This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (December 2011)

This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve this article to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. The talk page may contain suggestions. (December 2011)

Pa amb tomàquet (bread and tomato with olive oil).

Catalan cuisine is a Mediterranean cuisine from Catalonia. It may also refer to the shared cuisine of Roussillon and Andorra, which has a similar cuisine to the Alt Urgell and Cerdanya comarques, often referred to as "Catalan mountain cuisine".^[1] It is considered a part of western Mediterranean cuisine.

Alternative views[link]

Some contemporary Catalan authors, such as Josep Pla,^[2] Jaume Fàbrega or Eliana Thibaut i Comalada,^[3] and others like Colman Andrews,^[4] have suggested that, besides Catalonia proper, this cuisine takes in the Balearic and Valencian cuisines,^[5] but this opinion is challenged as politicised,^[4] and is not widespread, nor is supported by either the Catalan,^[6] Balearic or Valencian government.^[7][8] In any case, mutual ties do exist between Catalan gastronomy and other western Mediterranean gastronomies, such as Balearic cuisine, Valencian cuisine, Southern French cuisine, Aragonese cuisine or Murcian cuisine.

Basic ingredients[link]

Fruits from La Boqueria Market, Barcelona

It relies heavily on ingredients popular along the Mediterranean coast, including fresh vegetables (especially tomato, garlic, eggplant (aubergine), capsicum, and artichoke), wheat products (bread, pasta), Arbequina olive oils, wines, legumes (beans, chickpeas), mushrooms, all sorts of pork preparations (sausage from Vic, ham), all sorts of cheese, poultry, lamb, and many types of fish like sardine, anchovy, tuna, and cod.

The traditional Catalan cuisine is quite diverse, ranging from pork-intensive dishes cooked in the inland part of the region (Catalonia is one of the main producers of swine products in Spain) to fish-based recipes along the coast.

The cuisine includes many preparations that mix sweet and savoury and stews with sauces based upon botifarra (pork sausage) and the characteristic picada (ground almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts, etc. sometimes with garlic, herbs, biscuits).

Savoury dishes[link]

Coques, a kind of pizza.

Rovellons or Pinatells, a tasty wild mushroom

Sausage from Vic.

• Catalan-style cod (with raisins and pine nuts)
• Escalivada (various grilled vegetables)
• Escudella (a stew, it may served as soup with pasta and minced meats and vegetables, or as the soup first and then the rest)
• Ollada (meat and vegetable stew)
• Esqueixada (salted cod salad with tomato and onion)
• Mongetes amb botifarra (beans and pork sausage)
• Pa amb tomàquet (bread smeared with tomato and oil, and sometimes garlic)
• Tonyina en escabetx (tuna escabeche)
• Suquet de peix (a seafood casserole)
• Savoury Coca
• Mar i Muntanya ("Sea and Mountain") dishes, which combine meat and seafood
• Embotits, a generic name for different kinds of cured pork meat, including Fuet (a characteristic type of dried sausage) and Salchichón or Llonganissa (salami).
• Calçot (specially cultivated onion, grilled and served as a "Calçotada")
• Cargols a la llauna (cooked snails)
• Sonsos

Sauces and condiments[link]

Calçots with Romesco sauce for dipping

• Allioli, a thick sauce made of garlic and olive oil, used with grilled meats or vegetables, and some dishes. Allioli means garlic (all) and (i) oil (oli) in Catalan.
• Samfaina, also called tomacat or pebrots amb tomàquet. It's a variety of Occitan ratatouille or Spanish Pisto.
• Salvitxada (made from almonds, hazelnuts, garlic, bread, vinegar, tomatoes, olive oil and dried red peppers) from Valls.
• Xató, a variety of Salvitxada without tomatoes.

