Avant-Garde Techniques and Ingredients

It is a challenge, in a short space, to describe molecular gastronomy because it consists of so many unrelated techniques. Also, every chef has his or her own style of cooking and uses a different set of favorite techniques and plating styles. Furthermore, it is important to understand that many or even most items on an avant-garde chef’s menu are made with traditional techniques. The chef uses whatever cooking methods he or she feels are appropriate to the dish, whether a traditional technique or a molecular-gastronomy technique. You shouldn’t think that such a menu is composed entirely of foams, bubbles, powders, and gels. In the definition in the preceding paragraph, the word selective is used to mean the chef selects a nonstandard technique when, and only when, it helps intensify a flavor or aroma or in another way to improve the dining experience.