Ready? Here we go!
For this activity I chose six unconventional "molecular gastronomy" recipes to try.
MANGO BUBBLES
Calcium Solution:
6.5 grams calcium chloride
1 liter water
Mix ingredients well
Mango Solution:
250 milliliters water
1.8 grams sodium alginate
250 grams mango puree
1.3 grams sodium citrate
Bring water to a boil to dissolve sodium alginate. Allow to cool, and then mix well with mango puree and sodium citrate. Drop into the calcium solution. Allow to set. Strain, rinse, and serve cold.
I'm not sure if I liked how these actually turned out. They looked amazing in the end, but the taste was very disappointing. If I were to do them again I would do three things differently. First of all, the mangos weren't very ripe and the whole dish would have been a lot tastier if I had waited until they were juicier/sweeter.
The way you can tell that a mango is sweet and ripe is mainly from the color of it. When you cut into it, a ripe mango should be soft, it should be a bright, rich golden-orange, and it should be dripping with juice. This one wasn't very juicy, had a lighter color to it, and was still stiff. It didn't taste bad, so to say, but if I had waited another week or so it would have been much better.
The second thing I would have done differently is I would have put the mango through a juicer rather than puree it. The texture of the pureed mango made the bubbles less "pop-in-your-mouth" caviar-like and more of a solid consistency. I'd like to try making a watermelon juice caviar next time!
And the third thing I would have changed is that I would have used an eyedropper. Since I didn't have one on hand I had to get creative and use two spoons to quinelle the puree and drop it into the calcium bath. The original recipe actually was titled "Mango Caviar", but since I didn't have an eyedropper and they ended up being bigger than expected, I retitled them "Mango Bubbles". Also, for the final product, I ended up adding a tablespoon of brown sugar to make the dish sweeter.
Touch
- Balloon-like
- Bumpy
- Squishy
- Fragile
Odor
- Mango fruit
- Sweet
- Fruity
- Tangy
- Fresh
- Cold
Texture
- Stringy puree
- mushy
- like a liquid that you can pick up!!!
- Watery
Taste
- Not very flavorful (not ripe)
- Slightly sweet from the brown sugar
- Kind of bland
All in all, this project was very successful, but pretty horrible in the flavor department. The most amazing part of this process was watching the chemicals instantly interact when I dropped the mango puree into the calcium bath. What I saw happening in this step is this: since the calcium chloride has already been mixed well into the bath, when the puree is dropped in, it only surrounds the very outer layer of the droplet. The mixture of the calcium, sodium citrate (which enables the alginate and calcium to interact because it adds creates the right acidic balance), and the alginate causes a quick chemical reaction. The result was a beautiful, invisible, gelatinous membrane that encased the puree in it's spherical quinelle shaped droplet! Amazing!
LIME AIR
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup lime juice
1 teaspoon lecithin
Froth with the immersion blender, holding it just above the liquid
For this project I only had soy lecithin available. It was a sticky and tough, like old silly putty. I had to spend some time breaking it into little pieces. If the lecithin that I used had been finer I think that it would have mixed more efficiently with the rest of the ingredients, resulting in a lighter and fluffy air that was dense with even smaller bubbles. It would have been more frothy and it would have have stayed frothy for a longer amount of time.
Odor
- Mild lime sting
- Citrusy
- "Zing-y"
- Tangy
Texture
- A full, airy foam that resembles soft soap bubbles
Touch
- Doesn't feel like anything when you touch it, almost like touching a thin mist
- Slightly damp after-feel
Taste
- Watered down with lime juice
- Strange, bitten aftertaste
This dish would have been good on a savory fish dish to break up a heavier sauce. I also thought that it would be a good touch on top of sushi! So many fun recipes in our future.
WATERMELON FOAM
500 mL watermelon juice
5 g gelatin (3 sheets, 1.0%)
Heat half of the watermelon juice. Dissolve the gelatin sheets in the hot watermelon juice. Add the rest of the juice. Strain the juice and transfer to a 0.5L whipper. Charge the whipper with nitrous oxide and refrigerate until chilled.