Sweets and desserts[link]

A crema catalana

A xuixo

A tray of panellets, as they are typically served

• Crema catalana, the famous yellow cream made with yolks, milk and sugar; which denseness is between a crème pâtissière or natillas and a flan; used to stuff a great amount of pastries, or to make simple desserts with, for example, fruit, and that we also eat in a small flat pottery plate, after covering the cream with white crystal sugar and burning it, in order to create a layer of solid sugar that we have to break with a little spoon before reaching the cream.
• Mató de Pedralbes or mató de monja is another kind of Catalan cream, similar to crema catalana, originated in Barcelona.
• Menjablanc or menjar blanc is typical of Reus but eaten all over Catalonia, is a kind of white cream made with almonds, of which we obtain first a sort of milk, and after we make with this a cream which will be eaten with a small spoon.
• Peres de Lleida is a typical dessert originated in Lleida composed by peeled pears cooked in a kind of lighter crema catalana and served cold, covered by meringue and decorated with cherries.
• Xuixos are fried pastries created in Girona and stuffed with crema catalana.
• Mel i mató, a dessert of mató cheese with honey
• Pastissets, or casquetes, de cabell d'àngel are sweet half-circle shaped pastries stuffed with cabell d'àngel (a sort of marrow jam) and covered with white crystal sugar which are eaten at coffee time
• Carquinyolis are little almond crunchy biscuits often eaten at coffee time.
• Catànies are Catalan marcona almonds covered by white chocolate and powdered black chocolate to eat with the coffee.
• Pets de monja are small nipple-shaped and sized biscuits also eaten at coffee time. At first they were called pits de monja (nuns' nipples) but time has changed their name to current pets de monja (nuns' farts).
• Sweet coques were at first eaten only in holydays. Catalans have at least on type of traditional coca for each holyday and feast day of the year.
• Orelletes are thin fried pastries covered with sugar and eaten in carnival. They also exist in nearby regions in Spain or France.
• Sweet bunyols as bunyols de vent, bunyols stuffed with crema catalana or bunyols de l'Empordà are typically done and eaten on Wednesdays and Fridays during lent.
• Mona de Pasqua is a pastry richly couvered with almonds, yolk jam, chocolate eggs (or currently big chocolate sculptures) and coloured decoration that the godfather and godmother give as a present, every year, to their godchildren in Easter (Pasqua). It is a very old tradition that existed before Christianity and which marked the passage from childhood to the adult's world. At first, it has one egg for each year of the children's age and that stopped at twelve, as at thirteen they were no longer considered children.
• Panellets are small pastries made of pine nuts, almonds and sugar with different shapes and flavors, eaten during la Castanyada, that Catalans celebrate on 1 November instead of Halloween. Their origin is Jewish, before the Middle Ages, but the tradition of castanyada is very much older.
• Tortell, also called torta or roscó in northern and southern dialects. It is round, it can be made of puff pastry or a mixture similar as lionesas and palos, stuffed with trufa (a mixture of cacao, chocolate and cream) or with crema catalana. It is typically bought and eaten after Sunday's lunch, in family or with friends. It is also typical, as an alternative, the braç de gitano, that in Catalonia is always covered with yolk jam.
• A specific tortell is in fact a special coca that Catalan only eat the day of the Three Kings (6 January) which is called "tortell de reis", or galeta de reis in French Catalonia, a typical ring-shaped pastry stuffed with marzipan or Catalan cream (crema catalana) and topped with glazed fruit and nuts.
• Torró, a Christmas sweet made with almonds with DAO of Agramunt (Lleida).
• Neules are also eaten on Christmas in Catalonia. They are dipped in cava (Catalan champagne). They have the same origin as Waffles and Belgian Goffres.

Wines[link]

There are 11 Catalan wine-growing regions qualified by the INCAVI (The Catalan Institute of Wine): Priorat, Penedès, Catalunya, Costers del Segre, Conca de Barberà, Montsant, Alella, Tarragona, Empordà-Costa Brava, Pla del Bages and Terra Alta.

The sparkling wine cava, made mainly in the Penedès and Anoia regions, is the Catalan equivalent to champagne. It is widely exported.

"Moscatell" (Empordà), is a sweet Catalan wine which have similar varieties in other countries as France, Italy, Portugal, Albania, Slovenia, Greece, Rumania, Turkey, other regions of Spain, etc. However, Catalan moscatell is thicker than French muscat and not drunk before eaten -in the aperitiu- but after, with or after dessert.

