What a month! We spent March showing you how to use Molecular Gastronomy techniques to enhance the flavors and textures of your dishes. From foams to gels to the Sous Vide, there area wealth of options for the experimental chef. We ushered in the month with a fantastic demo by the people from Culinary Imports, who showed us the tip of the molecular gastronomy iceberg. We snapped some interesting and fun photos from that first week, and wanted to share a few here.
For all the ingredients used in these demos, check out our Molecular Gastronomy page.
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- Peanut butter jelly bites! This is one of Culinary Imports’ favorite samples to make because it demonstrates how molecular gastronomy infuses old favorites with new sensations. The peanut butter and jelly bite consists of spherified grape juice and a dab of peanut butter foam.
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- Vanessa definitely approves!
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- Here’s some pineapple espuma – believe it or not, this is just pineapple juice combined with Spuma and run through a cream whipper to make a foamy, delicious treat.
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- Here’s the first component of the strawberry lime cocktail: the spherified strawberry caviar! Caviar is made by combining solutions of Algizoon and Calizoon – you can find detailed instructions on our Molecular Gastronomy page.
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- After you combine the Algizoon and Calizoon solutions, you need to drip them out to form the caviar. Here’s a fast way to do it: the “Caviar” Box: able to make 96 individual pieces of faux caviar at once!
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- The Leaning Tower of Lime! Lime air, to be precise. Air is a perfect example of the interesting mouthfeels made possible by molecular gastronomy. The bubbles burst in your mouth, giving you the taste of lime even though you’re not actually going to digest anything. Like smelling with your mouth!
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- The master at work! Marietta of Culinary Imports prepares the lime air.
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- The finished mocktail – this one has Sprite, but you might want to use something more adult (like Champagne) for yours. The air bursts in your mouth and the strawberry caviar floats in to finish the flavor.
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- This is knistazoon – but you can just think of it as poprocks. It’s mostly made of carbon dioxide and sugar, and it adds a real pow! Fante’s staffmembers have used them in chocolate pops and in cookies – oh, what a feeling.
Thanks to Culinary Imports, BioZoon, all of the wonderful staff for helping plan all our demos this month and of course, everyone who stopped by to take part! We hope you learned as much as we did this month about the new frontiers in food science!
We’ll be revisiting one of the more popular creations from the March demos this Saturday in our store, and showing off a new product, the ISI Gourmet Whip cream whipper/foam maker. This is one of the best whippers on the market and a favorite of culinary professionals. Among other things, it allows you to very quickly and easily infuse liquids like olive oil or vodka with many different flavors. We’ll be making thyme-infused lemonade – AND we’ll be turning it into a foam with Spuma! You’ll be able to try both the liquid and foamy versions. The fun starts at 11 on Saturday, and it’ll keep going till 3. Make sure you stop by!
