Jordi Roca Teaches Plating Senses

Meet Jordi Roca, one of the greatest pastry chefs on the planet and, more importantly, an inventor of classic techniques in the plating dessert industry. In this lesson, Jordi invites you into his sacred 40-year-old family story, including El Celler de Can Roca, a 3-Michelin star restaurant named the best restaurant in the world twice.

Jordi explains how he always felt like an outsider at his brothers' restaurant until he discovered pastry, which became his true passion. First, he gained his brothers' trust and then the pastry world's trust. He talks about the importance of doing brave things and shares what helped him invent creations that didn't exist in the pastry industry.

Jordi continues to tell his story, inspiring us to see other possibilities in a pastry career. He shares stories of his family brands that are highly successful but are also mindful of the environment, help others and support the community.

Jordi explains how plating desserts are inspired, created and developed to be finalized into a complete menu of 40 set dishes per dinner. How can you make a dessert that continues to excite your guest when they've already sampled 35 dishes? Let's find out!

Jordi says that this class may seem odd because it's very personal, and each step has a deep connection to his life. He will teach 3 very complex and technical plating desserts using countless techniques and styles that you can fully adapt to your own creativity and innovation. The first dessert is surprising, light, seasonal, and cooling. The second is a deep creative concept that is technical and fresh. The third combines the complexity of taste and technique in the first two desserts and represent Jordi's beginnings. They're all very different and all a part of one story, the story of Jordi.

Learn one simple Almond Cake gluten-free recipe that turns this 3-Michelin star dessert into a masterpiece. In this lesson, Jordi focuses on the textures, speed and timing of making sponge cakes.

Jordi turns this Japanese-inspired dessert into Mediterranean-style with a Turkish touch. He talks about the inspiration for the taste and how he can achieve a completely different texture with mochi. This silky mochi is a versatile recipe that you can turn into various shapes and flavors.

Learn to create multiple textures using various gelling agents, understand how each agent works, and the best way to use them. Jordi pairs the flavors of this jelly with the rest of the desert to create a balance and as a reference to Japanese culture. This jelly will dissolve into your mouth and release the sake's flavors and aromas.

Jordi shares his philosophy on spontaneous beauty and challenges us to prolong the cherry blossom season by creatively replicating almond blossom flowers using other ingredients.

Use Jordi Roca's technique to replace dairy ingredients and learn to make house-made Almond Cream and Almond Milk. Dive deep into Jordi's lecture on sugars' functionality and molecular qualities. Discover the unique process of creating ice cream that is stable enough that it can last on the serving plate and, at the same time, pliable with an incredibly soft texture.

Learn the secret to fresh preparations made daily, like Almond Sauce. Jordi teaches you the best way to select the oil type for the recipe, the texture to aim for and the stabilizing ingredients that work at specific temperatures.

Learn how to reduce sweetness in this lesson. Jordi explains how to stay mindful of sugars in your recipes and breaks down the process of managing the sugar content in the ingredients that you need for this recipe.

Learn how to create crunchy elements of various intensities inside a very special dessert, "It Rains From The Almond Tree." This might remind you of biting a caramelized almond, but it's on a different level of the crunchy-verse.

This dessert has 3 plating stages, and Jasmine Almond Cloud is a stage of its own. Learn the concept of a cinematographic experience not made in the kitchen but in the dining room, directly interacting with the customer; A first-time Michelin experience that will stay in our memory forever!

Experience Jordi's presentation of this class's first iconic plating dessert and his 3 steps for plating. Each element has a purpose on the plate: lychee, mochi, sake, bitter almond, jasmine cloud, and disrupting grapefruit. Each element gives us textures and flavors that play in your mouth like a musical composition: silky, creamy, crisp, lively, acidic, sweet and floral. Jordi asks students to transform this recipe into their own, and honestly, we want to taste every single version.

We start the second dessert of this class, Purple Chromatism, with a unique approach to meringues. Jordi teaches you how to make meringues out of just juices and introduces us to new ingredients in this class that open the horizons of a molecular kitchen.

Jordi shows us 3 magic tricks in this class, and this is the first of the three—prepare to be mind-blown! Manipulate the colors of your infusions by playing with PH levels, and at the same time, learn to stimulate the taste receptors of your guests. Enjoy Jordi’s behind-the-scenes stories explaining how they find and grow rare seeds for their restaurant production.

Learn to create different textures and flavors of shiso that you can also reproduce with any other flavor. Jordi explains that tasting a flavor with one texture is not the same as eating it with another because different textures make the same ingredients taste differently. This class is an explosion of various techniques, inspiration and information.

By now, you’ve already discovered one element of Jordi’s unique baking style, learn even more in this class where you will prepare ingredients for the Purple Chromatism plating dessert. Jordi works with various fruits and vegetables, representing a purple tone. This unique concept will blow your mind as you move towards the next lessons and discover the full story of the concept piece by piece.

Jordi teaches you how to determine whether an ingredient requires a hot or cold infusion. While cold infusions bring out fresh, real and natural flavors, hot infusions act with color reactions. Jordi explains how to apply each approach and in what case each is more suitable.

