Viewers like you make this program possible.

Support your local PBS station.

>> ANTHONY BOURDAIN: Coming up, Chef David Cheng visits Spain, and its heavy influence on his career... >> DAVID CHENG: San Sebastian is one of the eating capitals of the world.

The Cider House is sort of awesome.

>> BOURDAIN: ...eats pinxtos with chef Juan Mari Arzak... >> DAVID: The first pincho that was ever created?

>> BOURDAIN: ...visits chef Andoni Aduriz... >> DAVID: Is this edible?

No way!

>> BOURDAIN: ...cooks a microwave sponge cake... >> DAVID: The microwave is highly underrated as a cooking vessel.

It's pretty rad.

>> BOURDAIN: ...fideos, and a salt cod omelet.

Enter The Mind of a Chef.

>> BOURDAIN: Glorious Spain.

It is to many a culinary paradise, a delicious melting pot comprised of amazing ingredients and techniques.

>> CHENG: San Sebastian is the hub for modern Spanish cooking.

You have this entire wealth of culinary knowledge there, so it's an important region to represent.

>> BOURDAIN: The culinary tradition here is a window into Spain's history.

The Moors introduced Spain to a slew of ingredients that have become staples of Spanish cuisine, including many spices, rice, citrus fruits like lemon and oranges, and of course gazpacho.

The Greeks introduced olive oil, and from the New World of the Americas, tomatoes, potatoes, vanilla, and chocolate.

So it's no surprise that with its rich culinary history, Spain is where one finds many of the world's best chefs working in some of the best kitchens in the world.

And where Dave Cheng finds inspiration from some his most revered idols.

>> CHENG: San Sebastian is an amazing place to visit, to explore on its own.

But for me, when I go to San Sebastian, part of the experience is the Juan Mari experience.

Arguably Juan Mari Arzak's one of the most important figures in the Western culinary world, because he helped modernize Spanish cuisine from its sort of prehistoric days.

He elevated Spanish cooking.

He was one of a handful of figures that made it happen.

I had the fortunate luck to go on a pintxos tour with Juan Mari Arzak, his daughter Elena Arzak, and our translator extraordinaire, Maite.

Last time we drank all day.

>> JUAN: Yes.

>> CHENG: I'm the one that has to get ready to hang out with you.

Pintxos are the San Sebastian take on tapas, which just about everyone eats all the time, all day long.

It's like purgatory sometimes.

>> MAITE: He's going to give us, like, the first... >> CHENG: The first pinxto that was ever created?

>> MAITE: That was ever created.

The first pinxto, it's called gilda.

>> CHENG: His philosophy, he's always looked at food with a child's eye.

And that to me means always questioning, always asking why, always trying to improve.

>> JUAN ARZAK: This is umami.

>> CHENG: That's umami.

>> ARZAK: Good?

>> CHENG: Yeah.

>> ARZAK: This is no umami.

>> CHENG: It's just delicious.

>> ARZAK: No umami.

>> CHENG: Umami, not umami.

Umami?

>> JUAN: ♪ Umami, umami mami moo, umami moo.

♪ Bueno.

(speaking Spanish) >> MAITE: That he liked her very much when they were younger, but now he likes her too, but she's married and there's nothing he can do.

>> CHENG: He's got Benjamin Button of the mind.

It's like slowly getting younger.

Even though his body's getting older, his mind is getting younger, and the dude is the most beloved person in San Sebastian.

I want to know why you don't run for Mayor of San Sebastian.

>> ARZAK: I am anarchist.

>> CHENG: Anarchist, oh.

>> MAITE: He's an anarchist.

>> CHENG: The next egg dish that was very profound to me as a kid growing up, and I think that was an iconic egg dish in Europe, was created by Juan Mari Arzak and his daughter Elena Arzak.

If I recall correctly, I was a kid watching PBS, and I would run home and watch the great PBS show Great Chefs of the West, Great Chefs of New England, ad the best ones are Great Chefs of Europe.

And I remember watching this, and I was like, "Oh, man that's so cool, like, this egg."

And I can't believe right now I'm recreating this.

It was a different way of cooking an egg.

And how they presented it I don't remember, but it was a technique that I thought was so cool.

And it was really simple.

It was basically putting eggs in cling film.

And that's what we have here.

And we have it on a string.

The only reason we have string attached to it is this.

The water's about 185 degrees.

The idea again is you don't want these eggs to be touching the bottom.

Cook it at a gentle pace.

You could easily cook it in a water bath, but this is how I remember seeing it.

And I chill it down, and this is what we have.

In a way it sort of looks like a ball of mozzarella.

So it's just an egg, just repackaged.

And as you can see it looks like burrata cheese almost, but it's egg.

So what we're going to do here is try to recreate one of my favorite things in the world I've ever eaten.

Juan Mari's friend, the chef owner proprietor at Roxario, what she's known for and what Juan Mari goes there to eat is her omelet.

And when you see Juan Mari eat it it's like, oh, he's being transported to his childhood.

It's one of those magical moments, magical dishes that just does it.

Firs thing is that salt cod.

It's everywhere in Spain.

This is fresh cod.

