Day 11: Balsamic Pearls

Another easy recipe so I can get back on track! 

This principle should work for turning basically any liquid into a gel sphere.  To be clear, the gellification recipes (with Agar Agar) turn things into a solid, jello like substance.  The spherification recipes (with sodium alginate/calcium lactate) turn things in a sphere with a liquid middle.  Spherification recipes can have really cool results, but are harder to pull off and the spheres are usually larger.

Below is a gellification recipe.

To make balsamic pearls:
1) Fill a tall glass with olive oil and put in the fridge for 30 minutes.
2) When the oil is about five minutes from being done, boil 2/3 cup balsamic vinegar with one packat Agar Agar.
3) Using a dropper, drop the balsamic mixture into the cold olive oil.

4) When all the vinegar is dropped in, use a slotted spoon to transfer the spheres to a bowl of cold water and rinse.

Some notes:
*I placed cheesecloth over a bowl and poured my leftover olive oil into this to filter out any leftover pearls.  Then I reserved the olive oil - this would have been a big waste to throw away that much. I then used a filter to get the olive oil back into a bottle.

*I also used a cheesecloth to rinse my pearls.  After the first bath, I poured the bath over the cheesecloth and filtered out the pearls.  Then I put them in another bath and repeated this process once more. 

I am going to eat these in a tomato/mozzerella/basil salad.  Delicious!