Choose ingredients that bring shine and flexibility to your caramel, and learn to use caramel to create any fruit shape perfectly. Jordi was the first pastry chef who brought caramel into the restaurant and pastry industry as part of the tasting experience in 2002. Now, we treat it as a given in every other plating dessert we see, but we'll always remember who created this mind-blowing sweet experience for the world. 

As the creator of this technique, hot caramel is in Jordi's blood, and this blown caramel will blow your mind (ours are already in space)! This lesson is deep in the theory of the step-by-step process. He lectures on sugars, explains how complex sugars transform into simple sugars and what steps to take to bring them back to complex for the caramel to be easily shaped, and gives vital tips on how to avoid every possible problem when working with blown sugar.

Introducing the second magic trick of this class: Learn to work with nitrogen and discover how no other technique has the effect nitrogen does on your dessert. Jordi walks you through every step: preparation, soaking, boiling, safety, tools and handling. Make your own magic, and unleash the greatness of innovation.

Discover the concept behind this iconic plating dessert, Purple Chromatism, and invent your own from Jordi's blank sheet of techniques. Jordi shares the color play concept and the tasting concept that goes with it. The tasting of Purple Chromatism will transport you to orchard season in your farmhouse, just after a summer shower, surrounded by figs, a rich lavender scent, shiso and beets. Experience the gel, the cream, the sauce, the slush and the whole fruit textures in one bite. Jordi says, "It's pleasant, gourmand and a lot of fun." We say it's an experience of a lifetime.

The first recipe of the iconic Old Book of plating dessert will take all your senses to the moon and back. This technique for making Lemon Peels must be a secret cause we can't understand why we haven't seen lemon skin used that way before. Jordi teaches how water interacts with lemon skin and how to ensure it penetrates the skin pores and releases the juices.

There are very few simple recipes in this class, and while this one may appear to be, don’t relax, Jordi likes to make things challenging. While making a Madeleine in the shape of a sponge may be easy, integrating it into the ice cream could give you a new challenge and technique for your pastry creations that you didn't think of before.

Jordi introduces us to his technique of integrating Madeleine flavor inside an ice cream in the shape of a Madeleine, all made by you! Topping up our decoration skills, he then demonstrates a visual concept of reflecting two textures over this Madeleine Semifreddo.

Learn Jordi Roca's unique sugarless cream recipe, where he teaches you how to concentrate the fatty elements of the cream to create a dense and thick texture. Forget the milk, eggs or sugar, this cream is made with just cream inside! Wow!

Jordi talks about the origin of his ingredients' and how he uses them throughout the class. In this lesson, he shares about Bergamot and how most of its production worldwide is meant for the perfumery industry. However, this citrus fruit with an aromatic touch can bring unique floral notes to your plating dessert if cooked with the correct temperature and technique.

Learn Jordi Roca's approach to working with earl grey flavors in this class. Create different tastes using the same ingredient, and listen as Jordi explains how each component approaches your receptors when tasting a complete dish and the importance of telling this story to your guests.

Zero-waste cooking is one of Jordi's principles, so he uses the entire lemon when making this Lemon Jam. The preparation is powerful and really cheers up and stimulates taste receptors. Then, when he deglazes the caramel with water, he piques our attention and shares his unique knowledge.

Still using cocoa powder for a sprinkle? Time to switch up the flavor profiles. Still using mille feuille dough for a crisp feel? Time to switch up the texture profiles. This class is about never going back to basics.

Jordi’s idea of not only representing Proust’s Madeleine (Old Book) dessert in flavor and texture profiles but also on paper with a manuscript is so meaningful, and we can’t praise Jordi enough for stepping out of the pastry zone and into the world of emotions. 

Marcel Proust explained how eating a Madeleine pastry made him travel back to his childhood, which inspired Jordi to include this experience for each person making and tasting this plating dessert. Once again, in this class, Jordi is taking us out of pastry and into another industry. This time, he is taking you on a tour of edible printers, writing and memories.

Experience the lesson of a lifetime and get inside the genius mind of Jordi Roca. Jordi takes you through the perfume creation process showing you how to make unique scents that we can eat and probably faint from the joy of discovering 'never-before-tasted' flavors. Taste an old book, Jordi says, and we eat the library in one drop of this magical essence. 

Jordi works with scientists and chemists so that he can pass on his findings here for the first time. Take step-by-step directions and work hand in hand with Jordi Roca to create an old book essence (or any essence you want).

In this lesson, dessert goes beyond pastry. When plating this unique Old Book plating dessert for you, Jordi explains the emotions, memories and moments involved. Starting with an idea of the smell of an old book, adding some toasted caramel notes and rustic and muted flavors, topped with a story that touches everyone’s heart. Jordi Roca is a legend, and we want to watch this whole class over and over again just to get a glimpse of what’s possible when you’re crazy enough to think that you can invent something that hasn’t been done before. We re-invented Jordi after this class, and he re-invented us.