David Chamorro is the director of the Food Idea Lab, along with Pablo Márquez, and is a magician of light. A chef from La Rioja with the soul of a scientist and a commitment to research, efficiency and creativity, he demonstrated at Madrid Fusión that "light opens up infinite possibilities in the kitchen". "By working with electromagnetic waves, we have a very powerful tool that transforms cooking with an infinite number of culinary applications," he summarized.

"We come to shed light on light itself," is Chamorro's proposal, which has a lot to do with applied physics. He worked with his presentation on the simplest elements, such as water and air and waves. "We have expanded the vision of how light acts on food by working with sunlight, ultraviolet light, pulsed light and laser technologies. We have used them to enhance the flavor and color of many products, make cuts with surgical precision, and perform cooking processes that were unthinkable until recently.

In their lab, they have extensively studied what each spectrum of light can do for the kitchen: from sunlight to blue, red, laser, ultraviolet or pulsed light. "We should be concerned about the light in our restaurants and the light in the chambers that contain the food. We can prevent oxidation, improve color and flavor, increase vitamin D, remove feather residue from poultry or mushrooms, or disinfect kitchen materials," he said.

In a hands-on demonstration using a CO2 laser and a diode, he showed that with light, "we can have the most precise knife and blowtorch in the world. "A knife capable of cutting a lobster or nori seaweed. Also to peel a pepper with a laser beam that removes only the skin, preserving the shape and the flesh, and that can be used to free a lobster from its shell or to cut a turbot.

Cooking degradation

He also demonstrated magical cooking techniques. Like cooking only the membrane of an egg with a diode laser, leaving the yolk intact. Another innovative technique, called "selective cooking," allows the same piece of fish or meat to be cooked to different degrees. "We can have a cooking method with a tolerance of microns that can be applied to any piece. We can cook only the fat of one of the cubes of a tartar, or have a cooking gradient within the same piece."

Chamorro, whose challenge is to "connect knowledge," trained at the Portal de Echaurren with Francis Paniego and worked at Mugaritz with Andoni Luis Aduriz. He was in charge of R&D at Trivio and developed the new dryland cuisine with Segura. From dryland, he moved to the sea to work with Ángel León at Aponiente.

500th anniversary of 'Ruperto

In 1525, the recipe book of Ruperto de Nola was published in Toledo. It had been published in Catalan five years earlier. It is the oldest printed recipe book in Spain and confirms that Spanish cuisine is absolutely modern, as demonstrated by the chefs Joan Roca, Pepe Solla, Nacho Manzano and Iván Cerdeño. They had the historian Ana Vega as their master of ceremonies to cook live some of the recipes similar to those in the historic recipe book called "Book of Stews, Soups and Delicacies", a real bestseller of its time with more than two hundred recipes.

Joan Roca chose one of the two recipes for the "Ruperto" distillate. It is actually a low temperature distillate for tasting a fattened chicken with fresh peppers. From this, he obtains a broth that he distils and a hyper-concentrated broth.

Nacho Manzano, from Casa Marcial in Asturias, prepared an octopus of tazones cooked over a fire without water. "It is like a giant barnacle cooked in its own juices. It doesn't have any salt or anything. A happy, minimalist and essential dish.

Pepe Solla made a lamprey pie. It is a stew in a bread that is the perfect pot," said a lamprey lover with a phobia of snakes, who prepared a pie transformed into a soup with a crusty pastry on a lamprey stew.

Iván Cerdeño prepared a rabbit escabeche almost like the one in the book and exactly like the one he serves in his restaurant in Toledo. He makes it with white vinegar and sweet oil. A recipe to which he adds snails, rabbit kidneys and honey to give it a "sweet and sour" touch.

For the love of art

Awarded three stars, Quique de Dacosta reflected on the three decades of experience that have made him one of the greats of his profession. He began and continues to cook for the love of art, as his presentation was titled, and to demonstrate this he made some preparations with an almond cake topped with elements from his community. "Instead of looking at artificial intelligence, we should look at traditions and local products," he suggested. He wants to show that "all tradition is in avant-garde cuisine.

He demonstrated this with his reinvention of pâté with an "en crud" and a foie gras with an unusual texture. With a pilpil sauce, which resulted in a kind of breadcrumbs with a whiting flavor, which he accompanied with clams. He added to his proposal a fish salt with cream of roasted eggplant served with charred bread. He added a "black and white", a cuttlefish à la bruta with cuttlefish water and meringue, the water of the mollusk by the meter, cellulose and gelatin. With a white cake that, when opened, reveals the black ink of the cuttlefish on a black shell. Finally, a dessert that reconstructs all the aromas of a fig tree throughout the year, with candied figs, leaves and honey, aged vinegar and fig leaf oil.

Defending Scotland

Mark Donald has made whisky the centerpiece of his menu, even though the spirit appears in only three of the 17 courses at his two-Michelin-starred restaurant, The Glenturre Lelique, in Crieff. Born in Glasgow, Donald works next to a distillery and his restaurant only seats 28. He cooked lobster with hot whisky, spices, honey, ginger and black pepper in a recipe that uses the whole lobster, from head to tail. I accompany them with a drink made with smoked whisky, "restorative and able to cure that cold that punishes us all.

"Scotland is not a country associated with haute cuisine and we have a bad reputation that we want to reverse by using fabulous raw materials," says the two-star Scottish chef, who uses all kinds of whisky distillates in his cooking and prepares smoked meats with highland peat.