One of the coolest thing I’ve eaten so far here at Worlds of Flav was made by chef Dani García of Calima restaurant in Marbella. That’s in Spain. He made an emulsion of olive oil and tomato water and ladled it into a bowl of liquid nitrogen. Before this, he made a guy from the audience come up and put his hand in the liquid nitrogen. I am not volunteering for anything other than ham-tasting.

The tomato-oil mixture freezes immediately, of course, and the chef then pulls it out and breaks it into bite-sized chunks which look exactly like popcorn and taste like, well, olive oil and tomatoes. I highly recommend trying this if you have some liquid nitrogen handy. It’s not just for space-lasers anymore.

Last night we saw a video about calçots, which are a Catalonian delicacy where you take a bundle of leeks (they’re not exactly leeks, but they’re using leeks here as a substitute) and set them over flaming grapevines. The outer layer of the calçot burns, at which point you wrap it in newspaper and let it sit for a while. Then you peel off the outer layer, dip the limp heart in romesco sauce, and eat.

Today we got to eat the calçots. They tasted exactly like burned leeks, plus I kept choking on them. If you are one of my Catalan readers, I’m sure this is the fault of the Californian leeks, and is not intended as anti-calçotism.