Cooking Coffee, Albert Adrià

Italy has best known how to enhance the potential of coffee—devising preparation methods that exalt the pursuit of the perfect balance between the different organoleptic qualities and the multiple varieties, origins, and processing methods of coffee—to the point of becoming a vital, integral part of the country's culture. At Lavazza, the passion for coffee has accompanied and distinguished us since our origins. A tradition that is 120 years old and began in 1895, with the first shop in Turin, from which was born what is today a company that has made the pleasure of coffee a true vocation. Hence the idea, together with Montagud Editores, to create a book containing recipes that have been made using Lavazza coffee as an ingredient: more than twenty creations by Albert Adrià.

The professional life of a chef will always be characterized by constants that accompany him throughout life: effort, creativity, passion... and challenges. Challenges, in all aspects of life, are what push one to explore one's own limits and to explore the frontiers of the impossible. Undoubtedly, if I had to add a qualifier to this book, it would be challenge. Not only because of having dealt with an ingredient so intrinsic and familiar to anyone's life, but also because of giving it the role of 'prima donna'—and not of a spice—in the recipes we have prepared for it. The prologue for the book 'Caffè in Cucina', which my brother Ferran wrote 13 years ago, concluded with the desire and will to continue in the search for new opportunities for coffee at a gastronomic level, together with Lavazza. I am proud to think that, with this book, my team and I have contributed to a project that began to take shape at elBulli, more than 13 years ago...