Today's creation is a funny one to make - a mango yogurt display that looks just like an egg! I had a few issues making the "yolk" but overall, this one is pretty easy.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup milk
2/3 cup vanilla yogurt
2 mangos
2 tablespoons sugar
1 packet Agar Agar
1/2 teaspoon Calcium Lactate
1 packet Sodium Alginate
Immersion blender
Step 1: Make the alginate bath
As usual, mix 2 cups water and 1 packet alginate with your immersion blender, then place in the fridge at least fifteen minutes.
Step 2: Prepare the "egg white"
Heat 1/2 cup milk with one packet of Agar Agar and bring to a boil. I burned my milk, which didn't ruin anything, but did give it a slight toasted flavor. The milk never came to a very strong boil - I think you can consider it boiling when it has a thin layer of bubbles.
Step 3: Pour the whites
Immediately mix the milk into 2/3 cup of vanilla yogurt. Stir thoroughly and then pour a thin circular layer onto a plate. Wait five or ten seconds, then pour a slightly smaller circular layer over the original circle.
*Do not wait too long to do this! I was messing around taking pictures and my yogurt mixture got significantly thicker in the minute or so between adding the milk and pouring. You want to pour it out asap for a smooth looking white.
Then put the plate in the fridge for 15 minutes.
Step 4: Prepare the "yolk"
Dice up mangos - you need 1 and a quater cups of mango puree. This ended up being about a mango and a half. I pureed my mangos in my magic bullet, then measured the puree, then put the appropriate amount back in the blender. Then, add 2 tablespoons sugar and a half teaspoon calcium lactate. I would fudge and add a bit extra calcium lactate - my yolks weren't as solid as I would have preferred.
Step 5: Make the yolks
Using a tablespoon, drop the mango mixture into the alginate bath. Let sit at least 3 minutes (I would try 5) and stir occasionally. Then, pick up the yolks using the tablespoon (mine kept breaking with the slotted spoon) and transfer to a rinsing bath of water.
Take your plate out of the fridge and plate the yolks on top of the yogurt whites. The whites have a texture that feels almost exactly like a real egg white and the yolks look just like real egg yolks. I had a tiny bit of trouble getting my yolks to hold their shape when out of the water, but I think a bit of extra calcium lactate and some extra time in the bath would remedy that.
Voila - looks just like an egg! I have no idea what you would do with something like this, but it is kind of funny :)
For Day 6, I made Mint Caviar. This stuff looks REALLY REALLY COOL. However, I want to warn you that it is surprisingly not very flavorful. It doesn't taste bad, but I used creme de menthe and it really didn't taste minty at all. If you make caviar of any kind, I would make it with the intention of a cool garnishment, but don't expect it to impart much flavor.
Ingredients:
1/3 cup creme de menthe (or whatever liquid you want to use)
2 packets Sodium Alginate
1 packet Calcium Lactate
Dropper
Cheesecloth/mesh strainer
Step 1: Make Alginate Syrup
Add 2 packets of Sodium Alginate to 1 and 1/4 cups of warm water. Mix using an immersion blender, then pour into a saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil, let boil about 1 minute, then remove from heat and let cool for ten minutes.
*Note, to clean my immersion blender (the alginate solution gets really sticky) I soak it in warm water and soap and change the water two or three times.
Step 2: Make Mint Syrup
Mix together 1/3 cup alginate syrup and 1/3 cup creme de menthe. You will have leftover syrup - feel free to mix with other liquids (I think alcohol would be the safest bet) in a 1 to 1 ratio. However, I got REALLY sick of dropping in the small little balls, so keep that in mind. It takes forever.
Step 3: Make Calcium bath
Add one packet Calcium Lactate to 4 cups lukewarm water. Mix thoroughly.
Step 4: Dropper!
Fill up a dropper with the mint mixture and dropper into the calcium bath. This takes a VERY long time! However, keep dropping them in until you have the amount of caviar that you want. Stir periodically or the caviar will get a weird little tail.
Step 5: Strain
I used a cheesecloth to separate the caviar from the water and this worked well. It you have a mesh strainer, this would also work. The holes in a slotted spoon were too large, so this would not work. *Note I used to think cheesecloth was intimidating - it sounds so fancy! Buy it. It costs like $2 and it is totally worth it.
