Curiosity is the feature that has always distinguished gifted chefs. They never give up until they find out whether corn can be frozen with liquid nitrogen and how it will taste then. How can the temperature be measured inside creme brulee while it is being fired? Can we make fried mayonnaise? These and like questions led to developing a revolutionary food movement called molecular gastronomy.
The chefs who promote molecular cuisine seem to doubt the whole culinary experience accumulated by their predecessors, and they turn to scientists for help to avoid grammar mistakes in re-writing history. Physics and chemistry experts are toiling away to seriously analyze the laws of cooking, and their discoveries are now used for creating new unusual recipes. It turned out molecular linkage between different products can become basis for invention of unexpected mixes. Thus, the main principle of molecular gastronomy is not the use of exotic products but rather special culinary techniques. For instance, if you fill a glass with hot minted soup, and then pour cold pea-soup on top of it, very carefully not to mix the layers, you will get a triple contrast effect: that of taste, temperature, and consistency.
Sandwiches for astronauts which will stay edible during several years; food products which will take into account allergies and other peculiarities of a customer’s organism, the innovations like that have to do with alchemy rather than with ordinary cooking. Nevertheless, in the nearest future, it will appear as nothing extraordinary to the customers of restaurants and supermarkets, believes Englishman Heston Blumenthal, one of the founders of molecular cuisine and the first youngest chef who has 3 Michelin stars at the age of 39.

 

About 50 years ago, British nationals could only dream of shipping a good dry Spanish wine which would have a name different from «jerez». At present, their task grew more complicated: Spain, alongside France and Italy, belongs to the three largest wine producers in the world.
The history of winemaking in Spain is so long that we do not know the exact time when it actually started. Spain was one of the first European countries to undertake the production of wines. According to certain sources, initially wine was produced and traded in what is now known as the territory of Spain by the ancient Iberians who lived in the area of the present-day Cadiz, and later by the Greeks and Phoenicians.
The Romans, known to be familiar with wine at that time, further encouraged the local winemaking and set up a system of wine shipments in, among others, the towns of Cadiz, Malaga and Tarragona. These were the wine centres of that time. Spanish wines were commented upon by many ancient Roman authors, and the pieces of broken amphorae found in large quantities by archaeologists is the evidence of the Spanish wines spread all over the Roman Empire. The Visigoths drank much but left very few accounts of Spanish wines, as in fact of everything else, too. Although the Koran prohibited the consumption of alcoholic drinks, the Arabs who came in the 8th century went on with the development of wine trade in Spain.
The last years of the 20th century saw extraordinary investments into creating new and renovating existing vineyards and wine cellars. A lot of dramatic changes are going on outside the official classification according to which 55 Spanish regions have a status of Denominacion de Origen (DO) and one, the Rioja Region, Denominacion de Origen e Calificada (DOCà). No doubt that with time the number of these regions will increase.

It is already two years that Czeslaw Milosz has not been with us; Europe has been orphaned. Polish journalist Ewa Bienkowska wrote after the great poet’s death: «Milosz is an underground labyrinth of memory gouged in a huge rock of his life. Pictures of the world which historically is completely inaccessible for us now were generously brought before our eyes. Now that I learned he has passed away he seems to me a person who was delivering news from some distant land, from the past which we lost connection with and which itself was irrevocably lost as early as in the years of his youth».
In Joseph Brodsky’s expert opinion, Milosz can be regarded as «one of the greatest poets of our time, perhaps the greatest» (probably, after Mr Brodsky himself) whose poems absorbed the Eastern Europe’s specific traditions, echoed the fairly sophisticated history of the 20th century, and bitter memories of emigration. Actually, their intonations – and even themes – are very similar. It comes as no surprise then that they were very good friends, met frequently, «drank vodka» (a fact immortalized in Milosz’s well-known poem). Another famous quotation also belongs to Brodsky: «The enormous power of Czeslaw Milosz’s poetry lies in his understanding of the necessity of tragic intonation, while the tragedy of the century lies in supplying the poet with necessary experience to express it».
However this may be, the fact remains that Milosz is one of the poets whose very existence proves basic truth about the sacred simplicity of true wisdom and the true wisdom of sacred simplicity. A person like him is usually called a witness of the century and moral authority. But above all, Czeslaw Milosz is good taste, sense of harmony, and aesthetic courage.