Feasts

As Thanksgiving rolls around this year my thoughts turn to food and the joys of cooking. But this year my wife will be away. Her father died this past year and all his children are gathering for the first family dinner without him.
 
Regretfully, I’m here working due to obligations I could not change. So my Thanksgiving dinner will be with friends who have invited me over. These folks tend to be as individualistic as I am and they’ve cautioned me that the dinner will be “a little unusual.”
 
That could mean anything. As far I know they could be planning on roasting a camel (“Here you go...have the hoof”). I’m looking forward to the adventure.
 
Adventure in cooking always brings to mind some of my edgier culinary experiences. Recently we took some friends to MOTO, one of Chicago’s most astounding restaurants. It is owned by Homaro Cantu, on of the very few chefs who has won a competition on Iron Chef America by the Food Network.
 
Chef Cantu does “post-industrial” cuisine, also known as “molecular” cuisine. It is cooking using ingredients and equipment often found in chemistry labs. Dishes are prepared using Class-Four lasers, liquid nitrogen and pressure chambers. Nothing is as it seems in this cuisine. Chef Cantu once served me a dish that appeared to be Nachos and Cheese. It was actually a chocolate carrot cake with ice cream. Each ingredient had been handled at a different atmospheric pressure to change its texture and appearance.
 
This time it was really strange. Some of the dishes were hilarious. “Baseball Snacks” turned out to be a compression of peanuts, grapes and pop corn powder (as in “peanut butter and jelly with popcorn”). “Astronaut Tartare” turned out to be a slice of Kobe Beef elevated to 50,000 feet in a pressure chamber and “cooked” by freezer-burning it at Absolute Zero.
 
I was served the edgiest dish I have ever eaten at this meal. Called “Cuban Cigar” it was a handmade sausage shaped to look like a cigar butt. The cigar band was made from edible paper and flavored with tobacco. The sausage was served in an ash tray with “ash” made from pulverized sesame seeds. It looked exactly like an old cigar butt. I had to close my eyes to eat it. It tasted wonderful, but eating it took some willpower.
 
Fine Food is one of the great glories of our civilization, and I hope your Thanksgiving feast will be wonderful. If you are interested in MOTO, check it out at http://www.motorestaurant.com