The Sweet Dish from Barcelona
By Kim Rothrock

Basques may disagree, but Catalonia has a long history of world class cuisine and a reputation for producing some of Spain’s finest Chefs.  Barcelona is the capital, and some say the heart, of Catalonia. Influenced by neighboring European cultures and culinary styles since the 17th century, this melting pot of gastronomy has fostered the reinvention of familiar forms and flavors in all aspects of Spanish food.

Largely due to the daring culinary philosophy of 3 star Michelin ranked El Bulli Restaurant Chef Ferran Adria, Catalonia and Barcelona have become the mecca of avant garde cuisine. Adria’s successful breaking of all the rules of established haute cuisine has encouraged culinary experiments throughout the culinary world. His deconstuctivist cooking style restructures and renovates the classical preparation and presentation of a familiar dish, so that you see the original concept of the dish in a new and modern way. Foams instead of sauces, and liquid elements transformed into small caviar-like spheres are signature textural elements of Adria’s cuisine that now can be seen in fine dining restaurant menus all over Europe and the US. “The tasting menu is the finest expression of avant garde cooking. Concepts such as snacks, tapas, and predessert are coming into their own”—Ferran Adria. Europeans, like Americans are eating fewer conventional meals, snacking more and crave lots of new and foreign flavors.

Barcelona boasts not only a Confectionary Guild, a Pastry and Confectioner School, a Museum of Chocolate, a plethora of patissiers and chocolatiers, but also one the first fine dining plated dessert-only restaurants, Jordi Butron’s Espai Sucre (Sugar Space) which devotes its daytime hours to a cooking school for the perfection of the dessert makers art. One of Spain’s oldest and largest chocolate couverture manufacturers, Chocovic is located only one hour north of Barcelona in Vic. Chocovic also hosts a school for pastry and confectionery making called Aula Chocovic, headed up by Ramon Morato, Best Artisan Master Confectioner of Spain 1997, who also is the co-creator of Cacao Sampaka chocolate confections with Albert Adria, part owner and Pastry Chef of the famed El Bulli restaurant northeast of Barcelona, in Girona, Spain. There’s a whole lotta pastry, dessert and chocolate making going on in this town!

Catalans in particular, view chocolate is a food ingredient, not just a confection. One of the permanent exhibits at the Museu de la Xocolata in Barcelona reads: “Why do I love you so much? As a liquid, as a tablet, as a bonbon, with stuffing, with milk, as an ingredient for many desserts or even on the side with meat or fish, as in the Catalan cuisine, chocolate is a part of our lives because we like it at all times and its flavor delights us”. The use of chocolate, spices and nuts combined into savory dishes is in fact not modern at all, but deeply rooted in the cuisine of the Middle Ages. This fundamental difference in the perception of chocolate and other conventionally savory ingredients effects not only how the Spanish create chocolates, confections, and desserts but even more so the fashion in which they form their edible creations. It should be no surprise that Spain’s food culture is infused with chocolate. Spain after all, is the country whose explorers discovered chocolate in the new world. The trail-blazing Chefs, Patissiers and Chocolatiers of Catalonia celebrate the diversity of form and flavor that chocolate as an ingredient has to offer.

Barcelona is also home to Antoni Gaudi and Joan Miro, and has been a center of Modernist architecture and art. These influences on the cuisine of Barcelona can be seen not only in dessert and confection design, but also in the spirit of provocation found in many of the artisan Chocolatiers product concepts and marketing. Xocoa coined new words to describe and promote its chocolate philosophy; Xocominimalism, Xoco-Art, Xocoexpressionism, and Neoxocolatism, all followed by “New Tendencies in the Use of Chocolate” on their brochures and point of sale materials. Enric Rovira, whose storefront proclaims him as the Chocolatier de Barcelona, has paid homage to Gaudi and Barcelona with the physical representation of their forms in the design of chocolate bars and confections. Every one of the artisan Chocolatiers’ shops exhibited distinctively modern interior and exterior design style.