Chefs and restaurants[link]

Ferran Adrià is the head chef of El Bulli

Catalan cooks and chefs are widely renowned and critically acclaimed all over the world. Two of the five best restaurants in the world are in Catalonia^{[citation needed]}, and four restaurants have three Michelin stars. Barcelona has nine Michelin stars and has been chosen as the best gastronomical city by the American TV network MSNBC in 2009, topping the list of the ten best gastronomical cities in the world.

See also[link]

• Spanish cuisine
• Balearic cuisine
• Valencian cuisine

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Andrews, Colman, Catalan Cuisine. Harvard Common Press, 2006 ISBN 1-55832-329-5
• Fàbrega i Colom, Jaume, Traditional Catalan Cooking. Edicions de La Magrana, 1997, ISBN 84-7410-964-7 ISBN 9788474109641
• Lladonosa i Giró, Josep, The Book of Catalan Kitchen. Alianza Editorial, 2007, ISBN 84-206-0354-6

External links[link]

• Catalan recipes in English
• www.eatcatalunya.com
• www.lacuinacatalana.com (Catalan)
• DOP IGP Salchichón de Vic or Llonganissa de Vic (Spanish)

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (August 2008)

This biographical article is written like a résumé. Please help improve it by revising it to be neutral and encyclopedic. (December 2008)

Colman Robert Hardy Daniel Andrews (Colman Andrews) (born February 18, 1945) is an American writer and editor and authority on food and wine. In culinary circles, he is best known for his association with Saveur magazine, which he founded with Dorothy Kalins, Michael Grossman, and Christopher Hirsheimer in 1994 and where he served as editor-in-chief from 2001 until 2006.^[1] Since then, he has been the restaurant columnist for Gourmet.^[2] He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on Spanish cuisine, particularly that of the Catalonia region.^[3]

Early life[link]

Born in Santa Monica, California. His father, Charles Robert Hardy Douglas Andrews, born in Effingham, Kansas, was a newspaperman, pioneering radio soap opera writer, novelist, and screenwriter.^[4] In a 1948 New Yorker article on the soaps, James Thurber mentioned Andrews and his ability to turn out “a hundred thousand words a week over a period of years, without losing a pound or a hair.” Writing speed and fecundity would eventually become something Bob’s son Colman was known for as well. Andrews’ mother was Irene Colman (née Bressette), an actress of French-Canadian descent born in Nashua, New Hampshire.^[5] She was featured as a chorus girl in Gold Diggers of 1937 alongside Lucille Ball, and also appeared in Anthony Adverse with Fredric March and Tale of Two Cities with Ronald Colman (from whom she took her stage name, the second half of which she later passed on to her son). Andrews and his sister, Ann Merry Victoria Andrews (two years his junior), grew up on an estate in the West Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills, next door to Vincent Price. The family moved to Ojai, north of Los Angeles, in 1959, and Andrews attended Villanova Preparatory School in the same town. Even in those days, Andrews loved food; he relished dinners at the innovative Ranch House restaurant nearby and, living in a house rented from Loretta Young, he collected bags full of Ojai’s famed Valencia oranges from the small orchard out front and squeezed fresh juice from them. He also had his first job in journalism, writing community items for The Ojai Valley News for 35 cents a published column inch.

Early career[link]

After high school, Andrews went on to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles as an English major. Kicked out of Loyola after one year for ignoring his studies in favor of the campus radio station, Andrews spent the next year-and-a-half working and traveling, at one point following a girlfriend to Atlanta and then Boston. Returning to Los Angeles, he enrolled at Los Angeles City College in 1965, studying philosophy, art history and Arabic. He took a job in the bookshop at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art the same year, and got to know many of the top Southern California artists of the time. In 1968, after a year-and-a-half at Los Angeles City College and a semester at California State University, Andrews was accepted at the University of California at Los Angeles. There he continued his philosophy training and also began studying European and Middle European history; he graduated in 1969 with degrees in history and philosophy, and his knowledge of both would eventually become hallmarks of his food writing.

