bottle. Sampling this phenomenon sets the outré tone for what follows.

Benjamin whizzes coconut milk with Algin in a bowl until it becomes thick and fluffy, then adds sugar syrup, at which point James fills a syringe with the concoction and carefully administers a few splodges to bowls filled with water and Calcic. Submerged in the Calcic bath, the white blobs form a skin on the outside, though remain liquid inside – “Rather like an embryo,” muses James. El Bulli, which invented this technique, describes the process as spherification. James slides these ‘spheres’ on to a dish as Benjamin combines puréed mango with more Algin in a clean mixing bowl. Repeating the syringe and Calcic-bath manoeuvre, James then balances a smaller, mango-yellow ‘sphere’ on his most perfect white one, thus making a fried egg look-alike.

“In The Beach Restaurant we might serve this to VIPs between the main course and pudding. We put what looks like pepper but is actually vanilla on the table, so instead of egg the flavours are coconut, mango and vanilla.” This visual trickery also characterises his beautiful strawberries and cream creation, which the kitchen made a couple of weeks ago for a function for 32.

“When the new private dégustation room opens, I want to do more of this modern stuff,” James says modestly, although he is keen to emphasise that his first love is ‘honest’ food. “Cuisine needs roots – it needs meat and vegetables. But elements of this type of cooking can make it different and surprising, giving it wow factor.” Before arriving in Oman he worked at the Emirates Towers Hotel in Dubai, a city “which makes Las Vegas look organic.” He likes the sultanate precisely because it has room to play and potential for growth. Muscat can look forward to some exciting cooking in the future.

El bulli

Voted in 2002, 2006 and 2007 by Restaurant magazine as the best restaurant in the world, El Bulli is garlanded with Michelin stars and has achieved fabled status among gastronomes across the globe. Located by the sea on the Costa Brava, a few hours from Barcelona, El Bulli is open only from April to September – for the remaining six months of the year, the chefs retreat from the limelight to experiment and invent new dishes. It is notoriously difficult to obtain a table at El Bulli: during its open season it will seat around 8,000 diners, but rumour has it that some 800,000 people ring annually to make bookings. Reservations are taken on a single day each year.

El Bulli was founded in 1961. Ferran Adrià Acosta joined the kitchen in 1983 and took over its running a few years later. He is often linked to molecular cooking – visitors to El Bulli wax lyrical about the spectacular, multi-course tasting menus, which change constantly but might feature unlikely delicacies such as soft-boiled quail’s egg with a crisp caramel crust. Widely touted as a culinary genius, Ferran Adrià’s career began in 1980 in a hotel kitchen in Catalonia, where he worked as a plongeur to raise money for a holiday to Ibiza.