With a long history of drinking chocolate, and the willingness to eat chocolate at any meal, it is no surprise that Spain’s most emblematic answer to a hangover is the xurros amb xocolata, churros con chocolate, a deep fried pastry stick immersed in thick, gooey, hot chocolate. In Barcelona, this love of fried dough is seen in a myriad of donut-like confections of varying shapes and sizes in every pastry shop, some sweet, some not, along with the ever present offering of Chocolate a la Taza, a starch thickened hot cocoa, instead of espresso or café con leche.

No Borders--Gone are the borders between the salty and the sweet in Barcelona as evidenced by the Block of Foie Gras with Chocolate plated dessert by Ramon Morato. I found sea salt on sprinkled on chocolate bonbons (that didn’t have caramel inside). There were Salted toasted corn kernels panned in dark chocolate and dusted with cocoa by virtually every Artisan Chocolatier in Barcelona, including Enric Rovira, Oriol Balaguer, Xocoa, Chocolat Factory, and Cacao Sampaka. At Bubo, a newly opened Tapas bar in the Barri Gotic district, one of the dessert dishes was cubes of brie cheese, coated in unsweetened dried fine shred raw coconut, deep fried, and served with a bitter chocolate sauce. For a conference at the Gastronomic Forum in Vic, Ramon Morato prepared a Truffle Panini—buttered chocolate bread, filled with chocolate truffle cream, studded with black truffle slices, sprinkled with sea salt and put into a heated sandwich press. His Chocolate pizza has a base of cocoa brioche, painted with olive oil, topped with a roasted hazelnut emulsion, sprinkles of sugar, sea salt, and toasted hazelnuts. Restaurant PLA, also located in the Barri Gotic district of Barcelona, specializes in nouvelle catalan cuisine, had a simple but delicious dessert of Bread and Chocolate; bittersweet chocolate, toasted bread covered with bittersweet dark chocolate, sprinkled with sea salt drizzled with extra virgin olive oil.

East your veggies--The enterprising Jordi Butron of Espai Sucre was asked if everything is valid in the mixing of flavors. He replied that no, there is a thing called common sense that tells you how far you can go. This chef expertly takes us as far as the salad garden, in creating a plated dessert consisting of small cubes of spicy milk pudding resting on matchsticks of green apple with baby arugula leaves, peppery caramel sauce, dabs of kaffir lime and lemon curd, and a straight line of toffee.

While wandering the two fairgrounds of the Alimentaria tradeshow for food and drink manufacturers, I found naturally colored and flavored wafer paper from A.M. Neules, speckled with herbs or vegetables like a handmade writing paper. Tomato flecked torrone, anyone? Cacao Sampaka presents Tomato-Chocolate amongst its chocolate jam assortment of flavors.

Puristic—The borders between what is conventionally viewed as an ingredient, and what is viewed as a finished dessert component are also closing fast. The respect for the purity of an ingredient, and it’s use as an integral component of a dessert can be seen in the dessert assemblage by all the top chefs. In Ramon Morato’s Spice Cake Dessert with Yogurt and Chocolate, the plate is brushed with pure roasted hazelnut paste, not transformed into a sauce. At Espai Sucre, one of the most distinguished desserts is a smoky Lapsang Souchong Tea Cream with Chocolate, a black sesame tuile, and a pool of unsweetened plain yogurt, a coffee scented chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, and fresh grapes.

The concept of putting more whole and natural ingredients as opposed to refined and altered has clearly influenced ingredient manufacturers, too. La Morata Nuts exhibited an incredible range of specialized praline pastes, nut pastes and crocants at Alimentaria. From crocants made with fruit infused sugars or pinenuts to raw and roasted varieties of every nut paste, to praline pastes made from pistachios or macadamias, these premium pastry ingredients were truly good enough to eat with a spoon, or brush on a plate, or drizzle over an ice cream.

