By CARLA SPARTOS
Last updated: 7:57 am
July 23, 2008
Posted: 3:11 am
July 23, 2008
Move over sunchokes, celeriac and dayboat scallops.Hello Doritos? Long relegated to the dusty shelf of your corner bodega, snack food is now providing kitchen inspiration to high-end chefs across the city. Three of the key ingredients in Cool Ranch Doritos - MSG and flavor enhancers disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate - do more than fire up your taste buds and coax you to dig into that bag for just one more chip. They boost that chip's savory quality or "umami" - the "fifth taste" (after salty, sour, bitter and sweet) currently sweeping the culinary world.
It's the subject of a $500-a-head dinner at New York's James Beard House on July 29, as well as a recent symposium in San Francisco featuring celebrated chefs such as Per Se's Thomas Keller.
But MSG isn't the only junk-food ingredient captivating the culinary world now that more and more gourmet chefs are taking on the role of mad scientist in the kitchen. "Molecular gastronomy is good chefs discovering a lot of what Frito-Lay has known for years," said Eben Klemm, the beverage director for B.R. Guest restaurants, at the Tales of the Cocktail conference in New Orleans last week (see story on page 55).
Most of the ingredients found in a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos can be found in the Willy Wonka-like kitchen of wd-50 chef Wylie Dufresne, including buttermilk solids, onion powder, dextrose and sodium casenate.
"I'm not looking to cut into the Doritos market . . . but the idea of being able to replicate a ranch flavor in a different form is interesting," says Dufresne. "Maybe you take all those spices and you fold them into mashed potatoes and make Cool Ranch mashed potatoes. That's not something I've done but maybe that's delicious."
At his cutting-edge Clinton Street restaurant, he has done dishes like Pizza Pebbles - smooth, round "pebbles" with the crumbly texture of a shortbread-style cookie and the taste of the pizza-flavored Combos snack. Last week, they were replaced on the tasting menu by Grilled Corn Pebbles, which evoke South American-style corn on the cob.
Dufresne isn't the only chef intrigued by the possibilities presented by the supermarket aisle. Celebrated Spanish chef Ferran Adria - whose El Bulli restaurant has been named the "world's best" - is causing a stir with his forthcoming cookbook, "A Day at El Bulli," which calls for Frito-Lay 3-Ds as a recipe ingredient.
"Is this a bold demonstration of the modern theory that there should be no hierarchy of ingredients, or is Adria just being a bit of a lazy bastard?" blogged the UK's Tony Naylor.
Unlike Adria, most chefs aren't looking to hog the whole bag of chips. Dufresne bristles at the idea that just because he is interested in commercial food industry techniques that he is somehow using sub-par ingredients. That onion powder? "We can take red onions, dice them up, dry them up in the oven gently and then grind them into a powder. I'm not talking about going to Food Emporium and buying McCormick onion powder," he says.
