microwave, and a coconut ginger dome made with liquid nitrogen
and infused with a burnt-corn-husk oil. Oh, and popcorn too.
How does a dish like this come into being? Again, focus.
“You start with the ingredient,” explains Duffy, “and you ask,
‘What goes with that ingredient? What’s common? What’s
extreme?’” He shows me his notebook, in which he writes the
main ingredient at the top of the page and supporting elements
below. Somehow, by focusing intensely on how something tastes,
he arrives at a dish that’s surprising (the chill of the coconut dome,
the sweetness of the peach, the tartness of the finger lime), and yet
still a successful meditation on the star ingredient, corn.
“Okay,” I say, pointing at a box of heirloom tomatoes. “So I
just bought heirloom tomatoes at the farmer’s market and made a
salad in which I cut them into wedges, tossed them with olive oil
and vinegar, and added some onion and basil. How would I Curtis
Duffy that dish?”
“Well, what goes with tomatoes? Tarragon, vinegar, basil,
bread. You start there. Then you ask: How can I present the
tomato in different ways? You could juice them and turn them into
tomato water. You can add gelatin to some of that water and whip
it or maybe freeze it. You could add olive oil infused with
mandarin oranges. You could make a tarragon puree and freeze it
with liquid nitrogen.”
By meditating on the main ingredients and then free-associating
outward, it is possible to create food like this. But in a million
years, I’d never come up with the other dishes Duffy teaches me: