9 beautiful dishes: color, texture and mystery

A dish may not always be considered an object of desire beyond our appetite’s imagination. Here is a selection of nine recipes that, while bewitching us, push the boundaries of gastronomy, art, and illusion.

‘Chikyu’ means ‘planet Earth’, and this was the starting point for Chef Hajime Yoneda’s construction of this delicate and metaphorical recipe. A wide variety of vegetables are cooked individually and plated as a typical mountainous Japanese landscape, surrounding a sea of asari clam broth (Venerupis philippinarium).

Chef Alain Passard from the famed Parisian L’Arpège needs no introduction. Nothing can be more simple than a sublime carpaccio of vegetables, individually prepared and sliced with craft, to form a somewhat abstract painting on the dish.

The secret ingredient to this dessert ravioli is priprioca root  (Cyperus articulatus). Priprioca is a native Amazon tree whose oil and alcohol are used, among others, in the preparation of perfumes. Knowing that its scent enchants Brazilians, Chef Alex Atala took things a step further and brought about its flavour, which is said to resemble vanilla.

Caviar with white currants, oysters, fresh cheese and oyster leaf (Mertensia maritima), a perinneal herb that tastes like oyster.

A bouquet. Garlic flowers, fried garlic, Spanner crab (Ranina ranina) and miso saikyo mousse.

Find the hare. Hare’s blood, chocolate, coffee foam, foie gras, hazelnuts, herbs; only some of a total of 14 ingredients. Just one thing: you’re meant to eat it using your fingers.

This delicacy demands the fermentation of milk, fresh cheese and gelatin by Penicillium camemberti fungi (used for the production of  Camembert, Brie and Coulommiers cheese). After the mixture is carefully implanted into a cold dish, it is left two days at 30ºC, which allows the famous Camembert-like crust to form. The use of apple and carrot concentrate thickens the mystery of this dish.

A walnut reinvented: walnut oil and pureé topped by snap peas.

DIY: Do It Yourself. At a first glance you might think the chef forgot to bake. However, this clever dish actually took a lot of effort to concoct. We thus have a molasses tart with elderflower syrup (the ‘egg’), cinnamon-infused rice milk  (‘milk’), popcorn parfait (‘butter’), smoked vanilla marshmallow (‘sugar’), yogurt and cake snow (‘flower’) and 72% Arguani chocolate (‘chocolate’!).