It was during his college years that Andrews began paying attention to food in a serious way. His early inspiration was Holiday magazine’s annual restaurant awards, which were founded in 1952 and presided over by Silas Spitzer. Spitzer based the awards on reports from a squad of what he termed “anonymous scouts” around the country (one of whom was James Villas, who would become the food editor of Town & Country magazine for many years). At 25, aware of the fact that as a result of his privileged upbringing he had experienced “more restaurant meals…than many of my contemporaries would eat in a lifetime,” Andrews wrote to Spitzer in hopes of joining his team. Spitzer hired him to write about Dan Tana’s in West Hollywood, which was one of Andrews’ favorite places. Before the piece could run, the magazine was sold and the review was never published. It succeeded, however, in igniting a singular enthusiasm in its author.

Andrews’ first restaurant reviewing job was for The Staff, an offshoot of the LA Free Press. For the column, Andrews created a character called “Mr. Food” who had a distinctly Victorian voice and invoked a lot of food-related puns and homonyms.^{[citation needed]} In early 1972, Andrews, a serious music lover and amateur singer and songwriter in addition to his interest in gastronomy, was hired by the publicity department of Atlantic Records; he penned press releases for such albums as Bette Midler’s and Jackson Browne’s debuts. Still writing restaurant reviews on the side, Andrews got his first expense account—and used it to visit LA’s newest restaurants. He began to seriously study wine and was a fan in particular of the wine writer Roy Brady, who espoused the notion that a wine should be judged not by its reputation or price but instead by what it smells and tastes like. Brady became his mentor in wine matters, and Andrews himself is known for his democratic approach to the seemingly fusty discipline.^[6]

Magazine Life[link]

Andrews left Atlantic before a year had passed to accept his first leadership role on the staff of a consumer magazine. He became the editor of Coast, a Los Angeles-based lifestyle magazine; he held the position until 1975. Meanwhile, Andrews continued his association with the music industry reviewing records for Creem, where Lester Bangs was his editor, and covering live music in the LA area for The Hollywood Reporter and other publications. He also made radio commercials and wrote artists’ bios for several record companies and wrote liner notes for numerous albums, receiving a Grammy nomination in 1972 for notes on a special edition of Miles Davis reissues. In 1975, Lois Dwan, restaurant reviewer for The Los Angeles Times, who had read his Mr. Food pieces, asked Andrews to substitute for her while she went on vacation.^[7] This began his long association with the newspaper, in the course of which, though he was never officially on staff, he was alternately a restaurant reviewer and columnist, book reviewer and travel writer, and the editor of the paper’s travel magazine, Traveling in Style. In 1978, Andrews was hired by Los Angeles magazine to write a monthly wine column. Once again, he took a pseudonym: Van Delanay (a pun on the phrase vin de l’année, or wine of the year). He was hired that same year as an associate editor at New West magazine, a bi-weekly California publication started by Clay Felker as a parallel to his seminal New York magazine. He was promoted a year later to senior editor. During this time he met Ruth Reichl, then the restaurant columnist for the Northern California edition of New West, who would go on to become the restaurant critic of the New York Times from 1993 to 1999, and, later, the editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine. For a period the two were lovers, their relationship chronicled in Reichl’s memoir Comfort Me with Apples (Random House, 2002).^[8]

Andrews left New West in 1980 and began writing for Apartment Life, an urbane lifestyle magazine helmed by Dorothy Kalins. A year later that magazine was transformed into Metropolitan Home. Over the course of that magazine’s first decade, Andrews wrote dozens of articles and columns, the majority of which were about food and wine (although he also occasionally wrote about art and design, including interviews with David Hockney, Terry Allen, and Charles Moore).^[9] During this time Andrews wrote about restaurants all over the world; he was the first American reporter to introduce readers to the great French chef Guy Savoy.^[10] Perhaps most significantly, Andrews got a contract to write a book on Catalan cuisine based on an article he’d written for Met Home. Throughout the eighties he spent a great deal of time traveling to Barcelona and vicinity. The resulting book, Catalan Cuisine, published in 1988 and still in print, has become the standard reference book for restaurant kitchens in that region, and is revered by the top local chefs, including the world-renowned Ferran Adria.^[11]