You can actually make your own salt cod.

Take fresh cod and you pack it in salt.

That's it.

They're not joking when they say salt cod.

The salt, it will almost extract all the moisture.

What you'll get is this gnarly brick.

And what you do is when it gets to that point, you reconstitute it either in water, and change that water out, and then you put it in milk.

Sort of makes it more edible, because it's obviously incredibly salty.

So that's what we have here.

It's now edible.

So I'm going to add about six eggs.

Some of the salt cod.

Tear up some parsley.

A generous helping of onions cooked in olive oil and a little bit of butter.

What she definitely did not use was chopsticks to make this, but sorry, it's a better way.

Olive oil.

The great thing I liked about this omelet was the buildup.

You know, everyone's experienced this.

Like "Oh, this place is great, you have to try it."

And it gets talked about, and you're like... there's no way it can live up to the expectations and the weight of everyone telling you it's the greatest omelet in the world.

And then you taste it, and you're like, "It is that awesome."

That was the omelet.

And it was served like that, but as you can see, underneath, it's pretty creamy.

I actually like my omelets that way.

This is as simple as you can get, and it's going to be very tasty.

>> BOURDAIN: And now a word from Chef Ferran Adria.

>> CHENG: So San Sebastian is one of the eating capitals of the world, partly because of this guy named Louis Andoni Adruiz, and he's the chef at Mugaritz, which has been around for over a decade.

>> BOURDAIN: Andoni Adruiz.

protégé of both Chefs Adria and Arzak, he carries the torch of Spain's innovative chefs to new terrain.

>> CHENG: The genesis of so many modern culinary techniques came out of this kitchen.

The meal here is a lot of fun.

It's like pure joy.

One of the things with Andoni, and what I love most about Andoni, is his creativity.

He has such a cerebral approach with food, yet combines it with nature.

It's extraordinarily difficult, and it's not what you've seen.

It's not what you think it is.

It just transforms into this insane experience.

He spent two years researching the egg and everything about the egg.

And he was one of the first people to sort of break it down.

And out of his research of egg he created the slow poached egg, in terms of cooking in the shell in a constant temperature.

>> ANDONI: (speaking Spanish) >> MAITE: More or less after 64 degrees it started to, like, coagulate.

>> CHENG: It cooks at two different times, the egg yolk and the egg white.

>> MAITE: He said he studied, like, the egg white, like what is the composition.

They knew it was protein with a lot of water, but he needed to know like what kind of protein.

So there's 13 different proteins.

>> CHENG: After years of research, Andoni discovered that the egg white and the egg yolk cook at two different temperatures.

The egg yolk cooks at 62 Celsius, the egg white cooks, I believe, at 61 Celsius.

>> ANDONI: (speaking Spanish) >> MAITE: The goal was to protect the egg yolk.

>> CHENG: So after Andoni was just kind enough to explain to us how he came about slow poaching the egg, he really then just melted my mind when he showed me the faux egg.

>> MAITE: After the idea of the slow, slow cooked... >> CHENG: Slow poached egg?

>> MAITE: ...egg, they said we want to make an egg that we will eat every day.

>> CHENG: Is this edible?

No way.

That's amazing.

My mind just melted.

Andoni is the first person that I know of to literally recreate the shape, feel, and exact weight of an eggshell.

He is able to cast an eggshell and fill it with an egg cream, which is insane.

Just drop it?

>> ANDONI: Yeah.

>> MAITE: That's how they present it.

They take it to the table and they drop it.

>> CHENG: I'm so mad at him.

>> MAITE He said thank you for being so generous.

>> CHENG: No way.

He's the man.

He doesn't even let me call him Chef-- it's only Andoni.

That's the beautiful thing about Andoni, is he's created this egg now, you can create and cast anything.

You can literally put a chicken in there and cook it.

You can fill it with a baby bird.

It's a perfect marriage of science, of innovation, but also how you execute it in making it taste delicious.

Gracias, Chef.

>> ANDONI: (speaking Spanish) >> CHENG: Wow.

So we're going to make a slow poached egg.

Andoni made the egg as well.

He created it in 1999.

Andoni studied the egg.

And the idea really was, how do you understand the egg, that the egg yolk and the egg white cook at two different temperatures.

And then when you cook it within the shell that it cooks in itself, so it poaches in the shell.

The best way to get this to work is in a water circulator.

The beauty of it is the simplicity of it.

You don't have to do anything other than cook it at the temperature.

So what I like to do is cook it at 60 Celsius, so the egg yolk and the egg white are sort of not the same consistency, but I like my egg yolk more runny.

And it takes about 30 minutes, depending on the water volume.

One way you can cook this at home, if you don't have a water circulator, is in a large water bath.

What we've done is took one bowl, put another bowl in, place it in here.

The only reason we have this getup is so the eggs aren't sitting on the bottom.

It's really important that if you cook it in this manner, the eggs are separated from the bottom of the heat source.

And what's also important is that you keep it in that 60-63 Celsius range.

What we have here are eggs that have been cooked for an hour at 60 Celsius.

After the eggs are cooked, if you chill them down, they hold their shape a lot better.

