What inspires great chefs to come up with the dishes that they do? Smells, memories, sounds, or even seemingly unconnected events can converge in a dish. The latter is what happened in the case of Mugaritz’s emblematic dish, where two events and a lot of experimenting ended up becoming the restaurant’s calling card, the Edible Stones made out of potatoes.
The first event took place during a trip to Peru where the chefs discovered a way to preserve potatoes known as tuntas. They were dehydrated potatoes that after several days of treatment took on their characteristic appearance of lumps of plaster. Even though their taste didn’t live up to their interesting appearance, discovering tuntas intrigued the chefs and made them want to reproduce something that resembled them. After a series of trials they found the right variety of potato, sweet, creamy, small and with skin that was tough enough not to split after cooking. So then there was only one question to answer: what would the coating be?
They had a friend that was obsessed with a type of clay called kaolin. Kaolin is used for making optical fibres, plates, and explosives but is also used in medicine and in the pharmaceutical industry, and as such, suitable for human consumption. They got hold of some kaolin and started experimenting. First mixing kaolin with water, which was a disaster, and then mixing it with lactose that produced exactly what they wanted as a coating for the potatoes: crunchiness, impermeability, insipidness, adherence, the ability to preserve temperature and to be suggestive.
With a gastronomic conference coming up they decided to go one step further and imitate grey pebbles in order to serve “stones” as snacks. So with the right treatment of clay they ended up creating “edible stones” that where served in the restaurant accompanied by aioli and inviting guests to play, eat with their hands and be surprised. First, they were served with real stones but now they are surrounded by a kind of sand.
As you understand, inspiration can come from anywhere and be found everywhere. Sometimes you just have to keep your eyes, ears and minds open and not be afraid to experiment and try.
