At first glance, it looks like a brilliant ethereal butterfly just emerging from its cocoon. On closer inspection it’s actually an oval scoop of luscious strawberry sorbet filled with 'fromage frais' and decorated with very fine translucent toffee wings. Tiny legs of diced crystallised orange act as its support. On another page, there’s a sea creature made of tuber chips - fine golden ones at the base with darker beetroot flakes at the top - which looks as if it’s dancing in space. Yet another - the hot jellied consommé with veal marrow - is reminiscent of a chess board with its perfectly symmetrical jellied squares.

Sound surreal? Like something out of a Dali or Picasso catalogue? These are just a few examples of the sumptuous food photographs to be found in Feran Adria's compendium 'El Bulli 1998 – 2002', the English translation of which arrived on our shores earlier this year. This AU$325 culinary work of art weighs 5kg and is a 'must have' among cutting edge chefs around the globe It's not just the Spanish chef’s overhaul of traditional techniques and his revolutionary use of foams, hot jellies, clouds and frozen powders which intrigues the chefs. It's also the inspirational way in which he plates the food - and the stunning way in which it has been captured by leading Spanish photographer Francesc Guillamet.

But is this real food? Some think not. According to Anne Willan (La Varenne cooking school in Burgundy, France) in a review she wrote about 'El Bulli', "This cooking relates to none other. It has no history and little sense of place. It amazes, it excites but in no way does it nourish and satisfy. In no way is this real food." And despite the stunning presentation and lavish photography in the book, do we want to eat this food? What’s more, do we want to cook it? For the home cook, attempting to re-create Feran’s dishes is bound to be a challenge of Olympian proportions, not just because many of the recipes stipulate exotic ingredients but because they require expensive equipment to execute. And just imagine the scorched pans, the jelly noodles that won't set, the foams that won't foam.

There are many in the culinary world who feel that presentation has become overemphasised at the expense of taste, that it has become yet another fashion trend undermining the seriousness of food. Chef porn - or the glorification of food as a substitute for sex - as it’s been dubbed. When Thomas Keller’s lavish 'French Laundry Cookbook' (Artisan AU$120) was first published, New York chef-turned-author Anthony Bourdain doubted there’d be many who'd attempt to re-create its recipes. "We keep it on a special place on our bookshelves, safely away from any food that might mark its seductive and colourful photographs, as our parents might once have kept Miller’s 'Topic of Cancer' or the 'Olympia Reader' - away from general reading," he said. "Like the best of pornography, the best of food porn depicts beautiful 'objects' arranged in ways one might never have previously considered; star chefs, like the porn stars before them, doing things on paper which few amateurs would every try at home." These perfect images of finished dishes create disquiet in the kitchen, not to mention frayed tempers.

Much of the current obsession with the look of food can be traced back to the new wave of cooking ('nouvelle cuisine') which emerged in France during the 1970’s in the work of French chefs Paul Bocuse, Jean and Pierre Troisgros and Michel Guerard. These chefs emphasised the use of fresh seasonal ingredients, eliminated rich sauces, reduced cooking times and encouraged inventiveness. They also stressed visual presentation, not with elaborately cut garnishes or inedible decorations but with the food itself, food that was artistically arranged on large individual plates. Such dishes, muses Gay Bilson (ex Bennelong, Sydney Opera House) in an essay entitled 'Pictures on Plates' in her new book "Plenty" (Penguin 2004, first published in Artlink ) were ultimately judged by the general public, not for their flavours and textures, but by photographs in magazines and cookbooks. "This is the new aesthetic of seduction, a version of Arcadia, without dirt and odour, without taste," she notes. It's also one of the problems with 'food porn' - you can’t smell or taste the food. "Photographs of food are as odourless as the hero in Patrick Susskind’s novel 'Perfume'," continues Bilson. "Photographs of prepared dishes undo the transitory reason for their existence. Photographs have nothing to do with appetite."

In the new millennium, most media images to do with food and chefs are about seduction. Think food ads in which advertisers seduce our taste buds with suggestive images. Most of them are more interested in selling us unhealthy food and have nothing to do with taste or hunger. Think domestic goddess Nigella Lawson with her generous cleavage spilling out over the stove top or her tongue licking an ice cream with gusto. Or naked chef Jamie Oliver - even the title of his program is suggestive. These shows have helped fuel a love affair not just with chefs and their food but with the equipment that goes with them. On Jamie Oliver's set there's a AUD$10,500 gleaming stainless steel EB 385 Gaggenau oven plus the Gaggenau wok and grill; on Nigella's there's the double Viking wall oven worth about AUD$24,000; and closer to home there’s the Jenn Air 650 litre refrigerator and St George double side-opening oven on Kylie Kwong’s ABC TV show (Australia) series.

Jamie and Nigella have gone on to develop their own kitchen accoutrements. For Jamie wannabes there's the Jamie Oliver Professional Series 9 piece cookware set and for Nigella wannabes, there’s her pale blue 'Living Kitchen' collection. "These are objects I wanted passionately for my own kitchen," explains Nigella on her self-indulgent website. "That's where the collection came from. I’ve really enjoyed having the chance to design my own collection and seeing them come to life."

