Molecular Gastronomy in the Industry

I figured after all of this home oriented cooking, my readership (good word) might appreciate learning about some of the few restaurants in the world that specialize in molecular gastronomy!

First a bit about how restaurants are rated in the professional realm. There are two majorly significant rankings that are relatively well known: the michelin star system as well as the annual World's 50 Best Restaurants ranking. Michelin stars are probably one of the most highly coveted awards a restaurant can get, with three Michelin stars being the highest one restaurant can receive. In 2012, only 106 restaurants in the world received a three Michelin star designation.

The Celler de Can Roca is a Spanish restaurant owned by three brothers who are the chef, manager, and sommelier. The Celler opened in 1983 near the bar of their parents and since that year, the Cellar has grown into a giant restaurant with three Michelin stars. The original purpose of El Celler was to create a restaurant's research, and has been at the front of the molecular gastronomy movement. The brothers have experimented with things like the olfactory sensations and gases with flavors to create a unique experience. In 2012, El Celler de Can Roca was named the second best restaurant in the world. Using techniques like blowing sugar to create peach like spheres, they are at the forefront of the gastronomic world.

This is not a peach. It is sugar blown like glass to create a unique shape that mimics a peach or nectarine

Another restaurant in Spain called Arzak has been rising in the culinary world. Arzak recently was named the 8th best restaurant in the world, and aims to transform traditional basque food from the northern region of Spain using molecular gastronomy. An example below is their soft boiled egg with gelatin caviar:

The white is an egg that was cooked sous vide so that the white of the egg firms up while the yolk is liquid

The broken egg white

These are only a few of the many amazing examples of molecular gastronomy in the culinary industry! Not quite for the home chef, but still fun to look at!

Carnivorous Gastronomy

For the meat dinner, I actually kept some of the courses the same for the sake of simplicity for myself. The first course was the same Caramelized Carrot Soup and Garlic Knots as the vegetarian night, and the second course was an entire serving of the Daikon Paad Thai. After that, however, it deviated a bit.

The main meat course consisted of a culinary pun for those foodies out there.

72 Hour Short Rib "Filet" 

with Potato "Gnocchi"

A very traditional dish is to serve beef short rib (a very lean, cheap cut) served with gnocchi to soak up the sauce of the short rib.

Another traditional dish is to serve filet steak with mashed potatoes.

So, to have a bit of a play on tradition, I used the sous vide machine on the short ribs for 72 hours to break down the collagen in the meat, giving it a super tender and smooth texture, almost like that of a filet. Then, I used mashed potatoes to form little gnocchi-like balls. So while the first look at the dish may have appeared to be traditional short ribs and gnocchi, it tasted more like a filet and mashes potatoes. To finish off this dish, I made a horseradish cream sauce with fresh horseradish root to give it just a little bit of kick at the end.

For the dessert, I amplified my original dessert from the first dinner. Instead of a pure guava geleé, I used a guava reduction and then topped it with an orange juice reduction geleé. Because of agar's heat resistant properties, the two gels formed perfectly distinct layers on top of each other, giving a unique colorful presentation. In addition, I did the caramelized bananas again and gave my guests the opportunity to try caramelizing their own bananas!

It was a great amount of work and a great amount of fun! I hope that everyone present enjoyed themselves greatly! 

Feel free to give me any questions you might have!

Vegetarian Gastronomy

I am pleased to announce that after this past Thursday, I have finally completed both of my Teacher Dinners for my project! It was great fun and I really enjoyed putting it on, thank you to everyone who participated!

For this blog post, I'm going to tell you about the vegetarian night menu and how it used molecular gastronomy.

