GMM

One of the best ways to eat the ham or "jamon" is to grill some bread, rub some garlic and some tomato and sprinkle with olive oil. Serve the ham over the grilled bread. Fantastic and traditional

So I know what went wrong. The sodium alginate is so tough to dilute, I tried to dilute it in a very small amount of water before adding the rest and I made a gel. While this gel was resting, I tried again but adding more water from the beginning and it worked perfectly. There is a new (or at least one I hadn't noticed) part in Adria's textures site that talks about proportions. I'm wondering if it is so simple as they make it look (so far I'm at a 50% success rate), but I admit it is. My next step is being able to make "perfect" (not really but close...) shapes. By the pictures I saw on this thread (as well as from Adria's films ) I know it is possible. For me it is very difficult, but I'll just keep trying.

thank you Mkayahara. After my total flop, I moved to try again but this time with plain tomato juice and... it worked perfectly. I'm still wondering what went wrong with the first experiment but i'm happy that at least I could make some spheres. Now I'm up to reverse spherification, and once again have lots of doubts/questions. The most important one is: When I finished mixing the alginate with the water for the alginate bath (5gr for 1Lt) I ended with a very thick bath (more like a gel). Is this normal? Will it change after the 12h/24h rest in the fridge? I'm so impressed that you guys make all this right at the first time

ok. So, as I had no answers from you guys, i decided to give it a try and... total flop!! I tried with the proportions of alginate and calcium chloride as given by el bulli's site for the peas raviolli. Then put my tomatoe "juice" into the water and... nothing. I decided to increase the alginate quantities as well as the calcium chloride's in the bath and... nothing. Then I tried using some citrate to correct the acidity (I don't have a PH measurer. Definitely need to get one) and... nothing. So I decided I wouldn't eat the stuff anymore, but wanted to get the texture formed so I kept adding those products and... nothing. Well not really nothing. My tomatoe "juice" started getting some texture, but really not forming any "raviolis" or "caviar". After a while I decided to get rid of it all and am now planning to follow one of the recipes that Adria's site gives (although I'm not really interested in any of them but I need to learn the process). So, please tell me, where did I go wrong?

Hi, I just received my spherification kit and am going to try tonight. I would like to know if anybody has tried it with tomatoe serum. I am wondering if the tomatoe ph will allow it to go without sodium citrate or if i need to increase the ph by using it