Modern Cooking Techniques: Don't get it twisted

A lot of people either hate or love "modern cooking techniques," "molecular gastronomy," "food science" or whatever you want to call it. People dislike it because so many try to experiment with these techniques without any foundation of classic cooking. Classical french, Asian, Spanish, European, or any food style or race is the base of everything. Your grandma's, mom's, and dad's cooking is the "base" for our future culinary world. If you cannot cook and have zero knowledge of our culinary fathers and mothers, what is the point of adding kelcogel, transglutinamese, and liquid nitrogen to your food? It sure does not make the dish taste any better. Guaranteed. You do not just add an air or foam because of appearance or trend. You add a foam to balance a dish or add another dimension to your food. People need to understand this. To me, Molecular gastronomy is the process of taking classic techniques and totally transforming it to stimulate every sense of a human being. It is the modification of textures, aromas, and basically makes eating food fun again. The process of taking you on a journey from childhood and adulthood through food cannot be expressed with words.

I love cooking and respect my upbringing. Thank you to all of my mentors, you know who you are. I have so much respect for Escoffier and the long line of french chefs. Bocuse, Robuchon, Ducasse, T Keller, H Keller....to many to name...

Bottom line....for the youngin's, including myself....grab a foundation..."You'll never be a Grant Achatz unless you've worked for a Thomas Keller."- Bauti