ICE Director of Career Services Maureen Drum Fagin and Career Services Advisor Deanna Silva with elBulli Chef Ferran Adria. Photo by Greg Nesbit Photography

a
Last week, the gastronomy of Spain and its role in shaping worldwide culinary innovation, was celebrated in true style by none other than its highest practitioner, Chef Ferran Adrià. The event, which also served as a book launch for The Sorcerer’s Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at elBulli, by Lisa Abend, was presented by ICEX (The Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade) at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I Center in Manhattan.

The event kicked off with a speech by Miguel Sebastián, Spain’s Minister of Industry, Tourism and Commerce, on how Spain has shaped the world’s food culture. Lisa Abend then discussed her book, the daily life of elBulli interns (imagine pulling hundreds of individual pine nuts out of pinecones for the menu’s “risotto” course!), and what it means to hold a coveted stagiaire position at the world’s most renowned restaurant. (By the way, she noted that Adrià often says, a stage at his restaurant is even harder to secure than a reservation — over 3,000 candidates apply each year for around 32 unpaid six-month stage slots.) Two former elBulli stagiaires, including ICE’s own Paras Shah (Culinary ’07), spoke about their time in the elBulli kitchen, and how it’s impacted both their career and the way they think about food, craft, and creativity in general. More…

ICE President Rick Smilow Introduces Modernist Cuisine Author Nathan Myhrvold

Modernist Cuisine is perhaps the most highly anticipated cookbook ever. Nathan Myhrvold and co-authors Chris Young and Maxime Bilet (an ICE grad) worked with a 20-person team and spent six years creating the six-volume, 2,400-page set that reveals science-inspired techniques for cooking. And last night, the team celebrated the launch of their book at ICE.

During their week in New York, the team appeared on the Today show and The Colbert Report and prepared food for events at the Core Club, the New York Academy of Sciences and Jean Georges. The last event in the city was the launch at ICE. In attendance were industry notables such as chefs Marcus Samuelsson, Nate Appleman, Johnny Iuzzini, Paul Liebrandt, Waldy Malouf, as well as food media personalities such as Amanda Hesser, Gail Simmons and many others interested in hearing from the chefs behind the immense project.

Red Rooster Chef Marcus Samuelsson with ICE Alum Gail Simmons of Top Chef and Chef Nate Appleman

Myhrvold, the former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft, feels that the book represents a revolution in the art of cooking. Ferran Adria has said, “The book will change the way we understand the kitchen.” He shared that there are over 1,150,000 words, 1,522 recipes and 3,216 photos in the completed volumes. While many people assume the book is full of very technical recipes that require expensive equipment, Myhrvold said, “Half the recipes in the book anyone can cook at home.” For example, while his detailed chart for making different types of custard looked confusing, he pointed out that the only ingredients on it were milk and eggs and the only technology required to make it was a thermometer. More…

When ICE President Rick Smilow and Anne E. McBride wrote Culinary Careers: How to Get Your Dream Job in Food they discovered a plethora of food jobs they had never heard of before. Since the book’s release, they have been discovering even more interesting career paths in the food world. DICED shares some of them with you in a reoccurring feature, “Unique Culinary Careers.”

Working in the culinary industry affords many unique and interesting opportunities. Paras Shah graduated from ICE’s Culinary Arts program in 2007. A born and raised New Yorker, Shah plans to open a small restaurant in Queens one day, but for now his culinary journey has taken him to Europe and one of the top restaurants in the world. After completing his externship at Per Se, he went on to work at Momofuku Noodle Bar. While working there, he was one of two American culinary school graduates to be awarded an ICEX Spanish Trade Commission Scholarship, allowing him to spend a year cooking in Spain. While there, he worked at Echaurren in La Rioja, then Santo Mauro in Madrid and is now at Ferran Adrià’s world-famous El Bullì in Roses. We asked him about working in Spain, cooking in another language and how travel is shaping his culinary growth.

How would you describe your job?
I am a stage at El Bullì, one of the best restaurants in the world. I am part of an international team of about 50 cooks. We do everything from doing about 90% of the mise en place to plating dishes during service. It involves long hours and we strive to be perfect in everything that we do in the kitchen. At El Bullì, we are constantly striving to reinvent the concept of fine dining by utilizing the newest techniques and pushing the envelope. More…