Story and photography by Manos Angelakis
 

Restaurante Guggenheim Bilbao
Avda Abandoibarra 2
48001 Bilbao
Spain
Tel: (94) 423-9333
Web: www.restauranteguggenheim.com

I met Chef Josean Martínez Alija during the Gastronomika event in San Sebastian, and from our conversation I thought he was an interesting chef that could seamlessly combine molecular gastronomy with vegetarian ingredients to create some very tasty dishes, with the assistance of a Gastrovac. The Gastrovac was developed at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia by the chefs Javier Andres (Restaurante La Sucursal, Valencia) and Sergio Torres (Restaurante El Rodat, Javea). It is a combination vacuum pump and cooking chamber in one. Suspend your food in a basket above a flavorful broth. Seal the machine, and hit the button to turn the chamber into a vacuum. The low-pressure environment pulls all the air out of the food which also allows for very low-temperature cooking or frying. Near the end of the cooking, drop the food into the broth and restore the pressure. The liquid rushes into the cells, infusing the food with an intense broth flavor; and no oxygen during cooking means no oxidation. Lower temperatures and shorter cooking times keep the cellular structure as well as the color, texture and nutrient values of foods intact.

I have to admit that I am an unrepentant carnivore. I dislike vegetarian meals, mainly because I find  them having very little taste, even when they include fiery spices, as in vegetarian Indian cuisine. You get the high spiciness, but the actual taste of the ingredients is minimal. I respect other person’s beliefs in a vegetarian diet, but up to now I did not considered it tasty enough for me.

But, a tasting dinner at Mr. Alija’s restaurant in Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum was so good, I have to change my perception about vegetarian food, and I have to attribute the taste-improvement to the use of the Gastrovac.

We started our dinner with a gelatinous tapioca in pepper sauce amuse bouche. I’ve had something very similar at a well respected Italian hotel restaurant and I remember asking myself “What is this tasteless lump in the demitasse?” In this case though there was a definite taste, and you could easily differentiate between the taste of the tapioca and the taste of the red pimento.  

The first appetizer was “tomatoes in sauce with aromatic herbs and caper bottom”. Again, we were easily able to differentiate the intensely aromatic mint, melissa (herb), caper and rosemary of the sauce that infused the very ripe baby tomato. As I found by asking Mr. Urko Mugartegui, the maître d’, the restaurant has its own gardens that grow herbs and vegetables to the chef’s specifications, which are delivered fresh every morning. And, of course the Gastrovac was used.

The dishes though that really established the superiority of using a Gastrovac in a commercial kitchen were the next two in the tasting menu.

The first was a “confit of endives, with croquant leaves dressed with walnut and citrus”. It was the intense “fresh walnut” flavor of the endives (during my youth I had fresh walnut meat preserved in a mixture of ice and water that I still remember the taste) and the intense citrusy flavor that made the dish stand out.

The next dish was also very flavor intense even though it was only “roasted red onion and ‘verdinas’ lentil stock”. As a group of food writers, we considered the tastes unusual in their intensity.

The 2009 Txakoli Itxasmendi, the local wine that accompanied the first part of the menu, was a middle bodied wine with a long, acidic finish that matched the food well. Then, a red wine was brought to the table, a Rioja blend of Tempranillo, Graciano, and Mazuelo and that wine was paired with the next series of dishes and the desserts.

Two dishes were presented: “Fleshy grilled root, rustic bread soaked in a seafood jus and red wine”, again the seafood jus gave a very distinctive taste to the dish. The next dish was “Roasted colt chunk, with red garlic casein”. Now this was a dish that caused considerable discussion. I have lived in France, where horsemeat is not an unusual phenomenon on a table, but some of the other writers had never had horse meat and were not ready to start at that point. I do not remember horsemeat being so flavorful and so tender (I think that the horsemeat I had eaten in Paris was rather stringy and had a sourish taste). I tried to remind in vain to the writer seating next to me that had no compunction in eating venison, that her preference would be similar to consuming Bambi. But she harrumphed and changed the subject. 

Dessert came next. At this point my tolerance for innovation was being really tested. The first dessert (?) was “Black olive ashes, on a casein of aromatic herbs and liquorice ice cream”. The mount of what looked like black sand, under and sprinkled over a spoonful of ice cream did not look so appetizing, so after tasting a little bit I passed. I hate the taste of licorice anyway.

The next dessert though was much more to my taste; it looked like a piece of coffee cake with the inside of a garnet geode by its side. The description on the menu was “Pure chocolate from Venezuela and spicy sand of marzipan”. Really unusual and very tasty.

So, yes. Of course the creativity of the chef in procuring and combining the ingredients played a major role in creating flavorful dishes; but the Gastrovac use had improved the tastes of the dishes exponentially!

Next time you are in Spain, find a restaurant that uses that device. You will not be disappointed!

© January 2011 LuxuryWeb Magazine. All rights reserved.