Cutting edge

Every summer, Ruffino’s Executive Chef Peter Sclafani travels to Chalmette to select what he believes are the area’s most flavorful Creole tomatoes. A farm-to-table advocate, Sclafani buys the scarlet fruit from the same family farm each season, incorporating them into Ruffino’s La Caprese and other summer salads. But this year, the tri-colored classic of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil was elevated further—the result of Sclafani’s interest in another major culinary trend: modernist cuisine. He didn’t douse the salad with the requisite extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. He topped it instead with homemade balsamic caviar, created with a natural gelling agent called agar-agar.

Topped with micro basil and served with impossibly soft burrata cheese, the dish was an impressive reinterpretation of its classic forebear. But it looked so much like real caviar that several patrons, including some who didn’t like caviar at all, remained unconvinced. Ruffino’s servers were used to the exchange. It wasn’t the first time Sclafani had dabbled in modernist cuisine.

Also known by its less popular name, molecular gastronomy, modernist cuisine is the practice of intensifying the science used in traditional cooking. A growing number of restaurants worldwide are incorporating new equipment, ingredients and techniques to redefine texture, reinvent classic dishes and introduce new ones.

“At first, I was skeptical and thought it might be ‘here today, gone tomorrow,’” says Sclafani, who also uses liquid nitrogen to quick-freeze berries or sauces that he’ll break apart to use as garnishes. “But the results are absolutely amazing.”

Aspects of modernist cuisine have been around for centuries, but the movement has built serious momentum in the past decade. Well-known practitioner Chef Ferran Adria of Spain’s El Bulli put the idea of culinary foams on the menu, along with other dishes that have rewritten the rules of texture. Last year, the movement earned another boost when author Nathan Myhrvold introduced the six-volume Modernist Cuisine, a 2,438-page set intended to “reinvent cooking” with carefully researched culinary techniques.

“We’ve started to introduce students to the concepts,” says Chef Instructor Christine Nicosia of the Louisiana Culinary Institute in Baton Rouge, who recently attended two national seminars on modernist cuisine. LCI instructors discuss concepts like textural modification, sous vide, the use of drying and gelling agents and how to create foams.

Sous vide, a method of cooking vacuum-sealed foods in a water bath, is one of the most familiar types of modernist cuisine and is used by Sclafani and a handful of other chefs in Baton Rouge.

Fred Huertin is one. A corporate chef and founding board member of Slow Foods Baton Rouge, Huertin says he keeps his culinary skills sharp by organizing “underground” modernist wine dinners for friends and acquaintances.

At one such dinner, Huertin created carpaccio of tuna and watermelon that involved compressing the liquid from the fruit then quickly grilling it to impart a meaty texture. The duo was served with aged sherry vinegar, Nicoise and Picholine olives, Marcona almond slivers and a tiny dollop of avocado espuma (foam). Each ingredient was painstakingly selected for texture and flavor, says Huertin.

“It should be very calculated,” he says of modernist cuisine. “It’s not just about what you can do with these foods and with this new equipment. It’s understanding the ingredients and determining the direction you want to go in with them. Then you’re only limited by your imagination.”