Unfortunately, for this watermelon foam I didn't have a nitrous oxide whipper available to me, so I used my immersion blender very delicately. The nitrous oxide would have turned the watermelon juice into a very light, fine, foam rather than the consistency of the froth that appears when you blow bubbles into your chocolate milk (which is one of the many obvious rules of drinking chocolate milk with a straw, including squirting a little extra syrup in so that you get a chocolate surprise at the bottom of the cup). Anyways, despite the added gelatin, which should have helped the foam set in the fridge, the "foam" melted into a puddle at the bottom of the dish with a thinner layer of foam at the top, as you can see in the picture. The place where the bottom half of the dish gets darker is all liquid that came from popping bubbles.
Odor
- Really concentrated watermelon flavor
Texture
- Jello-jam-like consistency (deflated foam)
- Light
- Gooey
Touch
- Bouncy
- Light
- Airy
- Jello-feel
Taste
- Watered down watermelon
- Deceiving. It was almost artificial.
The whole thing was still tasty, sweet, and refreshing. However, the watermelon jello at the bottom after it has set in the fridge was kind of weird. It needed to be sweeter. I would love to try this with the nitrous oxide whipper. It would be a great addition to top off a fruit tart or and ice cream/sorbet!
MAPLE GEL
50 g maple syrup
250 g cold water
3 g gellan (1.0%)
Hydrate the gellan in cold water. Boil the maple syrup. Blend together and chill.
Alright. So in all honesty, this was downright gross. As much as I wanted this to be tasty and delicious... it really wasn't! haha I think the main problem was that since I didn't have gellan available, I used gelatin instead. From my research, I found that if I had used gellan, the results would have been more of a stiffer, more compact, almost fruit-roll-up consistency. By just using gelatin, I basically ended up with maple syrup....well...jell-o!
Odor
- mostly odorless
- slightly sweet
Texture
- Broke apart easily
- Gooey when eaten
- Firm like jell-o, but smoother like a jelly when broken apart
- Wiggly
Touch
- Cold
- Bouncy surface
- Slightly sticky
Taste
- At first it tasted like nothing-- just cold, mushy goo in your mouth-- but then, little by little, the flavor of the maple syrup escaped and covered your tongue. It tasted watered down and would have been better if sweeter.
Chicken Noodle Soup? No Way. CHICKEN SOUP NOODLES!
200g flavored water base, soup or broth
(I used organic chicken soup broth)
0.8g agar(0.4%)
0.5g locust bean gum (0.25%)
(I used guar gum instead of locust bean gum)
0.4g xanthan (0.2%)
Disperse hydrocolloids in cold water with immersion blender. For easier dispersion the hydrocolloids can be grinded with some sugar in a mortar prior to dispersion. Bring to boil. Fill straws or tubes with hot solution and leave to set in a cold water bath. Eject the noodles and heat under a lamp. The noodles are soft, palatable and heat resistant, but there is some syneresis.
Straight from the pot into the straw into the ice bath
Cold ice water bath. They set the INSTANT they were put in!
The beginning of many chicken soup noodles!
Here he goes...
Max's AMAZED reaction! :)
Blowing the noodles out of the straws
FINAL PRODUCT. YUM!
I thought these were delicious in a very strange way. It was incredible that the noodles could set that fast without leaking into the cold water bath. The final product was SO much fun to eat
Odor
- Salty
- Cool
- Savory
Texture
- Feels like a slippery noodle in your mouth
- Mushy and gelatin-like when pressure is applied, but in an appealing way
- Able to pick up gently
- (some were more set than others)
Touch
- Slippery
- Fragile
- Compact
- Cool
Taste
- Salty
- Flavorful
- Savory
NUTELLA POWDER
80g tapioca maltodextrin (40%)
120g Nutella
(I used a organic chocolate-hazelnut Nutella replica)
Combine ingredients in a food processor. Process until the mixture has the texture of soil. Pass mixture through a tarnis or a fine-meshed sieve to lighten its texture. Store in a cool dry place until ready to serve.
Odor
- Faint, airy, chocolatey smell
Texture
- Feels like the texture of snow
- Airy
- Melts in your mouth
- Fluffy
- Light
- Slightly sticky when moistened
Taste
- Sweet and airy!
- Chocolate richness
This was the most fun I'd had all week. It was a total success, completely delicious, amazing snow-like texture, and more! I could picture this topping a cake or brownies, acting as an ice cream topping, or even sprinkling some into your coffee.
As you can see below, Max and I had a litttlllee too much fun with this chocolate snow! We couldn't help ourselves!!
