Anonymous Modernist 847

http://blog.khymos.org/, andhttp://www.cookingissues.com/have great stuff

Does anyone know where I can find the perforated spoons that I always see being used in spherification demos? There is a picture of one being used on this site as well.

I have always wondered if it makes a difference what side of the foil one uses when roasting/baking/braising in an oven. I would assume that having the shinier side face down (facing the food) would reflect the heat onto the food better and create a more stable cooking environment. Thoughts?

I figured there was something like that going on. I have found that using the same liquid as inside the sphere (minus the alginate) as the holding bath works the best. I tried thickening with xanthan and found that sometimes, the sphere became too bouyant (sp?) and the exposed portion would still end up leaching out slightly. Thanks for all the help!

Does anyone know if there are any plans to release any of the El Bulli books (after '03-'04) in English?

I have been playing around with the reverse spherification technique and found that the sphere itself holds great for even up to a few days when submerged in water. The problem is that the flavor starts leeches out into the water almost immediately, resulting in a more tasteless orb as time goes on. This seems to have a correlation with the viscosity of the liquid inside the sphere (the thinner the liquid, the more flavor leeches out). A few questions: 1) If I thickened the holding water with something like xantham gum, would that keep the flavorful liquid from leeching out? 2) Does the amount of time the frozen/calcinated liquid spends in the alginate bath have a correlation to how thick the sphere wall is and thus how much flavor leeches out? 3) Would storing the sphere in the same liquid inside it (minus the calcium) make up for any flavor loss? I am trying to avoid this last option as food cost becomes an issue at some point. 4) Finally, would using the same flavor of the inner sphere for the alginate bath make any difference? Again, the food cost thing. I am going to try and play around with this after the weekend, but if anyone has any suggestions in the meantime, please let me know. BTW, thanks for the book and the forum, I have been waiting for something like this for so long!