[edit] Saveur

After finishing his Catalan book, Andrews worked as a freelancer, writing articles for the Los Angeles Times and for Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, and many other publications. In 1992, Andrews published his second book, Everything on the Table: Plain Talk About Food and Wine, a collection of new and revised short pieces, and shortly thereafter he began work on a book about the cuisines of Genoa and Nice, Flavors of the Riviera: Discovering Real Mediterranean Cuisine, published in 1996. Meanwhile, in 1994, Andrews had become a founder of Saveur magazine, and in late 1995, he moved from Los Angeles to New York City.^[12] The magazine was a watershed publication, the first of its kind to delve beyond recipes and formulas and tell the stories of the people and cultures behind the food.^[13] During his tenure, Andrews won six James Beard Journalism Awards, and in 2000, Saveur became the first food magazine to win the American Society of Magazine Editors’ award for General Excellence. The following year, after the magazine changed ownership, Kalins left to work for Newsweek and Andrews took over as editor-in-chief. He left Saveur in 2006, becoming the restaurant columnist for Gourmet and undertaking new book projects—the first of which, The Country Cooking of Ireland,^[14] will be published in 2009^{[dated info]} by Chronicle Books.

Despite his association with Barcelona, the two cities that most shaped Andrews’ passion for food, he has said, were Paris and Rome. He first visited the former in 1965, during which he was guided by an old friend of his father’s, Claude Caspar-Jordan, the administrative director of Associated Press France. Meals with Caspar-Jordan forever changed Andrews, and the two would dine together in Paris at least once a year for 28 years more until the Frenchman’s death; Andrews wrote a moving account of their times together called Paris Authentique that appeared in the twelfth issue of Saveur (May/June 1996).^[15] On repeated trips to Rome throughout the 1970s and early ‘80s to visit an American friend who had moved to there, Andrews made a serious study of Italian food, paying particular attention to the Romans’ style and pace of eating, and it left an indelible impression. “Rome made me,” he has written.^[16]

Employment[link]

2007–present: GOURMET, restaurant columnist

1994–2007: SAVEUR (co-founder) 2001-2007: Editor-in-Chief 1996-2001: Editor 1994-1996: Executive Editor

1980–1993: Freelance editing and writing

1979: Senior Editor, NEW WEST (Los Angeles)

1978: Associate Editor, NEW WEST (Los Angeles)

1975–1978: Freelance writing and editing

1972–1975: Editor-in-Chief, COAST (Los Angeles)

1966–1972: Freelance writing and editing

Freelance Editing[link]

1992—1994: Editor, Traveling in Style, the Los Angeles Times travel magazine (thrice yearly); editor, numerous Los Angeles Times travel section special editions

1976: Editor, “The Hollywood Reporter Annual”

1972–1977: Editorial consulting (clients included Filmex [the Los Angeles International Film Exposition], the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art Journal, and Picture Magazine)

Freelance Writing[link]

Author of an estimated 2,500 freelance articles, essays, and reviews about food, wine, travel, music, art, architecture, design, the entertainment industry, social issues, etc., between 1966 and the present. Publications include Bon Appétit, Chicago Sun-Times, Christian Science Monitor, Creem, Food & Wine, the Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Free Press, Los Angeles Magazine (wine columnist, 1978–1988), the Los Angeles Times (variously restaurant news columnist, Friday restaurant reviewer, travel writer, and Sunday magazine contributor, 1972–1992), the Mail on Sunday (UK), Metropolitan Home (principal food writer and editor, 1982–1990), Musica Jazz (Italy), Phonograph Record Magazine, the Radio Times (UK), the Sunday Telegraph Magazine (UK), and Travel & Leisure.

