To give a cookbook as a gift is an act of nourishment. You hope that your offering will inspire and ultimately feed the recipient. You hope he/she will think of you while standing in the kitchen, excited and covered in flour.
Perhaps the year's best cookbook, or at least the most lavish, isn't nourishing to anything but your brain and fantasy life. A Day at elBulli: An Insight into the Ideas, Methods and Creativity of Ferran Adria (Phaidon Press Inc., $49.95) is less a cookbook than an act of highbrow food porn – and I mean that in a more literal sense than the term "food porn" usually conjures. The meticulous chronicling of "the best restaurant in the world" walks us through every aspect of the cutting-edge eatery in northern Spain, but it quickly becomes apparent that the true experience of elBulli is unattainable. We can look, but we can't touch, and we certainly can't taste.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2008.