Edible Chemistry: Vegetarian Night

Caramelized Carrot Soup

with Garlic Knots

"Grilled" Romaine

with Emulsified Balsamic Dressing

Three Pepper Platter

with Refried Beans, Daikon Paad Thai

and Sous Vide Vegetables

Tropical Molecular Gastronomy

with Guava Geleé, Caramelized Banana

and Mango Smoothie

Caramelized Carrot Soup with Garlic Knots

This course was meant to show how a traditional ingredient such as carrot can be used in ways other than what is expected. The carrots were pressure cooked in butter and pureed, then added to some fresh carrot juice. All that was in the soup was carrots and butter. Simplicity can often produce amazing results. The Garlic Knots were served with olive oil powder, made from tapioca maltodextrin, because frankly its just cool.

"Grilled" Romaine with Emulsified Balsamic Dressing

Grilled Romaine is actually a thing! (Sorta). Instead of grilling it though, I used molecular gastronomy. Which means: TORCH. The smokey flavor coupled with the lettuce produces a unusual but delicious flavor and aroma. The very stereotypical sweet balsamic dressing on the lettuce sharply contrasts with the uniqueness of the torching of the lettuce.

Three Pepper Platter with Refried Beans, Daikon Paad Thai and Sous Vide Vegetables

I served all three of these small dishes in hollowed out bell peppers. Cause then you can eat the serving vessels as well! The refried beans were made in total of one hour in a pressure cooker (which is amazing considering most recipe involve soaking the beans for 24+ hours). The Paad Thai had a traditional sauce, but instead of rice noodles I used strips of daikon radish. And the sous vide vegetables were to exemplify the power of sous vide cooking using only fresh vegetables and olive oil.

Tropical Molecular Gastronomy with Guava Geleé, Caramelized Banana and Mango Smoothie

The dessert was meant to be almost like a lighter palette cleanser to end the meal. The guava geleé was simply guava nectar with agar to form a brittle gel, which has a very smooth mouthfeel. The banana was sugar on half a banana that was then torched to form an almost creme brulée style crust on top, and the mango smoothie for just a little extra sweetness at the end.

So there you have it. It was fantastic, and because it was first I was able to improve some of these dishes for the second dinner! Let me know if you have any questions below!

This is cool, but I could never do it....

That is what a lot of people seem to say about molecular gastronomy. As my project slowly winds to a close, I will focus more closely on how molecular gastronomy applies to the home cook, particularly the three main points of my thesis: financial feasibility, understanding of scientific concepts, and difficulty of culinary technique.

Let's begin with financial feasibility. One of the most commonly perceived barriers to using molecular gastronomy at home is the price tag that comes with some of the equipment. I admit, the home centrifuge, pacojet, and rotostator homogenizer are a bit of a stretch at thousands of dollars each, the basics are not beyond the average kitchen.

As cited in my last post, a small home sous vide machine with a vacuum sealer is priced between $400-$500, which while not inexpensive, is comparable to some standing mixers and blenders on the market today. I find far more use for a sous vide machine compared to a standing mixer, but most home chefs don't understand how to use them or why they're worth the cost, which relates to the understanding of scientific concepts.

In one of my first posts, I discussed many of the unique different ingredients used by gastronomists and where to obtain them. For those who haven't read it, I encourage you to scroll back and read it. Many of the ingredients, whether it be soy lecithin or sodium alginate, often cost as little as $10 for 50 grams, which may not seem like a lot, but when a recipe calls for only 2 grams, a little goes a long way. "Fancy chemical names" do not imply prohibitive costs.

I'm not saying that molecular gastronomy is going to save you any money; however, I will argue that you can improve your home cuisine without a steep price increase compared to a traditional kitchen as many would expect.

I had my first Molecular Gastronomy Dinner on Wednesday and it was a fantastic success! Thank you all who attended! I will post more on both of my dinners after the second one occurs this upcoming Thursday.

Sous-What?