A number of Aussie chefs have also come up with their own range of branded products - Christine Manfield’s pickles and pastes, Neil Perry's ready-to-go sauces and Maggie Beer's pates and preserves - to mention a few. Gourmet food ingredients have also become another 'must have'. The implicit message is that you can cook like them and live like them without leaving the comforts of your own home - as long as you've first purchased the goods.

 

 

 

In another category is our own Ozzie style queen, Donna Hay. Her books and magazines, with their clean-cut minimalist look, are a "must have" among the 20 and 30-somethings. The cover of her latest book 'Instant Cook' (Harper Collins $45) is predictably Donna with its large white plate of food sitting centre stage on a pale apple green background. Over the top is a translucent protective jacket, touted by the publishers as an exciting new design concept. For Donna’s trademark is her distinctive minimalist design, not just on the plate but also on the page. It's how it looks that counts, to the exclusion of the other senses.

Despite the apparent simplicity of the recipes, she offers little guidance with technique or method. Unlike informative food writers of the past (Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson and Claudia Roden to mention a few), Donna gives no background to the development or culture and history of her recipes.

Even Julia Child, one of the first successful TV chefs in the United States, goes to great lengths to explain her recipes in 'Mastering The Art of French Cooking' (Penguin 1970). Her dedication to publisher Alfred Knopf as an "appreciator of good writing" and her encouragement to home cooks to produce similar results in their own kitchens with detailed step-by-step instructions reflects another era. Now, thanks to dream makers like Donna and the 'Marie Claire' and Bill Granger books, most people just want to show off. They don’t want to know about the hard work and craft involved in good cooking.

When Kath & Kim (ABC TV, Australia) hone in on a subject, you know it’s infiltrated the suburbs. "I’m gonna do a huge slap-up meal for Kel. I’ve got Donna Hay’s newie," boasts Kath in an episode on cooking at home. "I'm gonna do the Chinese degustation menu. It looks to die for." It's that sentence that's the clincher because it’s how it looks that has sucked Kath in. It's also the prestige she associates with being able to tell anyone who’ll listen that she's cooking a Donna Hay recipe. "Look at moiye, look at moiye," has been extended into the world of food.

Unlike many who buy Donna's books - and who devour them in place of food - Kath actually does cook something from it though what it really tasted like (or if the recipe worked) we'll never know. Even the kitchen has been 'sexed up'. While still the hub of most homes, kitchens are increasingly valued more for their looks than for cooking - and Kath and Kim are onto it. In their cooking episode, Kim tells Kath that she's finally got the concept for her new kitchen. "Brett and me have decided we want solid monogamy," she says. "Oh no Kim!" retorts Kath, "Monogamy is very old-fashioned. You just need a veneer of monogamy – that's all people care about." Such a veneer might include an expensive bench top and extra preparation space along with a tiled or coloured glass splashback and snappy range hood.

"A lot of executives at the upper end of the market are taking Cordon Bleu courses and want top of the range appliances so they can fulfil their hobby," says John Thurgate of Winning Appliances in Crows Nest Sydney (a longtime retailer of top-of-the-line European kitchen appliances). They also like the prestige associated with a well-equipped kitchen. Must haves include glass ceramic induction cooktops, steamer ovens, granite sinks, integrated refrigerators (which look like wall cabinets), under-mounted sinks and no-brainer coffee machines. Single and multi-zone wine cellars, specially designed to maintain wine at a constant storage temperature, are also becoming popular.

For Michelin-star English chef Gordon Ramsay, it’s necessary to have a state-of-the-art kitchen at home as well as at work. Not one to do things by halves, he built an extension on the back of his house in Wandsworth Common South London for his new kitchen and its French-made 67,000 Pound Rorgue range oven. This monster comes with a selection of five ovens - microwave, electric oven, gas oven, convection oven and drying oven - and required a reinforced floor to take its two and a half tonne weight. It sits in the centre of his large spacious kitchen and is his pride and joy.

He's even promised wife Tana (who has her own more modest kitchen in the basement) that he’ll cook for the family now he has his masterpiece kitchen. Whether he actually finds the time in his busy life to cook for his family is another thing.

Despite all the showy equipment and flashy cookbooks, fewer people are actually cooking at home. According to Sandro Mangosi, senior food and beverage consultant at BIS Shrapnel, Sydney, the kitchen has become yet another status symbol. "As people become more affluent they eat out more frequently," he says. "They might spend more on their kitchens but they also tend to be the ones who use them less. Real estate agents push the idea of the kitchen as an entertainment area, but how many people actually entertain at home these days?"

He also cites the vast consumption of cookbooks as an example of this trend. "Australia and the UK have the highest consumption of cookbooks per capita in the world, but they are only used once a year. People like to put them on a coffee table and flick through them but they rarely read them or practice new dishes from them. They're more concerned about getting them dirty."

You can tell a lot about a society by what it does with its food. At the start of the new millennium, while chefs mimic 'El Bulli’' in technique and presentation, fatuous home cooks aspire to the Donna Hay look. It's 'show food', intended to impress. And god help you if the crème brulee doesn’t set - or if it doesn’t look like the one in the picture.

 

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