Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Martini.. Half hot half cold

Molecular Mixology



A good way to understand food, its too much of chemistry and too much of confusing, no wonder I discontinued Bio Chemistry after forty five days of class, and I was lucky enough to learn what I loved. To end the Molecular Gastronomy, I would like to start with a cocktail, because I have always been fond of drinking, and today behind the bar molecular mixology is becoming popular, a new career BAR CHEMIST, thanks to Ron a leading bar tender in India for his views on molecular mixology. The main objective is to turn cocktails in to papers, foams, gels, and powders. Where you no longer drink a cocktail
Many cocktail has fake garnish, like fake caviars or fake strawberries, but at the end garnish is all about eye appeal and presentation. And nothing wrong with fake caviar or strawberries. In molecular mixology syringe and needles replaces shakers and stirrers, unlike molecular gastronomy where you try to understand what happens when foods are mixed, baked, whipped, fried, sautéed in limejuice, and so forth. And It shows, for example, how the 451 classical French sauces break down into 23 distinct types. the creation and pairing of billions of novel, potentially tasty dishes. To demonstrate how, This randomly generated a formula describing the physical microstructure of a previously nonexistent dish and the formula for boiling an EGG .in mixology its very few chemicals …. Sodium Alginate, liquid nitrogen etc. . .
Sodium Alginate a natural product with the chemical formula Na C6 H7 O6, is derived from the cell walls of brown algae. It is used in the food industry as a thickener, to increase the viscosity of liquids and as an emulsifier. The use of sodium alginate in the restaurant industry was first introduced by Ferran Adria who created the concept of spheres/pearls in his world famous restaurant ElBulli in 2003. The idea being that a liquid is thickened with sodium alginate and submerged in a bath of calcium chloride to create spheres, also know as the process of spherification.. It can be applied in other areas of cooking, for example in thickening sauces and creating gels. Unlike gelatin you can heat/cook your sauce or gel without it melting and becoming liquid. Used as an emulsifying agent and to increase viscosity, sodium alginate helps suspend particles within a solution, for example vanilla bean in a pannacotta will remain mixed throughout the mixture instead of sinking to the base of the finished product blah blah blah blah blah… its more chemistry …let it make more simple
(Sodium alginate is mixed with any liquid/juices and the mixture is piped in small quantities into a bowl containing water and calcium chloride, chemically, the piped liquid mixture becomes soft/hard/semi hard balls as it gets into the bowl containing water and calcium chloride, and you strain the water to get small balls, fake caviar)
A talented bartender would have a handle on the specific gravities of different liquors so he could layer them one on top of another to make a pina colada, and imagine a cocktail which is solid until you take it to your mouth, and unsweetened mojito decanted from a cocktail shaker into a glass filled with cotton candy that immediately dissipates into and sweetens the drink. However, its very much important for the cocktail and molecular mixology to meet the present need, when one gets, tired enough with fake caviar and frozen Cosmo with liquid nitrogen, one will tip and fall into something better.

2 comments:

ranji said...

Dear Chef,
no wonder,There might be any taste, texture, aroma, consistency....etc.But one thing u should remember is..if a person av any Cocktail it should lead his life happy atleast 4 an hour....so expecting some more recipes of cocktail which leads life happy for a day..
"Expecting more from you" Chef Chintu
Reg,
RANjith

Big Mouse World said...

Nice blog thhanks for posting