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Jonathan M. Guberman

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    Torontonian living in Princeton, NJ
  1. Wow, I lost track of this thread for a bit and was amazed at how much has been added. BryanZ, this may be completely obvious, but how did you shape the noodles? That's something I'd love to try! Cookman, there are a few recipes here at the Texturas El Bulli site, and there are a few interesting entries in the Hungry in Hogtown blog. I may have linked to some others that got me started in the very first entry in this thread.
  2. My concern with all of those North American sodium citrate distributors is that none of them are marked as food grade chemicals; that means that, essentially, there is no guarantee that there isn't a contaminant that will make you sick. Of course, the Texturas stuff doesn't have that problem, so I may have to look into getting some from Europe. That said, there's plenty to experiment with even without sodium citrate; I'm going to try to experiment some more later this week.
  3. I think you're right, the problem was most likely the amount of alginate. As I showed in my original post, I had trouble getting all the alginate to dissolve, and when you're dealing with such small amounts to begin with that amount is probably significant. On my next run-through I'll definitely be more careful. BryanZ, from what I understand (from the Texturas website) the alginate/calcium reaction doesn't work properly at a pH lower than 4, so the reason for adding sodium citrate or something else is simply to allow the solidification to occur. I think I'm going to borrow a few pH indicator strips from the lab and try to do some real experiments sometime. If and when I do I will, of course, post the results here. Has anyone found a source for sodium citrate? I'd love to be able to use it rather than baking soda.
  4. It could also be that the onion rings they use for photography are either fake or are chosen for their uniformity. On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me if they were indeed extruded. Thanks for the syringe info. For making ravioli, I did exactly what you described, using a hemispherical measuring spoon. A regular spoon, of course, wouldn't work. There's actually a video clip of this being done at El Bulli which can be found at this link. I forget where I saw it, but some other site mentioned using sodium citrate, so that's what I assume the 'citras' is. The whole point is to lower the pH of the solution, so I don't think adding citric acid would work. Regarding dipping in chocolate, I recall reading somewhere that the product is thermally stable. However, I did try a couple times to heat up the tea balls they burst or deflated pretty quickly. I'd like to try it again with a little more alginate. Also, remember that the solidification continues even after you remove the balls from the water bath, so you want to eat it pretty soon after you take them out. Now, if you could use the calcium in milk chocolate to perform the reaction, you might be able to do something interesting...
  5. Thanks, Digijam. I definitely made some accidental caviar just from having drops fall off the spoon I was using to make ravioli. I'd like to try a dropper or syringe; any ideas on where I can find one, and what size I can get? I imagine the type used medically is too small, but maybe I'm wrong.
  6. Much to my delight the sodium alginate and calcium chloride that I ordered in the mail arrived yesterday. I've been waiting to make my first eGullet post a good one, and this seemed like the perfect topic. First, a little personal background. (Feel free to skip this paragraph. You won't miss anything.) I've been a life-long kitchen-phobe: when I started working on my PhD and no longer had parents or dormitory food I relied mostly on take-out and the occasional hand-out to sustain me. Recently, however, I realized that if I can manage in the laboratory at work, then I should be able to manage in the kitchen at home. Hence, I've been teaching myself to cook and, though I'm still a novice, I've been happy with my progress. My tastebuds (and my friends') have been reaping the benefits. I find that I now spend most of my free time reading about cooking or playing around in the kitchen. (Incidentally, if there are any people within a reasonable radius of Princeton, NJ who feel like showing a novice a thing or two in the kitchen, PM me! I'm always looking to learn.) When I read about "fruit caviar" and "liquid ravioli" I was dying to taste them. As I read more, it seemed like something that wouldn't be too hard to do at home. Thanks to this thread, I learned that Will Goldfarb's Room 4 Dessert in New York was selling both sodium alginate and calcium chloride. I called the restaurant on Monday, and the packets arrived on Wednesday. (Apologies for the blurry photo; either I was shaking with excitement or I'm just a terrible photographer.) The powders came in nice re-sealable packages and are labelled www.willpowder.net. It's just a "coming soon" page as of this writing, but I look forward to seeing what other goodies they will offer. I was eager to play around with my new toys, and so I rushed to make something. I was somewhat worried about acidity since I don't have any calcium citrate to balance the pH, so I decided to do a simpler variation on the tea ravioli recipe from the Texturas web site (the simplification being the omission of the lemon ice centres). I also used this post about liquid pea ravioli from the Hungry in Hogtown as a reference. In my zeal I made at least one silly mistake. I added all of the alginate that the recipe called for to the water at once and then attempted to blend it in, rather than adding a little powder at a time and then blending, which led to gooey chunks that were difficult to dissolve (which you can sort of see in the picture.) I probably could have dissolved these chunks by heating, but I was doing this for fun, not for serving, and I was eager to get some mixture into the calcium chloride bath. And that's exactly what I did. Here you can see a couple of tea balls floating in the calcium chloride bath. You can see the remains of an unsuccessful one on the right side in the middle. I definitely got better at forming the spheres as time went by, but I can't say I got a perfect shape every time. Still, even the deformed looking ones at the top look much more spherical once they're out of the bath. Finally, here's a picture of the finished product. It's not much for presentation, and certainly wasn't the nicest one of the batch, but it's the only one that I took a picture of. What did they taste like? Well, not to be glib, but it tasted exactly like iced tea. The texture was pure liquid. I experimented with leaving the balls in the bath for shorter and longer amounts of time. If I didn't leave it in long enough, they were very delicate. The longer they were left in the more durable they were, because they had a thicker skin. However, the skin has a bit of an odd feeling in your mouth and isn't nearly as flavourful. It seems to me that the goal of this particular preparation is to make the skin as thin as possible while still holding together. The whole thing was definitely a lot of fun, and I can see what it delights people so much. I'm looking forward to experimenting further, and am curious to hear what others have done with this. In particular, I'm wondering if I can use baking soda rather than calcium chloride to change the pH of fruit juices without compromising flavour. If anyone has recipes for alginate dishes (other than the ones linked to in this post and the ones on starchef.com) I'd love to know about them, and any tips would be much appreciated. If I can, I'd be happy to answer any questions people might have (although I've put most of what I know in this post!). Cheers! Jonathan
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