I-MOO-VATION

Innovation has become one of those words that has been rendered meaningless by overuse. It’s a natural instinct to better or change the way you do something: a combination of insight and invention. And nowhere is innovation more obvious than at the heart of really great cooking. Second only to sourcing the best ingredients it’s the mainstay of confident dishes and flavours. And what makes food – preparing and eating – such a fascinating and rewarding past-time is that it can be different every time. Each pinch of pepper and twist of lemon slightly creates a dazzlingly different outcome. Bring to that a special combination of eager enthusiasm and sheer love and you find yourself in the realms of special, really special, eating.

Few dinners have reached my top ten. Well only ten. But there is a new contender. A must eat. One worth the food miles. Moo is the restaurant in in the svelte, low lit Hotel Omm, just off the Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona. The place feels like being an insect under a stone. In a good way. You don’t know where the light is coming from. But the shadows live and it’s secure and cool under this vast monolith.

Moo is run by the brothers Joan, Josep and Jordi Roca who started El Celler in Girona, where they achieved two Michelin stars and their development of sous-vide cookery. They’ve taken Catalan tradition and combined it exactly with insight and invention. Flair with integrity. The tasting menu is a brilliant combination of dishes crowded with flavour and texture. And the sommelier provides you with a different wine for each course.

We rolled in fuelled on Negronis and the usual amuses bouches. Soon kicking off with a mushroom veloute and foie gras soup – tiny slivers of mushroom luxuriating Cleopatra-like in a bath of sacrificial unctions. Both the Belgian and I professed to wondering why no-one had ever thought of it before. The unexpected transformed and redeemed. Kissed down with something called Iberia Cream – sweet and fino mixed.

I wonder whether fish works in fine dining micro eating. Not sure if it’s because it needs more to really bring the palate alive and so often gets lost in a mouthful. But I wanted to wear the prawn and gewurtztraminer with curry, roses and liquorice. This little buttonhole broke the taste barrier for me. Made me wish I was cooking in a restaurant to serve such a dish. Straight out of Sheherazade. Sexual – as my friend Michael says - like the Quail in Rose Petal Sauce from that wonderful romance Like Water for Chocolate.

Another fish dish. The ubiquitous sea bass but here unusually cured and sushi like, served with little cubes of crunchy pear and rosemary and washed up on a delicate Penedes Xarello. Straight through to tiny crackly, suckling pig with little castanas – sweet chesnuts grown in Asturias. By this time any doubt that having a small glass of something with each course might not be good value was soaking away, as we pecked on our Ribera del Douro Tempranillo. Grown in the clay where the ground runs down to the river.

I couldn’t bear the ‘or’ moment so we had both choices. Pigeon with blackberries. Real brambles too. At first my taste buds didn’t get it. But the glass of Mourvedre found it for me, bringing the gameyness up. I love this tannic, rough grape, normally known in Spain as Monastrell and in France most gallic-ly as Estrangle-Chien – dog strangler. Though it didn’t hold my chat back.

We’re rocking into our sixth course by now. And yet another star turn. A perfectly green apple sorbet encased in hard shell of Idiazabal cheese. God knows how. But somebody has signed a Mephistophilian pact to make such a thing. Next up fruits salad with green tea and a Reisling.

At the last I am triumphantly sloshed and slurping something that seemed like peanut butter ice cream and coconut puree and served with a Muscat. I can still taste it. But by this time, I was fairly incomprehensible. The Belgian orders coffee and, as I pop to the loo, suggests I don’t speak to any of the gorgeous Barcelona beau monde who have gathered at the bar for the coolest disco night in town.

In May we’re back in Barcelona for our nuptials. We’re driving over to El Celler just to find out what they are doing there. I don’t think it takes the hard-edge of innovative cooking to have an experience like this. Just a sense of adventure and someone who is willing to take you there. Now I’m wondering how I’m going to make the foie gras soup.

TENDER WORDS

Tender (2009) tells the story of Nigel Slater's love affair with his garden in Islington and the many seedlings he has raised in his box-hedged vegetable patches. It’s a magnificent volume, like a medieval knightly treatise with pictures of his Eden, its produce and many of the recipes he has created from them.

23 May, 2010

FOOD FROM THE HEART

Cooking is a basic human instinct. We’ve been eating, chopping, shaping, flavouring, enticing ingredients into something delicious since time began. But as the way many of us live has changed, the basic skills we require to cook, are no longer valued and it’s often easier to let others take control of what we eat.

21 April, 2010

IN A RIGHT FISH STEW

This week we had sustainable fish stew. It’s a quick and easy way to feed a gang of hungries on a Friday night and doesn’t need much else but some good bread and wine. Like all stews, you need balance, rich liquid and a range of potent flavours steaming from your pot.

15 March, 2010