Step 6: Enjoy your awesome looking creation! I ate mine over chocolate ice cream. These would look cool over basically anything, and I also think they would look great in cocktails (mint in a mojito would be fantastic).
You can pick these up and roll them between your fingers. They are very sturdy little balls (they feel like small salmon eggs you use for fishing).
Well Day Five was a pretty big failure when it comes to Thing A Day. I really wanted to post something, but I woke up and went to a friend's house to help prepare food for the Super Bowl. She made queso dip, lil weenies, and football brownies. I made a mexican chicken pizza and an Italian sausage pizza. Everything was delicious and turned out great!
The Super Bowl was okay - I didn't drink and I don't find football very interesting, not to mention the commercials weren't all that great. I did manage to fall asleep during the last quarter, so it is good to know it isn't just the alcohol that makes me sleepy during football :)
I rode to the party with my friends, so I didn't get home until 10:30, which gave me no time for Thing A Day. Today, to make up for it, I made two things.
Day Five's designated recipe was for Lychee Cubes.
These did NOT turn out, but I think the basic theory would work for liquid spheres with something solid in the middle. I will explain how I made them, because I really think there were just a few simple errors and these would be pretty easy to fix.
Ingredients:
One can Lychees (or any fruit packed in syrup)
One packet Sodium Alginate
1/2 teaspoon Calcium Lactate
Utensils:
Immersion blender
silicon baking tray (preferrably small circular holes!)
Instructions:
Step 1: Make the alginate bath
This is your standard alginate bath - 2 cups water and 1 packet Sodium Alginate. Mix with an immersion blender and place in fridge for (at least) fifteen minutes. Note as you read the recipe farther, I would recommend freezing the other portion overnight. Therefore, you can probably make this bath the next day.
Step 2: Prepare Lychee syrup
Add half teaspoon Calcium Lactate to 1/2 cup canned Lychee syrup. Mix thoroughly - I had a tough time getting it mixed completely. Keep stirring until it is!
Step 3: Cut Lychees
Cut the solid pieces of lychee into small bits
Step 4: Pour into silicon tray
Pour the prepared Lychee syrup into the silicon tray. I could not find a circular tray anywhere, and I think this would work way better with a circular tray, rather than large squares. Do not fill the tray completely or it will spill everywhere.
Add the solid bits of lychee evenly into each spot.
Then, place on a baking tray (the silicon tray will bend if you don't) and freeze.
I did NOT let mine freeze long enough. Ideally, freeze them overnight.
Step 5: Alginate bath
Pop out the lychee squares and let soak in the alginate bath for 3 minutes, then put in a rinsing bath (water).
My problem here was I put too many cubes into one bath, and they all stuck together and made a big mess. Use a big bowl and make sure the cubes are not touching.
I think this has the potential to be really cool - essentially you can make spheres/cubes that are liquid with something solid in the middle. That would look really awesome. With a few tweaks (freeze completely and don't let them touch in the bath) I think it would be pretty easy. When I did it, they all stuck together and turned into a big gross blob!
Day 4's inspiration came from an overwhelming amount of oranges and a love of goat cheese. I was looking for recipes that called for oranges because I have a ton of them - a couple days after buying a massive bag of orange's from Costco, I also got a shipment of 12 oranges from my Aunt in Florida. Love having so many oranges, but I have to get creative.
I found a recipe for "Orange, Roasted Beet, and Arugula Salad" in my cookbook, Fresh Flavor Fast from Martha Stewart (thanks Mom!).
As a side note, this cookbook is rated 4.5 stars on Amazon and I absolutely love it. It has really simple ingredients that make really delicious, impressive food.
Goat Cheese Globes
Ingredients
1.7 oz of goat cheese (I used garlic and herb)
1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon milk
1 packet (20g) Sodium Alginate
1/2 teaspoon Calcium Lactate
Special Utensils
Slotted spoon
Immersion blender
Step 1: Make Alginate Bath
Add one packet (20g) of Sodium Alginate to 2 cups of cool water. Mix with your immersion blender (or put into a standard blender) and let sit in the fridge for 15 minutes.
Step 2: Prepare Goat Cheese
Add 50g of goat cheese to a bowl. I used a converter and this is 1.7 ounces. The standard goat cheese log is 4 oz, so I tried to use about a little less than half of the log. Then, add 1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon of milk. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon of Calcium Lactate over the milk/goat cheese, and stir together thoroughly.
