Spring Fling Experiment

This was really tasty, though not yet in its final form. It's a mango gel sheet, pineapple coconut pearl tapioca, raspberries, maraschino brulee, and lime sugar. Wild Sweets Chocolate has a recipe for a hot fruit gelee using agar and gelatin. When warm, it should make a wonderful wrap. The pineapple and coconut may end up as separate components as I'm not particularly happy with how the tapioca turned out. More than likely I'll end up doing a coconut jelly and just brunoise some pineapple. Over all, a pretty successful experiment that I'll be trying again soon.

It Feels A Little Like Christmas

Martin Lersch at Khymos has updated his hydrocolloid recipe collection. It's a wonderful resource for learning how to use the chemicals commonly associated with molecular cuisine. Download it and start playing with your food today.

Needs Work

The tea/alginate solution wasn't quite thick enough to allow me to make the ravioli-like spheres that I wanted. Hopefully a night in the chill chest will give me better results tomorrow. The adornment is a lemon zest & sugar mixture.

Cola Caviar

Preparing for an excursion into molecular mixology, I made some cola caviar following a recipe from the hydrocolloid recipe collection on khymos. They turned out very well, though I did have to strain the cola/alginate mixture to remove some clumps. While I made them to go in a Colorado Bulldog, it was pointed out to me that they would also go well with vanilla ice cream, playing with the idea of a coke float.

One Of The Great Things About Food...

there are no mistakes, only discoveries. And sometimes they're even edible!
While trying to make an apple foam, I accidentally use 4% methylcellulose and xanthan gum, instead of .4% as prescribed by Wylie Dufresne on the Next Iron Chef. So I just kept adding apple juice until I got a consistency that I liked, poured the mixture into a silicone demi-sphere mold and froze it. It had a texture similar to a granita, and tasted like apple sauce. Something I will definitely have to try again, maybe with the strawberries left over from Valentine's.

New Food Science Column

The Washington Post has an exciting new column called The Gastronomer.

Fun With Chemistry

Tomato juice gelled with agar, poached in olive oil, and topped with basil powder. The powder was created by mixing basil oil with tapioca maltodextrin. It was pretty tasty.

First Attempt at Caviar

Most were nice & round, with the occasional blob. I used a pomegranate juice cocktail. timing is very important, as some of the caviar took on a rather nasty taste if they sat too long in the calcium bath. Definitely a technique that requires a bit of practice, but a lot of fun.

My Chemical Romance

No modern kitchen is complete without a few hydrocolloids around. These were purchased from Le Sanctuaire.