Having recieved a introductory molecular gastronomy for Christmas and made it a new years resolution to get back into cooking I set about creating a molecular gastronomy delight for tonight’s evening meal. As a trained experimental chemist, this field of cuisine should suit my talents and way of working more than any others. However, I find the whole field rather daunting and feeling less than inspired about a creation for this evening, I looked for a recipe online. This search yielded a number of very lengthy and complicated dishes that I felt distinctly incapable of following. Wanting to get more familiar with the range of additives in my kit I decided to create something simple using one of the ingredients. I selected carrageenan which is capable of setting a liquid into a flexible gel. I heated dark chocolate, water, sugar and a half teaspoon of carrageenan powder to boiling point and poured over blueberry coulis and caramel. The effect was almost instant with the gelification occuring as soon as the warm mixture touched the cold glass ramekins. Not only was the result a delicious, smooth and silky chocolate desert, carrageenan is apparently considered as soluble fibre, it contains 0 calories making the luxurious desert much less diet-busting than it tasted, I was thoroughly impressed with this quick easy chocolate pudding and will definatly be recreating it. I will upload the recipe with photographs later.
A brief foray into Molecular Gastronomy
Advertisements