*Note that my globes were not runny at all. I had to use my finger to push the mixture out of the teaspoon. This made the effect much less impressive because they were more blobs than dollops. Without a bit of fluidity, they didn't take on a very cool shape. I am not sure how to remedy this - maybe more milk and more calcium lactate?
Step 3: Make the Globes
Using a half teaspoon, scoop up the goat cheese mixture and drop by the spoonful into the alginate solution. Note that I thought a half teaspoon ended up being fairly large. If I made these again, I would use a quarter teaspoon. Let sit for three minutes, then give the globes a rinsing bath in a bowl full of cool water.
Goat cheese globes were far from the coolest thing to make. These were really easy, but just not very impressive. Goat cheese can already form crumbles on their own, and without any sort of fancy shape, I could have had a similiar result by just slicing the cheese. I did like have more of a fluid cheese on my salad though.
Orange, Beet and Arugula Salad- serves four as a starter salad
Ingredients:
Salad
1 large beet - I got canned shoestring beets to make it much easier
2 oranges
2 bunches arugula
Goat cheese - or make goat cheese globes, above (I used almost half of a standard 4 oz goat cheese log). Choose your favorite flavor
Cauliflower - optional
Dressing
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablesppon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
Juice from the oranges
Step 1: Prepare the beet
If you don't want to use canned beets, you need to cook your beet. To do so, preheat the oven to 450*F. Wrap the beet tightly in aluminum foil and place on a baking sheet. Cook until tender when pierced with a knife (about 45-50 minutes). When cool enough to handle, peel (rub off the skin with a paper towel so your hands don't stain) and cut into wedges. That seemed like a lot of work for just one beet, which is why I choose to use canned beets. They come presliced, so you just open the can and you are good to go.
Step 2: Prepare oranges
Over a bowl, cut the ends off both the oranges. Then cut in half again (see picture). After that, peel and wedge the oranges. Squeze the juice out of the ends of the orange that you cut off. You are trying to salvage some orange juice for the dressing.
Step 3: Make the dressing
Mix together oil, vinegar, mustard, and orange juice. Add salt and pepper to taste, then whisk to combine (I just put mine in a little container and shake). If you do not have enough orange juice, just squeeze the juice out of a few of your orange wedges.
Step 4: Assemble Salad
Toss arugula with dressing from Step 3. Divide among four plates (or two if this is a dinner salad), top with beets, oranges, and goat cheese globes, plus cauliflower if using.
For Day Three of Thing A Day, I decided to continue on the road of spherification and attempt to make Yogurt Spheres. YOGURT SPHERES WERE A RAGING SUCCESS! Seriously, these should be marked #1 on the beginners scale, and they are a total bang for your buck. Cheap ingredients, very simple to make, and really cool looking.
Grocery Store Ingredients:
2/3 cup of your favorite flavor of yogurt
If serving in a fruit salad, then you also need a variety of your favorite fruits
Additives:
1 packet Sodium Alginate (20g)
1/2 teaspoon Calcium Lactate
Special utensils:
Immersion blender/normal blender probably works
Slotted spoon
Step 1: Make your Alginate bath
You may be getting used to this now, as an Alginate bath is the basic step for any spherification recipe. Add 1 packet (20g) of Sodium Alginate to two cups of water and mix with your immersion blender. Then, place in the fridge for fifteen minutes.
Step 2: Prepare your yogurt
Add 1/2 teaspoon Calcium Lactate to 2/3 cup of yogurt. I was heavy handed with the calcium lactate, as I think this may have been my issue yesterday. I also made sure to mix very thoroughly - if the additive is not mixed in properly, then it will not work well.
Step 3: Make your spheres
Now that things were working properly, making the spheres was a cinch. I seriously had *none* of the problems that I had last time. When placed in the alginate bath, the yogurt stayed put. It didn't matter if it had been in the bath 10 seconds or 3 minutes. As soon as it was dropped into the bath, it was like the yogurt immediately had a coating around it and it wasn't leaking out everywhere like the custard did.
Using a teaspoon, drop balls of yogurt into the alginate bath. Because of the"shell" around the yogurt, I didn't have to worry about dropping them near each other and them sticking together. Once they had a few seconds to set, they didn't attach to their neighboring spheres.
The only thing to be careful about is as you drop them in. If you are a messy dropper or drop too slowly, two or more balls could form and stick together.
