Planet Marx By Thierry Marx
Thierry Marx's cuisine is not food as you know it - unless, perhaps, you come from outer space. Marx is known for his 'molecular' and 'deconstructed' food and when this book was published, in 2006, he was chef of the two-star Cordeillan-Bages in Bordeaux, France. He has recently decamped to Paris.
The dishes might sound familiar but the forms they take are not: quiche lorraine is turned 'liquide' by sous-viding a custard filling at 83 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes - so it's fully cooked but still fluid - then pouring it into a pastry case made by baking shortcrust pastry, then grinding it with other ingredients and cooking it again as if it were a pancake, then adding dehydrated bacon. The humble dish of sardines and potato in oil is elevated by using boned Mediterranean sardines, sous-vide potato, oyster tuile biscuits and fish fumet.
The best parts of this book, though, are the pictures and ideas, rather than the recipes - many of which are missing steps and call for exotic ingredients. The photographs and styling were done by Mathilde de l'Ecotais and make the food resemble petri-dish specimens as seen through a microscope, or creatures from some far off planet.
