Molecular Caprese Salad - my first sphere

As some of you have noticed, I have started a journey into the wonderful world of modernist cuisine. From my studies so far I have reached a temporary conclusion that Modernist Cuisine is all about

- Using science to optimise food, often getting rid of traditionally well known truths and using new ingredients and techniques, for instance sous vide.

- Finding new and unusual, but magnificent flavour pairings. Like chocolate and caviar.

- Having fun with new textures and serving possibly well known food in new ways. This bullet is closely related to what is known as molecular gastronomy which is perhaps what many people think of when (or if) they think about modernist cuisine. This is much of what Ferran Adrià did in his legendary, but now closed, restaurant elBulli. This is amongst other things about taking familiar tastes and adding elements of fun and surprise. That is what I tried to do for my first molecular project.

One of the truly iconic and most simple dishes from Italy is the tomato and mozzarella or caprese salad. This is a simple salad from Capri consisting of tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, basil leaves and olive oil. So I wanted to do a new version of this, and I wanted it to work as an amuse bouche, a small mouthful before the first course. It had to contain the four ingredients, but I wanted to try out some new techniques I have read about.

Reverse Sphere Mozzarella

The first technique is spherification. This has become almost an icon for molecular gastronomy. The idea is that you take the food you want to serve, liquidize it and make it into a sphere contained in a thin gel membrane while the interior of the sphere is still liquid. The spheres may be small, like caviar, and they are then often called - caviar. For instance cured ham with melon caviar. Or they may be much bigger, perhaps the size of a table tennis ball. 

The technique utilises a reaction between an alginate and calcium. There are different ways of doing it, but basically you either mix the liquid food with sodium alginate and drip this into water containing calcium, or you have liquid food containing calcium that is dropped or otherwise submerged into water containing alginate. This second technique is called reverse spherification. In both cases, gel will form where the two solutions meet, and with a little luck (and skill), this will encapsulate your food.

I have tried this before without really having any luck. The ingredients need to be measured very accurately (you will need a scale that can measure down to 0.01 grams). In my previous attempts, I mainly ended up with goo floating in water. This time I decided to try out a recipe I found in my newest favourite website, http://www.molecularrecipes.com/. This fabulous site holds a wealth of information, tips and recipes for molecular gastronomy. So in there I found a recipe for reverse spherical mozzarella. 

http://www.molecularrecipes.com/spherification/reverse-spherical-mozzarellas/

This recipe uses the fact that mozzarella already contains calcium, so you do not need to add that. I bought a number of molecular ingredients a few years ago, but did not have much luck in using them then, but I still have them, so I went down to the basement and got out my box of alginate.

http://www.albertyferranadria.com/eng/texturas-spherification-algin.html

For those of you living in Norway, and especially in the Oslo area like me, ingredients like this (but not the same brand) can be bought at

http://sousvidenorge.no/

The shop is situated at Mathallen in Oslo, but they also ship to other parts of the country. They are my main supplier of stuff for this kind of cooking and also have sous vide equipment, knives and other kitchen utensils.

I got two packets of mozzarella, kept the water they were packaged in, shredded the cheese and put it in my blender with the water and cream. This was blended into something resembling very heavy cream. I added salt and put it in the fridge.

Now for the alginate bath. I weighted up 7.5 grams of Algin and dissolved into to 1.5 litres of water using my immersion blender. This is when I read that the solution should be left in the fridge for 24 hours before use for best results. Oh, well. I let it have about two hours and hoped it worked. 

Using a round measuring spoon, I carefully filled it with mozzarella cream and even more carefully released into the alginate solution while holding my breath. It kept its shape beautifully, and soon I had a number of spheres floating around in there. It is important that the entire sphere is covered with the alginate solution, so I carefully waved some on top of the ones that were not quite submerged. After 12 minutes I carefully took them out using a draining spoon and placed them in plain water to rinse. These babies are very delicate and fragile, so they need to be handled with the outmost care.

Spheres: DONE. Easy.

Powdered tomato

Tomato is an important taste in the caprese salad. My plan is to add tomatoes as a powder sprinkled on the mozzarella sphere. To powder tomatoes you have to dry them and then crush them. Turning to page 312 in volume three of Modernist Cuisine, I see that the drying stage may be accomplished in the microwave oven. According to the book, low power for 30-40 minutes should do the trick. The lowest power on my micro wave is 90 Watts. 