Books[link]

Flavors of the Riviera: Discovering Real Mediterranean Cooking, Bantam Books, 1996

Everything on the Table: Plain Talk About Food and Wine, Bantam Books, 1992

Catalan Cuisine: Europe’s Last Great Culinary Secret, Atheneum, 1988

Saveur Cooks Authentic Italian (co-author and co-editor), Chronicle Books, 2001

Saveur Cooks Authentic French (co-author and co-editor), Chronicle Books, 1999

Saveur Cooks Authentic American (co-author and co-editor), Chronicle Books, 1998

Malaparte: A House Like Me (contributor), Clarkson N. Potter, 1999^[17]

Setting the American Table: Essays for the New Culture of Food and Wine (contributor), Copia/The American Center for Wine Food & the Arts, 2001

Awards and honors[link]

2010 James Beard Foundation Award: Best International Cookbook (and) Cookbook of the Year. The Country Cooking of Ireland (Chronicle Books, 2009).

2007 James Beard Foundation Award: Best Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes. Ireland: Farm to Fork: Special Issue, Saveur, Issue 91, March 2006.^[18]

2004 James Beard Foundation Award: Best Magazine Writing on Wine and Spirits. Article: Treasures of the Land, Saveur, Issue 71, December 2003.^[19]

2000 James Beard Foundation Award: Best Magazine Series. Article: Venice special series, Saveur, Issue 38, November 1999.^[20]

1999 James Beard Foundation Awards: Best Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes and Best American Cookbook (for Saveur Cooks Authentic American, with co-author Dorothy Kalins).^[21] Burgundy: Special Issue; Saveur, Issue 30, November 1998.^[22]

1998 James Beard Foundation M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. Article: "[1]. Saveur, Issue 18, April 1997.

1996 International Association of Cooking Professionals Bert Greene Award for magazine food journalism.^[15]

1985 Named to Who’s Who of Cooking in America (one of the first 50 figures to win this honor)

1976 Grammy nomination, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, for Best Liner Notes

Personal life[link]

Marriages: Leslie Ward, 1979–1989; Paula Fritz, 1989–2002; Erin Walker, 2006–present

Children: Madeleine Cartwright Andrews (born April 17, 1990); Isabelle Scott Andrews (born April 5, 1993)

Interesting facts[link]

Andrews’ godmother was Kathryn Brown, wife of actor and comedian Joe E. Brown (Show Boat, Some Like It Hot, etc.) While living in Atlanta, Andrews wrote some of his first (unsold) articles on a portable typewriter lent to him by Ralph McGill, the legendary editor of the Atlanta Constitution, to whom a friend of Andrews’ father had introduced him. From 2000 to 2006, Andrews performed several times a year as a guest vocalist with the Texas-based chefs’ band The Barbwires.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Oxford Symposium on Food, 2005
• Colman Andrews speech at Good Food Ireland showcase event
• Colman Andrews on Gourmet.com
• http://www.thefoodsection.com/appetizers/2006/08/colman_andrews_.html
• http://gawker.com/news/gourmet/andrews-exits-saveur-for-the-comfort-of-reichls-apples-191555.php
• http://www.amazon.com/Catalan-Cuisine-Europes-Culinary-Secret/dp/1558321543
• http://articles.latimes.com/writers/colman-andrews
• http://www.wunc.org/tsot/archive/sot0605b.mp3/view
• http://www.restaurantguysradio.com/sle/rg/content/shows/index.asp?show_id=180
• http://www.jamesbeard.org/index.php?q=search/node/colman+andrews
• http://www.tienda.com/table/products/bk-08.html
• http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE4DA1638F93BA35754C0A966958260
• http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/440333

This article's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Please help improve the article by updating it. There may be additional information on the talk page. (December 2011)

Carme Ruscalleda i Serra

Born	1952 Sant Pol de Mar, Barcelona
Cooking style	Catalan tradition
Rating(s) Michelin stars Campsa suns
Current restaurant(s) Sant Pau de sant Pol de Mar; Sant Pau de Tòquio
Official website
http://www.ruscalleda.com/

Carme Ruscalleda i Serra (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈkaɾmə ruskəˈʎɛðə]) is a renowned Catalan chef of the restaurant Sant Pau in Sant Pol de Mar, near Barcelona.^[1] She also owns and manages the restaurant Sant Pau de Tòquio in Japan.

