The family meal : home cooking with Ferran Adriá.

Every day at 5.20pm the staff at elBulli stop what they are doing, clear down their work surfaces and cover them with tablecloths, bring in chairs and sit down to eat a three-course dinner together in the kitchen. This is known at elBulli as the 'family meal', and it consists of homely dishes such as guacamole with nachos, Waldorf salad, fish soup, grilled sardines with garlic and parsley, or baked apples. Each day a different member of the kitchen team prepares the meal, and it's an important moment of the day, when the team can pause, take stock and prepare themselves for the pressures of the evening service. The family meal is very important to Ferran, so much so that he prepares the daily menus and recipes for it a whole year in advance. Now, for the first time, Ferran is making his recipes available to all home cooks in The Family Meal. With simple, step-by-step instructions, and all the know-how that results from more than two decades in the world's most innovative kitchen, he shows how to prepare tasty, everyday food with 31 nutritionally balanced daily menus, each one consisting of three courses, with a total of 93 recipes. Anyone can prepare his simple, everyday recipes, which are carefully designed to provide nutritious, tasty and economical meals for large numbers. Generously illustrated with specially commissioned photographs of the dishes, preparation, the kitchen and the chefs, The Family Meal is both a practical collection of simple, delicious recipes and an insight into one of the most important rituals at the world's most innovative restaurant.