I washed, halfed, de-seeded and finely choped three tomatoes. As described in the book I also tried to squeeze out some moisture from the pulp before spreading it out thinly on a plate covered with parchment paper and placing it in the microwave oven.

After 35 minutes I checked in on it, but the tomatoes werre still quite moist, so I set the power up to 350 Watts and left them for another 20 minutes. Still much of it was a bit moist, but now some of the thinner bits were getting very dark.

I don't know why this did not seem to work properly, but I ended up setting my ordinary oven to 80 degrees with the fan on and placing the tomatoes in there for another 20 minutes. After this they were completely dry and I could crush them in my mortar. 

My main wish for Christmas this year is a dehydrator. I would really like to start experimenting more with different textures, and having a crunchy texture together with soft textures have a great effect. I have been looking at the Excalibur dehydrator (http://sousvidenorge.no/butikk/maskiner/torkeskap) and I think I just need one. So, anyone near me, take a note of that. :-)

Anyway, at last I have my tomato powder ready. The taste is really nice and condensed. I have not crushed all of it to a fine powder as I also like the slightly larger, crunchy bits.

Tomato powder: DONE

Crisp basil leaves

Basil is the third of the main ingredients in the salad. I want my basil to be crisp. Also on page 312 in volume three of Modernist Cuisine is a way to dry or fry herbs in the micro wave. You just oil a plate (according to the book you should use plastic wrap on top of the plate, probably to be able to take the leaves off easier afterwards, but I did not do that), place the leaves on top and brush the leaves with oil as well. Microvave at 600W (Mine was set to 650) for 4 minutes or until crisp, checking every 1,5 minutes to prevent burning. After a little more than three minutes the leaves were nice and crisp and I placeed them on paper towel to dry off excess oil.

Crisp basil leaves: DONE

Crunchy olive oil

As an added element I wanted to try out this recipe I found on molecularrecepies.com:

http://www.molecularrecipes.com/transformation/oil-crumbs/

Maltodextrin is a starch that is slightly sweet. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltodextrin

It turns out that when you mix maltodextrin with fat, you can "dehydrate" the fat or oil and make it into a dry substance. This youtube video shows this in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5TToltpSUM

Now, both the recipe and the youtube video calls for tapioca maltodextrin, but according to the wikipedia entry above, it is most often made from corn or wheat. I got my malto from my local retailer (http://sousvidenorge.no/), and it does not say anywhere what it is made from. What I do know is that it behaved differently than in the recipe and video, so it is probably a different type. The recipe calls for 80 grams of oil and 25 grams of maltodextrin. After whipping this for a couple of minutes, it should turn crumbly.

Mine was a wet goo. I actually had to add 125 grams of the stuff, and even then it was like slightly dry tooth paste. But I found that if I had that in a skillet and fried it while chopping it up, it would dry into something resembling what was in the picture. I see in the comments to the recipe that Chef Ivar has found the same to be true. He used 125 grams. And Ivar is a Norwegian name, so he is probably using the same supplier as I am. I have, however, found a source for tapioca malto here:

http://www.modernistpantry.com/tapioca-maltodextrin.html

and they can ship world wide, so I will be ordering some (and I see they other cool stuff as well...). I also see from the video that he starts with the malto in a food processor and adds oil gradually. I chucked all of the malto into the oil and whisked by hand. That may make a difference. 

Also, according to both recipe and video, the crumbles (or powder if you make it into that) should melt back to oil once you have it in your mouth. Mine turns to a fudge like consistency with the properties of glue. Not quite successful. I need to research this a bit more.

Crunchy olive oil: DONEish. Almost. 

Reverse sphere mozzarella with tomato powder, crispy basil leaf and crunchy olive oil

So now all my elements are done. I got a set of those nice spoons that you can use to serve up amuse bouches just like in the restaurants and put one mozzarella sphere in a spoon. I sprinkled tomato powder on it using a small sieve, added one basil leaf and spread some crunchy (or actually chewy) lumps of oil around it all. Looked good and also tasted quite well. First you get an explosion of mozzarella, then you get some nice tomato flavours and basil. Nice.