I've recently joined Patch.com as a contributor, so you'll now get to read some shared content; here's an article that ran on Napa.Patch.com this week:
As one who regularly wins recipe contests, throws elaborate dinner parties and dismisses the Food Network as a little pedestrian for her taste, I've been increasingly interested in the new wave of modernist cuisine called Molecular Gastronomy.
The term was coined by French physical chemist Herve This in 1992, as a way to describe new ways of using science to augment and sometimes change traditional cooking ingredients and methods. The chefs that use these practices are known for turning dishes upside down with chemicals and equipment more commonly found in a laboratory than a kitchen. Liquids are turned into spheres, oils are turned to latticework garnish and herbs become suspended in an amber-like gel.
The movement has finally arrived at the point where sample kits are readily available for the intrepid cook, and I was lucky enough to receive one from my brother on my birthday. The kit is called Texturas, sold by Ferran Adria, the chef/owner of El Bulli in Spain. Adria is the present-day wizard of the modernist cuisine realm, concocting spirals of olive oil evoking memories of one's stair-hopping Slinky and caviar-like bits of melon juice. His restaurant is open from April to October, with 8,000 reservations available each season more than 300,000 people attempting to secure a spot. In the off-season, Adria and his team toil in a lab working on new methods with which to surprise his diners.
For my first project, I wanted to start off with something easy and tasty. Quite a few of the chemicals in the kit had been labeled "Spherification," and I was eager to try out the process. All I needed was sodium alginate, calcium chloride, water and my favorite beverage -- wine, of course.
It sounded easy enough in concept, but I stopped short when reading the recipe. Not only did I have to be exact in my measurements, but they had to be accurate to the GRAM. For someone who doesn't bake because teaspoon measurements are too constricting, this was a little scary. However, I borrowed a scale and soldiered on.
I mixed the wine with sodium alginate, then the water bath with calcium chloride. As instructed, I filled a syringe (my meat injector) with the wine and dripped drops of it into the water bath. The drops spread out in the water and … dissolved. No spheres.
Maybe the wine was too watery? I grabbed the can of xanthan gum and shook a bit into the wine, then hit it with my immersion blender. It immediately turned into a thick jam. I had high hopes for this new texture, but it dispersed in the water bath much like the first batch.
As a final effort, I decided to try "Reverse Spherification," where the chemicals are simply switched: sodium alginate in the water, calcium chloride in the wine. Aha! It worked! In the water bath, that is. As soon as I tried to lift out the balls and noodles of wine, they broke apart and made a mess on my counter. The only balls that stayed intact somehow lost much of the wine and looked like malformed jellyfish when plated.
Though disappointed, I'm still excited about the new way to play with my food and am at this moment dreaming up a concoction that will be a success.
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