Ruscalleda was raised in a family of farmers and began cooking as a girl. She studied Charcuterie technics, as well as Commerce, and after marrying a grocery owner, Toni Balam in 1975, the couple opened restaurant Sant Pau in 1988. In 1991 it obtained its first Michelin Guide star and in 2006 obtained its third Michelin star. Today her restaurants have five Michelin stars in total: three in her restaurant in Catalonia and two for the Sant Pau in Tokyo, making her the world's only five-Michelin-starred female chef.^[2] The restaurant in Sant Pol de Mar also obtained the maximum three suns of the Campsa Guide in 1999.

Her cuisine is strongly based on Catalan tradition though open to world influences, and focuses on quality and seasonal products. She often relates the dishes served to a leitmotif explained in the menu, creating a sort of literary concept.

Since 2000, she has published numerous books on the Mediterranean diet, with an emphasis on modern, easy, quick and tasty meals; including recipes adapted to non-professional kitchens. The most celebrated is Cuinar per ser feliç (2001), Cooking to be happy. In English she has published Carme Ruscalleda's Mediterranean cuisine (2007), Salsa Books Editions.

She currently is head chef at the Moments restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental in Barcelona whilst still overseeing her other restaurants.^[2]

In popular culture[link]

There is a sardana called Carme Ruscalleda in the album Ballem-la (Let's dance it), played by the cobla La Flama and composed by Pere Vilà in 2001.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Carme Ruscalleda

This Catalan biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

This Spanish biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (July 2010)

Ferran Adrià

Born	(1962-05-14) May 14, 1962 (age 50) L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Current restaurant(s) El Bulli

Ferran Adrià i Acosta (Catalan pronunciation: [fəˈran əðɾiˈa]) is a Catalan chef born on May 14, 1962 in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. He was the head chef of the El Bulli restaurant in Roses on the Costa Brava, and is considered one of the best chefs in the world.^[1]

Career[link]

A liquid olive, one of Adrià's appetizers

Ferran Adrià began his culinary career in 1980 during his stint as a dishwasher at the Hotel Playafels, in the town of Castelldefels. The chef de cuisine at this hotel taught him traditional Spanish cuisine. At 19 he was drafted into military service where he worked as a cook. In 1984, at the age of 22, Adrià joined the kitchen staff of El Bulli as a line cook. Eighteen months later he became the head chef.

In 1994, Ferran Adria and Juli Soler (his partner) sold 20% of their business to Miquel Horta (a Catalan millionaire and philanthropist and son of the founder of Nenuco) for 120 million Pesetas. This event became a turning point for el Bulli: the money was used to finance to expansion of the kitchen and the relationship with Horta opened the door to new clients, businessmen, and politicians who helped spread the word about the creative experimentation happening at the time in Cala Montjoi. ^[2]

Along with British chef Heston Blumenthal, Adrià is often associated with "molecular gastronomy," although like Blumenthal the Catalan chef does not consider his cuisine to be of this category.^[3] Instead, he has referred to his cooking as deconstructivist.^[4] Adrià's stated goal is to "provide unexpected contrasts of flavour, temperature and texture. Nothing is what it seems. The idea is to provoke, surprise and delight the diner."^[5] As he likes to say, "the ideal customer doesn't come to El Bulli to eat but to have an experience."

El Bulli is only open for about six months of the year (in 2010, the season was due to run from June 15 to December 20).^[6] Adrià spends the remaining six months of the year perfecting recipes in his workshop "El Taller" in Barcelona. He is famous for his thirty course gourmet menu.

He is also well known for creating "culinary foam". In his quest to enhance flavour, Adrià discards the use of cream and egg; foam is made exclusively of the main ingredient and "air" (combined in a siphon bottle equipped with N₂O cartridges). Adrià's foam creations include foamed espresso (Èspesso), foamed mushroom, and foamed beetroot, as well as foamed meats.

