Note: This has been languishing in rough draft Hell for over a week. I apologize. I got swamped with grading and my experimentation is beginning to lap my writing. As classes end next week, I imagine I’ll be getting back to a more sane schedule.

Following the previous caviar outing, I decided to step into the kitchen, once again, to see if I could further perfect the caviar making technique (and hopefully arrive at a general methodology) for producing this stuff. Additionally, in the course of browsing the internet (and watching television) for caviar information, I came across some useful tidbits.

First, having settled on a 1% by weight alginate solution, I set out to try lower percentages to see what the lowest ratio I could get would be. I’m primarily interested in experimenting with this, as sodium alginate is rather expensive ($21 per pound from L’Epicerie). So, I whipped up a 1% calcium chloride bath and a 0.5% solution of sodium alginate and sugar water. This resulted in caviar that were balled but seemed noticeably more “fragile”. I’m not entirely sure that this would be a valid ratio for production environments, but it does appear to work. One of the concerns I have, though, is that several posters on the eGullet Forums have mentioned that the ratio of alginate to calcium chloride depends on the pH of the base being gelled. I can’t find any confirmation of this (beyond anecdotal evidence) and, as I’m now reading Herve This’s (rather awful) book on molecular gastronomy, I’m disinclined to trust this sort of evidence. Nonetheless, this may prove to be true and I would be wary of using really dilute sodium alginate solutions in the future. 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After the Xantham Gum explorations, I decided to start toying with the instant classic technique of making caviar. Everyone either eventually starts playing with ravioli or caviar early on in the process of fooling around with food chemistry, because it’s just so shockingly cool.

Anyway, when I first started working on this, I was still trying to use volume based measurements to work out the magic ratio to make small spherical pellets any liquid. Also, I’d read some brief mentions that reversing the typical formula of sodium alginate plus ingredient into a calcium chloride and water bath yielded better results. (more…)

This blog is going into production a little faster than I had anticipated due to the arrival of a shipment of chemicals and the inevitable playing around in the kitchen that results from having new toys. Nonetheless, I’m starting to have some problems with some of the availability of recipes for doing some of the more out-there future cooking suggested by the molecular gastronomy boosters.

My main problem is a lack of recipes in British measurements, as most of the formulas I’ve found are in metric and, more frustratingly, are articulated in terms of mass rather than volume. So, I set out the other day to see what I could discover using volume rather than mass. (more…)

More to come