We’ve invited friends (one of whom is joining the EMC team) over for dinner this coming Sunday, and my wife requested that I incorporate some molecular gastronomy in the menu. We first got a taste for this style of food preparation last summer when we took a cooking course in Prince Edwards County. We did some cool stuff (frozen cocktails, fruit caviar, jellied champagne, etc) and I was immediately intrigued. A month later, we hosted dinner for friends and I served seared Tuna with raspberry caviar. It was a hit, and worth the two hours it took me to create each individual raspberry sphere.
After browsing through some molecular gastronomy recipes I decided I could safely make, I have embarked on a week-long experiment to decide which ones are worth serving. At the moment, I’ve identified the following recipes:
- Mango Ravioli (looks like an egg yolk, but tastes like Mango)
- Spherical Olive (olive made of olive juice)
- Beet foam (to go with a goat’s cheese bavarian)
- Frozen Parmesan air (to go with a mushroom ravioli)
On Saturday I took a crack at the mango ravioli. I followed the recipe for spherical ravioli, which looks pretty simple:
Ingredients: 250g water, 1.3g sodium citrate, 1.8g sodium alginate, 250g mango purée, 1000g water for setting bath, 5g calcium chloride for setting bath. Preparation: Blend the sodium citrate with 250g of water, add the sodium alginate and blend once more. Bring to a boil, allow to cool and mix with the mango purée. Blend 1000g of water with calcium chloride. Pour the contents of a dosing spoon full of the mango and sodium alginate mixture into this calcium chloride bath, leave for 2 minutes and wash in cold water. Repeat until all of the ravioli are made.
Not so much. I made the mistake of not measuring the pH values of the mango purée. The result was that the purée, when dropped into the bath did nothing. I took it out of the bath, and it was just as I had left it: a soft liquid purée. The bath was supposed to react with the mixture, form a membrane and when rinsed, would be placed on a plate, shaped like an egg yolk and garnished with lavender. Instead I ended up with a yummy mango purée but didn’t give me the effect I was going for. Hmph.
Verdict: I’ve decided I won’t bother trying to get this one right. I’ve got a couple days to test the other ones. I’m going to move on and try my hand at the olive spheres and hope to use those as an amuse bouche.
Stay tuned for more trials and tribulations of molecular cuisine at home.
Photo Credit: Flickr user QTea.
