For A's birthday, I gave him the most awesome present ever.
A molecular gastronomy kit!
(Well, we thought it was pretty awesome. But then again, we're kinda nerdy.)
It contained the chemicals and tools you need to make some of the more common molecular gastronomy foodstuffs.
We started with one that sounded easy - Honey Caviar.
But first, we needed something to eat it on. So I whipped up some homemade biscuits. They were just like Pillsbury Grands, but smaller (due to less-than-fresh baking powder). They were tasty, though!
Here are the ingredients for Honey Caviar. Cold vegetable oil , honey, agar agar, balsamic vinegar, water.
The secret ingredient is agar agar. We got to use a tool A is quite familiar with. What is agar agar? It is a gelatinous substance derived from a polysaccharide which comes from red algae. It's a gelling agent. You want something in gel form, grab some agar agar.
The key to getting the agar agar to work its magic is to heat it up. We dissolved it in water, then mixed it with the honey and balsamic vinegar and heated on the stove.
Once it's nice and hot, suck it up in the syringe. Then squeeze out drops into the cold oil. (We put the oil in the freezer.)
Once you've pearlized all the honey, move the spheres from the oil into a water bath to rinse them. (Slotted spoon conveniently provided in the kit.)
Stir them around to rinse, then remove them with the slotted spoon. You're done! Has science ever been so easy?
We put ours on the biscuits - delicious! Isn't it pretty?
We had tons of honey ready to become gellified, so we decided to try another experiment. We poured the honey mixture onto a plate and put it into the fridge.
A couple minutes later, we had honey sheets! A is demonstrating how sticky it was.
We used a knife to cut it into slices, then served on a biscuit.
A successful first attempt in the lab! I mean, kitchen. Right, we have a tiny kitchen, not a science laboratory. Too bad... imagine all the