El Bulli has 3 Michelin stars and is regarded as one of the best restaurants in the world. In 2005, it ranked second in the Restaurant Top 50. It was awarded the first place in 2006, displacing The Fat Duck in Bray, England. El Bulli retained this title in 2007, 2008 and 2009, but in 2010 the title was awarded to Noma of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Adrià is the author of several cookbooks including A Day at El Bulli, El Bulli 2003-2004 and Cocinar en Casa (Cooking at Home). With his young assistant Daniel Picard, Adrià has made almonds into cheese and asparagus into bread with the help of natural ingredients.^[7]

Adrià has been a featured chef on Great Chefs television.^[8]

In the fall of 2010, Adrià and José Andrés will teach a culinary physics course at Harvard University.^[9]

In October 2010, Adrià announces an alliance with Telefónica.^[10]

Controversy[link]

Adrià denounced his fellow 3-star Michelin cook Santi Santamaria who described his approach to cuisine as "pretentious". Traditionalist Santi Santamaria attacked Adrià's dishes in El Bulli as unhealthy, alleging that "Adrià's dishes are designed to impress rather than satisfy and used chemicals that actually put diners' health at risk". Top chefs, however, accused Santamaria, who runs the 3-star Can Fabes near El Bulli, of envy and "endangering the reputations of Spanish kitchens".^[11] The criticism has split top Spanish chefs into pro- and anti-Adrià camps.^[12] Unusual dishes that have been criticized include frozen whisky sour candy, white garlic and almond sorbet, tobacco-flavoured blackberry crushed ice and Kellogg's paella (Rice Krispies, shrimp heads and vanilla-flavoured mashed potatoes).

German food writer, Jörg Zipprick, accused Adrià of more or less poisoning his customers with the additives he uses in his cuisine and said that Adrià's menu should carry health warnings: "These colorants, gelling agents, emulsifiers, acidifiers and taste enhancers that Adrià has introduced massively into his dishes to obtain extraordinary textures, tastes and sensations do not have a neutral impact on health".^[13]

Domestic Commercialisation[link]

Texturas^[14] is a range of products by Ferran Adrià, and his brother Albert Adrià. The products include the Sferificación, Gelificación, Emulsificación, Espesantes and Surprises lines are the result of a rigorous process of selection and experimentation. Texturas include products such as Xanthan and Algin which are packaged and labelled as Xantana Texturas and Algin Texturas respectively.^[15] Xanthan gum allows the user to use a very small amount to thicken soups, sauces and creams without changing the flavour. Algin is a key component of the "Spherification Kit" and is essential for every spherical preparation: caviar, raviolis, balloons, gnocchi, pellets, and mini-spheres.^[16]

Works[link]

• El Bulli 1983-1993 (with Juli Soler and Albert Adrià)
• El Bulli: el sabor del Mediterráneo, 1993, ISBN 84-7596-415-X
• Los secretos de El Bulli, 1997, ISBN 448710002
• El Bulli 1994-1997 (with Juli Soler and Albert Adrià)
• Cocinar en 10 minutos con Ferran Adrià, 1998, ISBN 84-605-7628-0
• Celebrar el milenio con Arzak y Adrià (with Juan Mari Arzak), 1999, ISBN 84-8307-246-7
• El Bulli 1998-2002 (with Juli Soler and Albert Adrià), Conran Octopus, 2003, ISBN 1-84091-346-0; Ecco, 2005, ISBN 0-06-081757-7
• El Bulli 2003-2004 (with Juli Soler and Albert Adrià), Ecco, 2006, ISBN 0-06-114668-4
• El Bulli 2005
• A Day At El Bulli 2008
• FOOD for thought THOUGHT for food (El Bulli y Ferran Adrià), 2009 ACTAR Editorial, ISBN 978-84-96954-68-7
• The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria 2011 Phaidon, ISBN 978-0-7148-6253-8

In October 2008, Ferran Adrià published A Day At El Bulli along with Juli Soler, and Albert Adrià. The book describes 24-hours at the El Bulli restaurant, with images, commentary, photographs and 30 recipes. Most of the recipes included are complex and require many out-of-the ordinary kitchen appliances, such as a Pacojet, freeze-dryer, liquid nitrogen tank, candyfloss machine and Perspex molds.

See also[link]

• Haute cuisine

References[link]

External links[link]

• Great Chefs Biography
• About.com Biography
• Interview with The Guardian