Let the spheres sit in the bath for 3 minutes, then transfer to a bowl of water. Rinse (swirl the spoon around) and remove from the water. I did this in batches and probably had to clear out my alginate bath about 5 times to add more spheres in.
DONE!
So, so, so easy!
I am not sure about storage, but I think these will be able to be stored in a normal tupperware container. I will let you know if I run into any problems, but here is the finished product.
They are so awesome. You can pick each one up, roll it around, drop it into the water, and it won't even break. One thing to be careful of is getting them out of this container though. I had to squeeze a bit and a few broke, so I would use a spoon to get them out of the container they reside in.
Here is how I ate my spheres, atop a delicious fruit salad.
Another thing to note is the texture of these takes a bit of getting used to, if you are expecting to just pop them in your mouth. They taste fine, but there is a definite alginate coating that forms a shell around them. If you eat them in something like a fruit salad, granola, etc. they taste great and the shell isn't even noticeable. Just wanted to provide some forewarning that it might take getting used to if you wanted to serve this solo.
Day Two of Thing a Day was a total fail! However, I still tried to make something, and I am also going to make some granola tonight, so I think it still counts as a creative day.
Because my recipe wasn't successful, I will just give you a quick rundown of what I tried to do.
Step 1: Make custard
Buy a box of Jello custard mix, add one and a half cups milk, half a cup of cream, one beaten egg yolk, cinnamon, ground cloves and nutmeg. Bring to a boil, then let cool in the fridge for at least an hour.
Mistake #1: I think I should have used some sort of liquid custard from the looks of the recipe (no idea where to get a liquid custard? Maybe the custard mixture without letting it set?). My custard was too chunky.
However, the custard was absolutely delicious, so even though the raviolis were a disaster, I am still very much enjoying the custard.
Step 2: Make the alginate bath.
Add one packet sodium alginate to two cups of water. Mix with an immersion blender, then put in the fridge for 15 minutes.
This is pretty hard to mess up.
Step 3: Prepare the custard.
Pour 1/4 cup of milk into a bowl. Add 1/2 teaspoon calcium lactate and stir well. Add 2/3 cup of custard.
Mistake #2: My custard looked too think, so I added a few more splashes of milk. Maybe a little more than a few...apparently proportions matter.
Step 4: Make pearls.
Using a teaspoon, dollop the custard mixture into the alginate bath. Let pearls sit for three minutes, then remove with a slotted spoon and rinse in a rinsing bath (water).
Mistake #3: Do not overload the alginate bath. Pearls will stick together and as you try to separate them, they will break. Then, you will have a gellish/hellish mess of custard that is impossible to separate from the alginate solution, forcing you to either discard your entire alginate bath or attempt to fish out the custard strands (the latter method I have deemed impossible and the former is a waste of additives).
Step 5: Say screw it and drink your custard out of the bowl. Tomorrow, attempt yogurt pearls instead - yogurt starts out a little thinner. It has got to work!
So basically, the custard pearls acted like vampires that can't see the light, except they were pearls that couldn't emerge from the water. Each time, I thought I had it figured out and as soon as the pearls came above the waterline, I could see a hole that suddenly appeared in the "shell" and the custard would ooze everywhere.
Here are some things I tried that didn't fix it:
1) Do only a few pearls at a time to make sure they don't stick together and then break because they had to be separated
2) Do smaller pearls to make them easier to grab out of the water - I tried both a half teaspoon and a dropper size. Negative results for both. Also of note was the smaller the pearls were, the worse they tasted because they were covered in a noticeable alginate slime.
3) Let pearls sit in water for twice as long - 6 minutes instead of 3 minutes. This made no apparent difference.
I have no idea what went wrong, but that is part of the fun of it. To be honest, I didn't think yesterday's recipe would go well at all and I was shocked at how easy it was.
Now that I know it doesn't always work, it will be more interesting when I try to make it work with yogurt tomorrow. I wonder if there will be any other tweaks to make it successful. Tim Gunn will be standing over my shoulder - "Make It Work."
On a similiar note, I think week one is going to be all spherification recipes. Just so we are all on the same page, spherification is "the process of shaping liquid into spheres which visually and texturally resemble caviar." The technique dates back to the 1950's, so it isn't anything too futuristic.
Wish me better luck tomorrow!
For my first attempt at molecular gastronomy, I wanted to try out a variety of my additives, so I decided to make Coconut Almond Squares which use three different additives.
