Spherification Attempt #3 (01/10/09)

I'm tired and just doing some work on this lovely Sunday evening. But I wanted to write to say that I may be nearing the end of my spherification career. I need success in both the formation of and the tasting of these culinary enigmas. For those of you too lazy (or important) to read the Attempt #1 posting, I remind all three of you reading that spherification is the process of submerging a tablespoon of puree of [insert food item] laced with a little sodium alginate (or calcic acid) in a bath of water (laced with the opposite of the alginate or the calcic) to create a sphere of liquid trapped in a very thin, gelaltin-like skin. It sounds weird, I know, but I've had them prepared by one of the top chefs on the planet, and they can be really fantastic and interesting.

Those of you who know me know that I have been very excited about achieving this feat in my humble apartment kitchen. I've talk to almost anyone who will listen to me about these damn spheres, and I've been dreaming of a neverending list of things that would be cool to "spherify." My first attempt yielded instant success in the process by which these little buggers are created. The olives were the perfect consistency, easy to form, and generally pretty difficult to screw up. But they did not taste very good because the olive flavor was crappy and way too strong. My second attempt, mentioned briefly in the New Year Blog, yielded a gelatinous blob when the strawberries I pureed failed to perform as anticipated. (Great site, though: http://www.foodrockz.com/)

On Saturday, in a brief space of time taken in the midst of cooking a huge leg of lamb and four other dishes for my 102-year-old grandmother (shout out, Oma!!!), I took on pea soup. I won't go into the recipe because I took it from this guy (http://www.hungryinhogtown.com/hungry_in_hogtown/2006/04/liquid_pea_ravi.html) and it was easy to follow. Peas, mint and water. A little salt. And, of course, the fun (all natural extracts) chemicals.

Look, it worked. As you can see above. It even looked really pretty. Shocking the peas (dumping them in an ice bath after a quick boil to stop them from cooking and preserve color) is a really great little trick. But the spheres were finicky in their formation. I'd say that only one in three created a presentable sphere, while the rest were better suited for Rorschach's patients. If not left long enough in the water bath, the skins couldn't hold the weight of the liquid. If left in just a little too long, they formed much tougher skins which are sort of weird in texture. So execution was a problem. This is much harder than the olives.

More importantly, however, it just didn't taste great. None of this stuff can be done warm (I don't think), so you're serving room temperature pea soup. Not a great start. Second, I could really taste the chemicals in the soup. It was almost like the soup had been made with really hard tap water (which it wasn't). The soup is supposed to be fresh - not taste like someone should label it with a "Mr. Yuck" sticker.

To be honest, pretty much everyone who has tried either my olive spheres or my pea soup spheres has reacted negatively. Not. So. Good. Al.

I don't know, man, they just don't taste good. It think that, assuming the formation of some decent looking spheres with a good thinkness of skin, a good pea recipe would go a long way to curing this. And it is possible that a longer bath in the clean water after the spherification process could make things a little less chemically. I'm not giving up yet. I'm just saying, I need some success in this pretty soon.