Once upon a time, when we first heard about the crazy culinary shenangans of chefs such as Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal and Grant Achatz, it seemed that we would have to book flights to Spain, London or Chicago in order to see these foams, sponges and spheres ourselves. Then, with the advance of TV shows such as Masterchef and Top Chef, most home cooks and food-lovers have realised that such techniques were not only possible to recreate at home, but maybe not even that difficult. To help those who aspire to wow friends with some neat molecular cuisine at their next dinner party, here is our gift guide dedicated to molecular cooking at home.
The Cookbook
A logical place to start is with the fundamentals, and there is no more comprehensive guide to molecular gastronomy than this tome by Nathan Myhrvold. Former Chief Technological Officer at Microsoft and an inventor who holds numerous patents as well has French master chef, Myhrvold wrote the definitive book on molecular gastronomy, at a whopping 2,438 pages.
Using his vast knowledge learned during his various degrees in mathematics, geophysics and space physics, Myhrvold and his partners Chris Young and Maxime Bilet covers everything from how water affects almost all aspects of cooking to a whole volume on foams, gels, emulsions and thickeners. With amazing photographs and illustrations as well as actually approachable recipes, this encyclopedia is as entertaining on the coffee table as it is useful in the kitchen.
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is available on Amazon.
The Sous Vide Machine
Cooking sous vide, French for under vacuum, is one of the most important inventions of modern cooking in the past decade. An ingredient, usually a protein, is placed inside an vacuum-sealed pouch and cooked in a water bath of very low temperature for a prolonged period of time, anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. An advantage of cooking sous vide is that all the juices that can leak out of a protein when cooked normally (grilled, poached or sautéed) are retained, theoretically making the meat more intensely flavourful. Sous vide is most commonly used for steaks, salmon and eggs.
One of the leading brands for sous vide machines (essentially a temperature controlled water bath that constantly circulates water) is Polyscience and for beginners, the Sous Vide Cooking Kit with a 64-page guide written by Thomas Keller is perfect (model no: 7306AC1B9). The guide includes sections on food safety, as well as recipes and guidance towards the equipment and when you're ready to start, the kit includes an 18 litre cooking tank, a thermal circulator as well as a controller with LED display and three temperature preset buttons.
Polyscience's Hong Kong distributor is Catering Depot. For more information, visit www.cateringdepot.com or call +852 2690-3569.
The Spheres
Now that you've read about the basics, played around with cooking proteins sous vide, it's time to enter the next stage of molecular cooking: turning the expected into the unexpected. Ferran Adria is considered by many as one of the heroes of molecular gastronomy and together with his brother Albert, has created a Texturas Mini Sferificacion kit for the home cook. Containing key ingredients such as algin and agar, the kit both teaches and allow you to create keystones of molecular gastronomy such as liquid jellies, perfect spheres of vegetable essence and allows you to make caviar out of pretty much anything you fancy.
The Minikit Sferificacion is available here. (http://www.mcc-shop.com/Minikit-Sferificacion-Ferran-Adria-elBulli/en)
The Ice Cream
Creating savoury or otherwise unusual ice cream, sorbets and foam is a standard technique in molecular cuisine and while most ice cream makers are large, unwieldy machines that can be difficult to use, the Pacojet is a compact food processor that not only minces and purees at a super high speed, but also makes pate, mousse, sorbet or ice cream out of freshly frozen products. Now home cooks too, can whip up bacon or foie gras ice cream like it's the most natural thing in the world.
Pacojet is distributed by Oriental Engineering in Hong Kong. Please visit http://www.oequip.com or call +852 2333-0181.