Grocery store ingredients:
- Coconut Milk - you can find this in the Asian section of your grocery store, in a can. I recommend avoiding the light kind. I used the light kind and it could have used more richness.
- Amaretto - this is a liquer from the alcohol store, near the Schnapps
- Vanilla extract, to taste
- Optional:
Additives:
*Note I got all my additives from a Molecule-R kit, which I highly recommend if you are just starting out. The recipe calls for packets, so I converted the packet weights into grams. I have done some googling and while I haven't had to purchase any additional additives yet, Amazon seems to be a good source for addictives.
- Agar Agar (20g/1packet)
- Sodium Alginate (40g/2 packets)
- Calcium Lactate (50g/1 packet)
Special utensils:
- Slotted spoon
- Silicone baking tray with boxes (or whatever shape you want) - I used a brownie bites tray from Fred Meyer
- Immersion blender
- Normal blender
- You can probably get away with one or the other, if you do not have both a normal and immersion blender
Step 1: Make the Coconut Squares
First, mix together 1 cup of coconut milk, 20g/1 packet of Agar-Agar, and vanilla to taste - I added a teaspoon or two. Add cinnamon and nutmeg to taste.
Bring ingredients to a boil and stir for a minute or so.
Let cool for a few minutes, then place mixture in a blender and blend until throughly mixed. I used a Magic Bullet for this. Pour mixture into silicone baking tray. My mixture made 11 squares. Then, set tray in refrigerator for thirty minutes - the coconut squares are finished.
Step 2: Alginate Syrup
Fill a bowl with 1 and 1/4 cups of water.
Add two packets of Sodium Alginate. Use your immersion blender to mix thoroughly.
This mixture turns into the texture of hair gel. VERY thick and very hard to wash off, so be careful you don't spill everywhere like I did. It is a PAIN to clean up.
Once mixed, bring the alginate syrup to a boil and stir for about one minute. Remove from heat and set aside for 10 minutes to cool.
Step 3: Amaretto + Alginate Syrup
Measure out 1/4 cup of your Alginate Syrup. The rest is leftover, which I stored in a tupperware container.
Add 1/4 cup Amaretto to the 1/4 cup of Alginate Syrup, and stir to mix.
Step Four: Calcium Lactate Bath and Rinsing Bath
Prepare two bowls. In one, mix together four cups of water and one packet of Calcium Lactate. In the other, fill with lukewarm water - this is your rinsing bath.
Step Five: Amaretto Pearls
Using a teaspoon, scoop out a teaspoon of the Amaretto mixture. Lower the teaspoon to the Calcium Lactate bath, dunk under, and turn the teaspoon over to release the mixture into the Calcium Lactate. I found this worked best when I dumped the Amaretto swiftly, rather than taking too much time (if you take too long to pour it out, it turns into a strand). You will get the hang of this - you do not have to be as gentle as you would imagine.
Pour all the your mixture into the Calcium Lactate bath, one teaspoon at a time.
When done, use a slotted spoon to transfer your pearls from the Calcium Lactate bath into the rinsing bath. Stir to rinse well.
Then, remove the pearls from the water bath. Again, you do not have to be as gentle as you would think. I popped a couple, but I was being pretty careless.
Also note I put my pearls together on a plate, and this was actually the hardest part - it was difficult to separate and get them off the plate. You might want to think of a better storage method, but I don't have one yet.
Look how awesome they look! They feel like the texture of a fish oil pill. The first one is an example of what happens if you take to long to pour out the teaspoon into the Calcium Lactate bath.
I made about 20 pearls.
Step Six: Assemble and Eat
When ready to eat, carefully pop out your Coconut Squares - this is when you will be thankful you used a silicone baking tray. If you aren't careful, they can break, but you don't have to be too gentle. The Coconut Squares have the texture of a firm tofu or an airy flan.
Then, place your pearls on top of the Coconut Squares, sprinkle cinnamon and/or sugar over the top, and Voila! Impress all your friends! Or just impress your self...either way, it is still pretty awesome. I can't believe it actually worked. The pearls look like little eggs yolks.
Note that when pierced with a fork (with a bit of pressure) the pearls pop and liquid spills out. Also, don't be nervous. I was using really vague instructions and it still turned out just fine. These are surprisingly easy.
THANKS MOM AND DAD FOR THE AMAZING PRESENT!
