As a participant in the 2012 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cooking, I often found myself at odds with my fellow symposiasts as to what constituted wrapped and stuffed foods, the subject of that year’s event. I held to a narrow definition that interpreted the term only as a verb, whereas others seemed to bend the definition wildly to suit their own needs. For me, if the food item didn’t require the act of “wrapping” or “stuffing” to complete it, it was not a wrapped or stuffed food. For others, the fact that a food item was wrapped in another, even if not edible, was sufficient.

Why did it matter so much to me? I’m not sure. I tend to like to work with absolutes, which are easier for me to fathom, than abstracts, which are harder for me to wrap my arms around. I like things in life to be straight forward. I do much better with the direct than with the subtle. If you want me to take out the garbage, say “Take out the garbage.” Don’t say “It would nice if you took out the garbage.” When I lived for a short time in Georgia, I never learned to understand my co-workers who would never say exactly what they wanted, and they complained that I was impolite because I was too direct.

For my presentation at the Symposium, I was discussing stuffed and wrapped foods within the paradigm of the concept of Modernist cuisine as roughly defined by the book by Nathan Myhrvold and modified by my understanding of the avant-garde cuisine of Ferran Adrìa. The traditional reasons for wrapping or stuffing foods, such as making them portable, adding flavor to a bland item, or holding loose items together, or even adding texture, don’t come into play much in Modernist cuisine. Plus, exploring the pages of the book didn’t yield much in the way of examples of stuffed and wrapped foods. Consequently, I decided to provide some examples of my own based on my personal assemblage of recipes. With a couple of exceptions, most of these preparations have graced the pages of this website. The most notable exception was a preparation based on a concept that Adrìa presented in the 2010 German movie, El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, to illustrate his concept that food had to be surprising. This was a ravioli prepared by filling a piece of obrato (オブラート) with a praline mixture. The movie gave no explanation of the praline mixture used to fill the “ravioli,” but that not was the first problem I encountered when trying to recreate a version of this dish. My first problem was what was the obrato and where could I obtain some.

In the movie, obrato was described as potato-starch sheets used for taking medicine. From a trip in 1991, I knew that medicine in Japan was sometimes provided in powder form. The powder was provided a small envelope, and the patient was instructed to ingest the entire contents of the envelope. The obrato sheets could be used to enclose the medicine to make it easier to swallow.

I started searching in my first source for all things unknown, the Internet. There was no mention of the material, although Obrato is a town in East Timor. Searching in hiragana instead of romaji, I found multiple examples of the wafers as well as candy wrapped in similar wafers. The romaji spelling used on much of the Japanese packaging was “oblate.” This produced search results but not for a potato-starch wafer. (I’m using the spelling obrato because that is closer the pronunciation my Japanese friends are providing me.) Searching in Japanese also shows that the material is available in more forms than just flat wafers. There’s cone shapes and even some that look like the pleated cups used for chocolate candies. The origin of the name is from the Latin word for “oval.” Of course, knowing that the wafers exist didn’t mean that I could locate them for my use.

The first store I tried is Amazon. No luck. Next I tried the most traditional (and oldest) Japanese store in my neighborhood. The owner has never heard of the stuff. Next there was Mitsuwa Marketplace, the company that took over when Yohan closed in our area. They always have everything, but not this time. I was about ready to give up when my wife and I found ourselves seated in the noodle shop at Mitsuwa next to a woman and her two small children. The kids were using chopsticks with finger holes—training chopsticks. My wife asked where she purchased them, and the woman mentioned a Japanese grocery store in the area that we were unfamiliar with. After finishing our meal we headed over to the store, Marukai Market, to look for chopsticks. While my wife looked, I asked one of the sales clerks if they carried obrato. (Actually, I hadn’t “asked” at any of the places. At each I showed the clerk a picture, that I had downloaded from a website, on my iPhone.) At first the clerk see seemed puzzled, but then she guided me over to the end of one of the aisles and showed me two separate brands. One was flat, round disks and the other was cone-shaped. The cone-shaped obrato was four times the price of the flat wafers, but I thought they would be easier to work with. Now I had the elusive obrato, and I could proceed in making the “ravioli.”

One of the interesting aspects of the obrato material, at least as it was portrayed in the El Bulli film, was that the contents could be heat-sealed into the ravioli. One of the first things I did after returning home with my purchase was to insert one of the cones into my Foodsaver and try to seal it. It worked fine.

Next, to try it with something in the cone. I opened my refrigerator to look for candidates and decided upon some pureed onions I had. I filled a syringe with some—in the film they used squeeze bottles—and started to fill the obrato cone. Before I finished filling it, it had already started to disintegrate. That, obviously, was going to be a problem (but not for long).

I previously had purchased some oil-cured black olives to use for some other project that I now forget. I pitted a handful, chopped the meat in a mini-food processor, and proceeded to force the mash trough a sieve. I took some of this puree and put in it a syringe. I squeezed a bit into an obrato cone, sealed it, and popped it into my mouth. It worked!

The next issue was how long would a filled “ravioli” last? I made another and set it in the refrigerator while I went out to run a few errands. When I returned, the envelope was intact, but it was sitting in a puddle of oil. It turns out that the obrato is a bit porous. Although an oil-based filling will not dissolve the “pasta,” it will leach oil almost immediately. After my first try, I also decided that it was easier to leave the puree a little coarse and to spoon it into the cones with a demitasse spoon.

The “ravioli” was ready for prime time. I made up four using a coarse oil-cured, black olive mash. I plated all four. All four were then taste-tested by myself and my wife. I gave them a thumbs up, and my wife gave them a thumbs down. She felt they were too salty. I liked the salt.

Since that initial trial, I have tried other fillings. I think the overall favorite is sun-dried tomatoes that have been pureed with a little olive oil. In the El Bulli film, the “ravioli” were filled with an undefined praline liquid. The sealed “ravioli” was rushed to the table where the server ran each through some pine needle-infused water and immediately dropped the “ravioli” into the diner’s mouth as the obrato was dissolving in real time. When I served the “ravioli” to my guests, they remained intact, although one accused me of serving her plastic wrap. I think she was just joking?