Gastronomy You Can Do At Home

Ian Rosoff  

Molecular Gastronomy isn’t something most people think they can do at home. This is partly true as it often involves procuring hard to find powders and impractical equipment, however molecular gastronomy is more about innovative and cool cooking techniques then it is about fancy tools. Simplicity is one of the most important tenets of cooking, and nothing is simpler then making an egg. Molecular Gastronomy chefs have been fascinated with the egg. Because it can be treated in so many different ways eggs have become a great vehicle for gastronomy. Wylie Dufresne has a particular affinity for the egg. He is a classically trained French chef who owns wd-50 in New York City. He makes a delectable poached egg, Caesar dressing, pumpernickel, and lily bulb dish, where the egg is cooked in a sous-vide thermal immersion circulator, which is a warm water bath that cooks food inside a vacuum sealed bag. The low temperature cooks the food evenly without it losing any of the original flavor or color. Origionally sous-vide cooking was used in the preparation of fois gras, but today it has been embraced by molecular gastronomists to make a multitude of dishes. For home chefs sous-vide techniques are a little bit trickier, especially immersion circulator sous-vides because unless you have hundreds of dollars to buy one most kitchens are without a thermal circulator.

We can try and recreate the technique or at least incorportate some of the principles into our home cooking. What makes sous-vide such an attractive cooking technique is that the vacuum packed food cooks in its own juices and the flavor intensifies. Adding spices or oil to the vacuum packed bag also brings out that flavor profile more than conventional styles of cooking. So a good place to start for somebody cooking in a small apartment or dorm room is to poach an egg and try to intensify flavor by sealing it in. We will replace a vacuum bag and immersion circulator with plastic wrap and a pot of boiling water.

For a molecular gastronomy egg with no molecular gastronomy tools you’ll need: plastic wrap, string, a coffee mug, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a pot of boiling water. First bring a pot of water about two inches high to a boil. While waiting for the water take two sheets of plastic wrap and lay them on top of each other, then brush it with olive oil and sprinkle liberal amounts of salt and pepper. Now line the coffee mug with the plastic wrap, crack the egg and gently slide it into the coffee mug. Pinch the plastic wrap together to encase the egg and tie the top with string. Finally trim off any excess string and put the sealed egg into the water to poach. Depending on how you like your eggs, cook for two to four minutes. Lift the egg out with a slotted spoon then cut the string. You should now have a poached egg packed with flavor.

Intro to Molecular Gastronomy

Ian Rosoff

Last month the temple to molecular gastronomy, the world’s number one restaurant, closed its doors to the public. Nestled in a cove along the Gulf of Roses a few hours north of Barcelona sits more than just a restaurant, El Bulli is a laboratory, a place of unrivaled innovation and unbridled creativity. Ferran Adria is the chef who has turned molecular gastronomy from an amusing science trick to the most sophisticated and yet casual culinary art form. Adria is a real life Willy Wonka, complete with his own culinary factory, dedicated only to creating new techniques and dishes — think consommé pasta*, a dish that looks like traditional linguini, but is actually consommé contained within a thin shell of clear algin to reveal the viscous consommé center. For Adria, gastronomy is about pushing the limits of food and updating classics with modern ideas and a heavy dose of whimsy and humor. Each technique is tested endlessly as to reach the high level of execution needed to pull off these devilishly difficult dishes.
It’s important to realize that gastronomy is not a gimmick. It starts with fresh ingredients and faithfulness to flavor, and only then incorporates gadgetry and exotic powders. It does not attempt to hide flavor, in fact it seeks to produce bolder, stronger and truer flavors. It is sometimes unfairly called “fake food” and is often accused of being a means to show off, not showcase the food. While this is sometimes true it’s completely false for El Bulli. True molecular gastronomy is full of comforting and familiar flavors in unique textures and new presentations.
Even as Ferran Adria ends perhaps the greatest gastronomy experiment ever, the techniques he has pioneered, many of which were thought to be part of a brief fad, seem to be here to stay. Gastronomy has come to the United States in a big way. Chefs like Jose Andreas and Wily Dufrane have become mainstays on the Food Network and shows like “Top Chef.” New cooking innovations created by Adria have been adopted by many of the world’s best restaurants seeking to emulate the master who led El Bulli to be rated the world’s best eatery five times this decade. Anthony Bourdain has twice brought El Bulli to the U.S. on his show “No Reservations”, and, last year, Harvard University held a class taught by Adria, Andreas, and other gastronomy giants on the physics of food. Gastronomy has become unbelievably popular for an idea that even recently was thought to be neither cooking nor science.
The history of gastronomy is brief but tumultuous. The term was first coined by Oxford physicist Nicholar Kurti, who stunned chefs all over the world when he began a series of demonstrations that involved making meringue using a vacuum chamber and cooking sausages by running a current through them with the aid of a car battery. Gastronomy has come a long way. With the help of Adria, the father of modern gastronomy, now even home chef’s can use some of his complicated techniques and ingredients. I recently purchased a starter kit from Adria’s own line of home gastronomy products aptly named “Texturas.” The kit came with algin, xantham gum, and a litany of other exotic powders and products used for three basic gastronomy techniques: sferificacion, gelificacion, emulsificacion. With the right tools and a fair amount of determination anyone can now create foams, gelees, flavored caviar spheres and other staples of molecular gastronomy.
You’ll be hard pressed to find gastronomy in Ann Arbor, but look out for foams and emulsions at some of Ann Arbors top restaurants. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them incorporate more gastronomy techniques soon.
*Consommé is a soup made from stock or bouillon.