Ameteur Avant Garde

[PurpleDingo99]

since our school is on a crazy system, weel be finishing finals tomorrow (not midterms.) as a result, we only have one class (8-10am.) Well, we were talking today about what we should do after 'school' tomorrow. my friend and I have been throwing around the idea of opening an avant garde restaurant out of highschool for a while now, so she suggested that we do some food lab (i think half as a joke.) Unless we get a better idea, weel probably do just that. Now, were going to try to think of some crazy stuff to try. I havnt seen anyone try raspberry (or pineapple) and beef empanadas, so i may give that a shot. Ill probably give some experimental ceviches a try, as well.

first, have you had any crazy, untested dishes pop into your head that you think i should try?

second, i have been trying to figure out how to make a new kind of 'stuffed' item for a while now. what i want is something that could be shaped like a taquito, be strong enough for a full stuffing, but have the texture of perhaps a baklava crust. i may go the other way with a double-think wonton dough, but i dont know about that. anyone have an idea/recipe?

[Shalmanese]

Do you have any agar, alginate or other funky chemicals on hand?

[PurpleDingo99]

Do you have any agar, alginate or other funky chemicals on hand?

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no, but i can get some. weel be going to the market first if we go through with it, anyways.

quite frankly, i dont remember what either do. agar is a superyeast or something if i remember right (which i probably dont.) What do you use them for/what do they do?

[Farmer Dave]

Short answer would be that agar is a gelantinizing agent using a carb called glose.

Longer answer:Agar is a compound in its own right. It is a polysaccharide found in the cell walls of some red algae and is unusual in containing sulfated galactose monomers. It requires nothing but extraction and purification to become agar, but is sometimes chemically modified into agarose for special applications. Agar added to media simply gels them into a convenient solid form.

Laminaria has various oddball polysaccharides like laminarin (a storage polysaccharide) and alginic acid (from cell walls). They are chemically different from agar and, to my knowledge, not widely used.

Gelatin is not a polysaccharide at all but a mixture of peptides derived from the structural protein collagen. Collagen is the major component of connective tissue, which is why gelatin is derived from animal by-products. As a protein gelatin has considerably different chemical properties from agar.

Welcome to the realm of molecular gastronomy.......

[NulloModo]

Forget about science for a while. If you are anything like me, thinking and calculating takes all of the fun out of cooking. Just play around with ingredients, make up stuff you _think_ will work, and see how it goes. If it bombs, well, it bombs, but maybe the result will be something else cool anyway. If it works, awesome, and the success is even greater because it wasn't calculated.

[RETREVR]

second, i have been trying to figure out how to make a new kind of 'stuffed' item for a while now. what i want is something that could be shaped like a taquito, be strong enough for a full stuffing, but have the texture of perhaps a baklava crust. i may go the other way with a double-think wonton dough, but i dont know about that. anyone have an idea/recipe?

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We used to make something like this in highschool. We used a superfine parchment for the wrapper. For the interior, most vegetables will work but we would use canibus most of the time.

Edited January 22, 2005 by RETREVR (log)