I like putting it in soup, and I like having it at this viscosity, this 60 Celsius, because it gives it that inexpensive luxury.

>> BOURDAIN: And now another word from Ferran.

>> BOURDAIN: Innovation and tradition share the stage in the culinary world of Spain.

A humble dish like paella can be found alongside a deconstruction of the potato dish.

In Spain, innovation respects tradition, and tradition does not fear innovation.

>> CHENG: Now we're going to make a very famous Spanish dish, fideos, and offend them.

You know, I actually do love fideos, because it's not made with rice, it's made with noodles, and it has this really cool texture.

But, instead of using noodles, we're going to use instant ramen.

And that sounds so ridiculous, but it actually does make something delicious.

So start off with some olive oil in a ripping hot pan, some chorizo.

Chorizo is delicious.

We have some clean littleneck clams.

We're adding the clams first, because they take the longest to cook.

Some Bouchot mussels from Maine.

This one, you know, you can probably find in Sandra Lee's cookbook.

Excuse me, Mrs. Cuomo.

She's going to kill me.

And some crushed ramen noodles.

All right, we're going to pour in hot chicken stock to this dish.

So once the shellfish has opened up, you're pretty much ready to plate.

Well, why don't we just serve it like this, huh?

Garnish with some pimento.

We're going to top it with garlic aioli, which is basically mayonnaise, lemon, olive oil, and pulverized garlic.

So an homage to paella via fideos via instant ramen.

Very New York.

We're here with Dan Burns.

We're going to make probably one of the best dishes, ideas, techniques I've ever seen, and it's directly from Albert Adria, a landmark foam.

And it's not even a foam.

It's a microwaveable sponge cake.

>> DAN BURNS: That's done wrong a lot.

>> CHENG: Everything you're supposed to do wrong made right.

Albert Adria is one of the greatest chefs alive, who's also the creative director for Ferran and El Bulli.

But he's like the CIA.

You're never going to know how much Albert has influenced food.

So Albert showed us this insanely delicious dish.

This is our interpretation of a strawberry shortcake.

Nobody was using whipped cream canisters to make food as a technique.

>> BURNS: It's a brilliant way to make a sponge cake.

>> CHENG: It's a brilliant way to make a lot of foams, creams, everything.

>> BURNS: This is yolks, whites, flour.

We put almond nuts and some fat.

We chose olive oil.

So basically, we're just trying to mimic strawberry shortcake.

So super simple.

Cup this size, quite important, and then with the Dixie cup, cut three small slits in each side, just so that when it goes in the microwave it has some place for steam to escape all the way around.

So you fill it about one third of the way up, and then just simply put it in the microwave.

>> CHENG: And might I add, the microwave is highly underrated as a cooking vessel.

It's pretty rad.

>> BURNS: And you can see the air bubbles have formed.

It's fully set.

So in 25 seconds, you just made a cake.

And all we do is take the pallet knife, lightly loosen it from the sides.

>> CHENG: So the beautiful thing about this is you can break it apart, and it looks so irregular.

>> BURNS: So we're just going to dust it with some freeze-dried strawberry powder to enhance the idea of the strawberry shortcake.

Some macerated strawberries as well.

Just douse the raw strawberries with sugar, and then let it hang out in the air.

>> CHENG: We want to do as many things with strawberry as possible.

>> BURNS: And then we just have a... >> CHENG: So this is an espuma.

It's whipped cream, but we've added... >> BURNS: We added mint water.

so it's highly flavored blanched mint combined with cream, so it's flavored whipped cream.

>> CHENG: And this what this canister was essentially made for, whipped cream.

Although very good for whippits, just whipped cream.

Usually strawberry shortcake is garnished with mint but never eaten, and I think that's wrong, because mint with strawberries is a very delicious thing.

>> BURNS: And then we just made some strawberry gastrique.

finished with wood sorrel, also for acidity.

And that's our take on strawberry shortcake.

>> CHENG: So Burns, tell me... >> BURNS: You got something on your face.

>> CHENG: Oh, this?

What?

What is it?

>> BURNS: Something green, dude.

>> CHENG: Yeah?

Oh.

>> BOURDAIN: A final word from Chef Adria.

>> BOURDAIN: The influence of Spain on Cheng's cooking may not be apparent on the surface, but it's there.

>> CHENG: Juan Mari Arzak for me is the epitome of how you age gracefully.

I wish I could be as patient as he is.

You don't get to eat like this anywhere.

His wants and desires are all located in San Sebastian.

>> MAITE: Sometimes, like, when he finish work at the restaurant he comes back himself, and he's like, "Just give me an omelet," and he has an omelet.

>> CHENG: He is so loving, he's so gracious, and he just loves life.

>> JUAN: Momfuku.

>> MAITE: He said Momfuku.

>> JUAN: Momo, momo.

>> CHENG: He's just happy.

Happy all the time.

Even when he's unhappy, he's usually unhappy because there's not enough food, or not enough drink.

He's got it all.

This is so good.

I'm never going to be Hugh Hefner.

I'm never going to be as rich as Bill Gates.

I can only be like Juan Mari.