Twisted--The twist of traditional forms into new presentations is seen in pastry, plated desserts and confections all over Barcelona. Inspired by traditional bonbon molds, Ramon Morato calls one of these signature cake design techniques inverse montage --embossing or creating negative space in the design of a cake form, which produces a sculptural effect.His Block of Foie and Chocolate dessert is presented in the savory version of the dish’s iconic block format. Xocoa’s newest chocolate bars are long and thin, with the center filling erupting to mark the surface, and called turron, after the traditional turron (torrone) confection shape. Morato’s dessert turrons are playfully shaped to reflect their flavors. An Origen Unico turron, looks like a long chocolate bar. A turron shaped Torta Lavenda created during an international class at Aula Chocovic had a traditional French goutierre (u) shaped center of lavender scented pastry crème embedded asymmetrically in the turron shaped cake, and was finished with two colors to accentuate this graphic inverted dimensional design. Modern, asymmetrical and sculptural forms with historic or traditional references are the prevailing style for plated desserts, and many confections.

The artful Chocolatier Enric Rovira has become identified with his inspirational use of Antoni Gaudi’s art and architecture. His series of Rajoles chocolate bars replicate the beautiful street tiles of Barcelona in chocolate.

At Alimentaria , I found a complete line of molecular gastronomy ingredient powders to combine with liquids and transform dessert elements into crisps, pearls, leather, gelee, caviar, and vermicelli from PCB Creation, giving pastry chefs a convenient line of products intended to vary textures, temperatures and shapes of dessert components.

I also found flash frozen and highly styled edible greens turned into pre-made presentations for savory dishes. They were fashioned into woven pyramids, small bowls and dishes made from herbs and greens. It won’t be long before this type of presentation appears on dessert plates. Imagine an edible basket of rose geranium to place a quenelle of sorbet in or a dessert presented on a woven lemongrass mat.

The Half-Full Glass--Desserts in a glass are another non-traditional plating style that borrows its profile from the Tapas bar. The small glass format, extremely practical for Tapas and catering, also makes soup for dessert, every pastry chef’s under-ordered favorite, far more appealing to the unadventurous dessert diner.

At Espai Sucre, both Cold Tea Soup with Spices and fruits, and Cream of Vanilla, and Water Ice of Coffee, Crujiente with Caramelized Banana are served ‘plated’ in a glass. Ramon Morato takes the traditional pine nut studded puff pastry, found at every local patisserie in Barcelona, and uses it crumbled, in a glass dessert, with saffron custard and creamy chocolate.

Comatec, a French company, was showing a bonanza of small and innovatively shaped crystal-clear plastic dish and glassware for desserts, in the Alimentaria Restaurama hall. A smaller and similar line of plastic glassware for glass desserts is also available from PCB Creation in Europe. (Comatec products are available in the US through JB Prince in New York).

Pick Your Herbs--Just when you think it’s over, there’s a renaissance of herb, spice and floral flavoring in pastry, chocolate and confections.  At Aula Chocovic, there is an herb and spice garden just outside the front door, harvested by the staff and students in season.

Lavender is a tricky flavor for something sweet. It can so easily end up tasting like potpourri. Torta Lavande, created by Ramon Morato, is filled with lavander scented pastry cream, which had me seriously concerned. Thankfully when expertly combined with the not very sweet dark chocolate mousse and the tart lemon and nutty pistachio sponge, the spicey-floral lavender flavor contrast balanced with the other components beautifully.

Saffron and chocolate is a flavor combination finessed by bonbon makers but not often seen in the Patissier’s art. With a base of Breton biscuit studded with chocolate chips, topped with chiboust cream scented with saffron, and flavored with apples steamed with honey, this SaffronTart is unique in structure as well as flavor pairings. The menu at Espai Sucre includes a Pear Soup with Port and Eucalyptus Ice Cream, and a pastry of phyllo leaves filled with lemon and rosemary marmalade.

The artisan Chocolatiers, including Enric Rovira and Cacao Sampaka, are panning red pepper berries in dark chocolate and dusting them with cocoa powder, and panning crystallized flowers in dark chocolate and dusting them with acidic fruit powders.

Ready to crumble--The old fashioned and homey crumble dessert has been reinvented (with the assistance of a Kitchen Aid meat grinder attachment). Refrigerate your thoroughly creamed crumble dough, and put it through the meat grinder attachment to reshape the crumbs into spaghetti like squiggles of dough. Place the dough squiggles loosely into a ring mold and bake. The baked squiggles form an entirely different, but still forkable texture that has more structure, and can be the base of a dessert, instead of a topping.