Home sous vide model

If you've been reading carefully, you've probably noticed the phrase "sous vide" popping up quite a bit. But what is it? Sous vide is a cooking technique in which whatever you want to cook is placed in a food-grade plastic bag and vacuum sealed inside with whatever sort of sauce or seasoning you wish. The vacuum sealed bag is then placed in a temperature controlled bath for a long period of time to cook. Let's say you want your steak to have an internal temperature of 140 degrees F. Cook the steak in a sous vide at exactly 140 and a few hours later you have perfectly cooked steak all the way through! Because a sous vide cooks the meat or vegetables at whatever temperature you desire them to be served at, it is impossible to burn or overcook it.

Professional Immersion Circulator Bath (used for sous vide)

Heston Blumenthal (one of the fathers of molecular gastronomy) said that "sous vide cooking is the single greatest advancement of cooking technology in decades."And he was right. But sous vide is becoming more and more applicable to the home chef. the line of SousVide Supreme home sous vide machines  are greatly reduced in price from traditional immersion circulators like the one shown to the right. This means that home chefs can cook meat to the perfect temperature every time, just as more and more restaurants are doing today. Ever go to a restaurant and wonder how they manage to get their steak or chicken so perfectly done all the way through and remain juicy? It's usually a sous vide coupled with a minute of searing on the grill at the end. The key is that because water is used to transfer heat rather than air, completely submerging the food in the water bath means that every part of the surface of the meat is cooked at the same temperature--no hot spots like a grill may have. While the price of a sous vide still is not exactly inexpensive, the prices continue to drop due to more and more consumer demand. I use my sous vide for many experiments and it is worth every penny! Check out Sous Vide Supreme's website and Costco.com for more info!

Not-Lemon Curd

Since there was a rather underwhelming lack of response to my last post, I asked myself this question: what do I want to cook? After a brief exploration into some of my recipes, I decided to make lemon curd. Lemon curd is a jam-like spread that is usually used on pastries in place of jelly. It's often characterized by its sweet and tangy flavor profiles.

But of course a modernist chef doesn't want to make traditional lemon curd, but how can you make a delicious spread all science-y? Well the molecular gastronomy chef tells us that we should either put something new in, or take something essential out.

So I made lemon curd without lemons.

No zest, no juice, and no lemons were harmed in the making of this curd.

So how did I do it? Well, I used a relatively traditional recipe but used an ingredient that provides the same flavor as lemon. What is it you ask? Well this is molecular gastronomy, of course its a small white crystalline powder with a chemical name! In this case, I used Citric Acid.

Citric acid is the compound that gives all citrus its tangy flavor. Except this stuff is highly concentrated. I only used about 4 grams to go with more than 10x that amount of egg yolks. The citric acid is dissolved in a sugar syrup and combined with cooked egg yolks (sous vide of course) and butter. Whip it all together and refrigerate, and you have Not-Lemon Curd!

 Comment if you want the recipe!

Blog Posts A La Carte

Since I’ve been so busy working on planning and trying out all the dishes on my menu (which will continue to remain secretly mysterious for now), I want to give an opportunity for people to ask specific questions about molecular gastronomy and cooking in general!

There are so many different topics that I do not have a chance to cover but a fraction of them in this blog! So, you, as my readers, have the opportunity to choose what my next blog post will be on!

Just leave a comment below and I will spend a portion of next week researching your question and do my best to answer it. Think outside the box! You can ask questions on how appliances work, or about why different techniques yield different results in cooking, or why that last recipe that you FOLLOWED PERFECTLY didn’t turn out so well.

I expect the blogosphere to be abuzz with a different culinary query every minute! Don’t hesitate! Don’t be shy! This is how molecular gastronomy can be applied into our home kitchens! First we have to ask the simple question of our delicious meals: why does this work? Or, perhaps more importantly: why didn’t this work?

Science is about asking a question and trying to answer it through experimentation. Cooking is the same way. I have mushrooms, onions, eggs and milk in my fridge; what can I make with that? (If you were thinking quiche or frittata, bravo).

I can deal with things many consider hard to swallow (pun intended), so give me your hypotheses and questions!