Does Ferran Adrià Get Family Meals Right?

Ferran Adrià, known mostly for plates of molecular gastronomy galore at elBulli, may not be the first to come to mind when you think "family weekday dinners." Yet a reporter over at the Guardian tried his hand at Adrià's latest cookbook, The Family Meal, for his wife and two kids. Adrià may love twinkies, but the verdict for his home recipes is still lukewarm.

On chocolate cookies: "The world's greatest chef, the man behind El Bulli in Spain, has got his chocolate cookies wrong. ... Two teaspoons of flour to make 20 cookies? Are you sure? I know it when I make them, and what emerges from the oven is a baking sheet covered with 20 discs of molten chocolate, bleeding into one another."

On hamburgers: "Freya, our 11-year-old, pronounces it 'the best burger I've ever tasted', though bear in mind that, in her opinion, the buffet at the Disneyland Hotel is the greatest culinary experience known to humankind."

On tagliatelle carbonara: "Too rich. The recipe uses an insane quantity of cream — a betrayal to Italian purists. Eight-year-old Gabe loves it; the rest of us feel slightly queasy."

On making the infamous foam: "When I hold the siphon above the first plate, do I get a neat globe of foaming Chantilly? No, I get an exploding fart of cream and mayo, pebble-dashing the plate. It is, unequivocally, a failure."

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