Oriol Balaguer, named the best pastry chef in Barcelona in 2003 and author of Dessert Cuisine published by Montague in 2003, has created simple but perfectly delicious puck shaped confection-cookies of feuilletine and chocolate. Reminiscent of the now pastry-kitchen classic eurokrispies, (praline paste, cocoa butter, chocolate and rice krispies), the buttery nature of the feuilletine pairs more delicately with the chocolate, creating a melt-in-your mouth fall-apart-flakey textural treat. Many Pastry Chefs use feuilletine in dessert components for texture, but this singular utilization of an ingredient in its simplest form was amazingly successful. We have already seen the beginning of crumb and cereal inclusions in chocolate confections and desserts. We’ll be seeing this more and less subtle uses of these crunchy mix-ins. Like your mom’s favorite ice box cake layers, the straightforward use of textural ingredients provides great structure, crunch and flavor that stands on its own.

Play with Your Food--Just like bellbottoms and platform shoes, Pop Rocks have made a comeback. This time in chocolate! The Chefs of Spain have kicked foam up a notch. They’ve got fizz. Enric Rovira has created citrus Pop Rocks panned in dark chocolate, and calls them Effervescent Bombolas. The unexpected fizz of citrus flavor spreads across your tongue and clears your mouth with a tangy finish. Rovira also had a cola-caramel centers (yes, coke) panned in dark chocolate.
Will we see chef-made carbonic chocolate that rocks in ice cream treats and dessert plates, soon?
The audacious family owned Escriba, with four generations of Pastry Chefs and Chocolatiers, create an assortment of candy glam rings, edible bling for those with a sweet tooth. Cooked and colored sugar shaped into fanciful miniature pyramids, hearts, lips, and flowers, the rings are so popular that they not only sell them in their Barcelona shop locations, but also to prestige retailers in other European countries. Nostalgic flavors and forms from childhood are found in Barcelona’s sweet palette proving that these artful innovators don’t take themselves too seriously, and still truly play when they create.

The Source--Where do many of these super premium Patissiers, Chefs and Chocolatiers get their most important ingredients to craft their chocolate confection and dessert creations?

Chocovic is the largest manufacturer of couverture and chocolate ingredients in Spain and could arguably be called the chocolate of Spain. They began as Chocolats Arumi in 1872, later taking the name of the city where their factory was, Vic, a mere 1 hour north of Barcelona. They are specialists in couvertures and compounds chocolates for Confectioners, Chocolatiers, and Patissiers. They also produce many of the pralines, fillings, chocolate decorations, and textural ingredients, like roasted cacao nibs, used by the Chocolatiers of Spain to craft their chocolate innovations. Chocovic also sells its own proprietary single origin chocolates ‘Origen Unico’ in bars and tasting squares through retailers in Europe and the USA.

Chocolatiers and Patissiers :

Enric Rovira, www.enricrovira.com
Cacao Sampaka, www.cacaosampaka.com
Xocoa, www.xocoa-bcn.com
Chocolat Factory, www.chocolatfactory.com
Oriol Balaguer, www.oriolbalaguer.com
Domori, www.domori.com
Ramon Morato, www.ramonmorato.com
Escriba, www.escriba.com
Canal, Calvet 15
Foix de Sarria, Major de Sarrià 57
Natcha, Avinguda Sarrià 45-47
Patisseries Mauri, www.patisseriesmauri.com
Planelles Donat, Av. Portal de l'Àngel 7 y 25
Patisserie Pallares, Entença 175
La Campana, Princesa 36
Baixas, Calaf 9-11
Abril, Creu Coberta 17

Restaurants/Tapas :

Espai Sucre, www.espaisucre.com
Bubo, www.bubo.ws
Dolco Postres, Calle Valencia
PLA, www.pla-repla.com

Classes :

Aula Chocovic, www.chocovic.es
Espai Sucre, www.espaisucre.com
Escola de Pastisseria, www.pastisseria.com

Sources:

Alimentaria, www.alimentaria.com/es
Chocovic, www.chocovic.es
Comatec, www.comatec.fr
PCB Creation, www.pcb-creation.com
La Morella Nuts, www.morellanuts.com
JB Prince, www.jpprince.com
A.M. Neules, wwwamneulessl.com