彭蒙惠英语－另类无国界料理

作者：senven123 | 来源：沪江论坛 |

A Twist on Fusion Cooking (1)
Viewing food in totally unexpected ways allows chef Homaro Cantu, Jr. to create startlingly original ways of presenting and reconstituting food

A few clues reveal that Moto restaurant in Chicago is not your average fine-dining establishment. Start with the Class IV Iaser, normally used for Surgery, on prominent display in the dining room. At Moto, it's an important cooking tool. Then there's the huge tank of industrial-use liquid nitrogen in the backyard, used to freeze things that are normally hot and to mold foods into wholly unnatural shapes.

In Japanese, \"moto\" has many meanings including \"idea,\" \"taste\" and \"desire\"; and resident chef Homaro Cantu, Jr. loves to challenge a diner's assumptions about how food should look, taste and feel. \"He's an inventor who accidentally ended up as a chef and is returning to being an inventor,\" says Wylie Dufresne, chef-owner of WD-50, a New York restaurant known for a similar approach. \"But his food is good and tasty.\"

Method to his madness

Cantu's quirky search for the unexpected-the desire to push the culinary envelope by combining flavors, textures and temperatures in previously unimagined ways-and his general irreverence for the accepted parameters of food and fine dining have suddenly propelled him into the role of the restaurant world's enfant terrible. And it's obvious that he is just getting started. \"This isn't just [a] gimmick,\" he says. \"There is a point to this.\"

The point, for Cantu, is simple yet starkly ambitious: He wants to change the way the world thinks about food. This has barely progressed, he says, while everything else has advanced at warp speed.
\"What is cooking? ‘Cooking' is a loose term. It's understanding energy or the lack thereof,\" he says.

Vocabulary Focus
  
reconstitute(v) to change food that has been dried back into its original form by adding water

push the envelope (idiom) to stretch the limits of what is normally done

propel(v) to cause someone to do something

gimmick(n) something which is not of real value that is used to attract people's interest temporarily, especially to make them buy something

Specialized Terms

fusion cooking (n. phr) 无国界料理a style of cooking that combines ingredients and techniques from different cuisines

Class IV laser (n. phr) 第4级激光a high-powered device that uses a laser beam for cutting, primarily used for surgery and research

liquid nitrogen (n. phr) 液态氮the liquid state of a gas that has no color or smell and is the main part of air

enfant terrible (n. phr) 顽童；特立独行的人 a person whose unconventional lifestyle, behavior or work is considered shocking by others (French)


另类无国界料理（1/3）

主厨哈吗洛.坎都二世以出人意料的方式看待食物，使他得以在呈现与重组食物上展现惊人的原创性

蔡明颖译

从几个蛛丝马迹可以看出位于芝加哥的\"意\"餐厅并非一般的高档餐厅。首先是第4级激光，这种激光通常用于手术，现在陈列在餐厅最显眼的位置。在\"意\"餐厅，它是重要的烹饪工具。餐厅后院还摆着一大桶的工业用液态氮，用来让通常是热的东西结冰，再将食物材料塑造成完全超乎自然的形状。
日文字\"意\"有许多含义，例如\"点子\"、\"滋味\"与\"欲望\"；而驻店主厨哈吗洛.坎都二世喜欢挑战客人对食物外观、味道与触觉的既有想法。\"他原是发明家，意外变成主厨，现在又回去再做发明家，但是他的料理真是美味可口。\"韦利杜凡这么说。他是WD-50餐厅的主厨兼老板，WD-50是纽约一家餐厅，以类似\"意\"餐厅的料理手法闻名。

实现疯狂理念的手法
坎都对意想不到的事物有种古怪的兴趣，他希望借由以往完全意想不到的做法融合不同的风味、口感和温度，以延伸料理的传统界限。他通常不理会约定俗成的料理与高档美食元素，这种态度使他摇身一变成为料理界的顽童。而且很明显地，他才刚开始一展身手。他说：\"这不只是噱头，这样做是有道理的。\"
坎都所说的道理很简单，但显然野心勃勃：他想要改变世人对料理的看法。他说，当其他事物以超光速进步时，大家对料理的看法却几乎没有进展。
他表示：\"料理是什么？‘料理'是一个定义宽松的用语，重点在了解能量和没有能量的情况。\"