Strawberry "Ravioli"
This blog post was made possible by the generous support of my cyber-friend and fellow food blogger Julie—check out her blog—she rockz! Back in early April, Julie took her maiden voyage into the world of molecular gastronomy when she made apple pomegranate "caviar" with panna cotta. In her blog post about this maiden voyage, she noted that she had a ton of leftover sodium alginate and calcium chloride that she was willing to share. I couldn't resist such an offer, so I gave her my address and she promptly put some in the mail. It's taken me nearly two months to get around to playing with it . . . but I finally did yesterday.
Strawberries are in season and there are some sitting in my fridge, so I decided to make spherical strawberry "ravioli" based on this recipe for spherical mango ravioli . . . minus one ingredient . . . Citras . . . which I didn't/don't have on hand. I did a little research and learned that Citras is really only needed when attempting to spherify (is that a word?) highly acidic ingredients. Are strawberries so acidic that they require Citras for spherification? I don't know . . . apparently not . . . because I made the above-pictured strawberry "ravioli" without it. In addition to lacking Citras, I also lack a scale precise enough to measure fractions of grams. I've got a pretty sweet digital scale, but grams are its smallest unit of measurement and the recipe called for fractions of grams. I took my chances and rounded up.
As a first foray into spherification, I consider it to have been a success. Here's what I did. I blended 2g of sodium alginate with 250g of water using my immersion blender. The recipe called for 250g of mango puree, so I made 250g of strawberry puree. I threw a bunch of hulled strawberries into my food processor and pureed them, then added some sugar, then measured 250g of the stuff and added it to the sodium alginate/water mixture and blended it thoroughly. I then blended 5g of calcium chloride with 1000g of water. And I prepared a separate bath of ice-water. The final step was to drop several spoonfuls of the puree/alginate mixture into the calcium chloride bath, let it sit for two minutes, then move it to the ice-water rinse using a slotted spoon. Once rinsed, I set the "ravioli" on a towel and proceeded to make more.
I liked the results enough to do this again. I don't quite know how to describe the texture . . . they're gelatinous . . . but not so gelatinous as a jelly candy. I wish I were better with words! Next time, I'll use more sugar and perhaps a little less alginate. I actually made these before work yesterday and then brought a bunch into work with me. They were well received by my colleagues. I'm thinking they'd make a nice, refreshing starter course . . . maybe a dessert . . . but I'm thinking starter course. One colleague suggested a mint sauce and I think that's a great idea—strawberry "ravioli" with a mint "pesto." Stay tuned for more adventures with sodium alginate and calcium chloride. And thanks, again, to Julie for sharing!
Wow! What a great post! So interesting!
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Where did you get that Beautiful Platter?
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It was a gift from my awesome sister-in-law. I know you want it . . . but you can't have it!
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Nice. How gelled were they by the time you served them to co-workers?
By the way, although sodium alginate needs to be sheared into the water by blending, the calcium chloride can just be stirred in to dissolve.
The reason is that the sodium alginate, as with other, more familiar hydrocolloids like corn starch or flour, clumps when introduced to water. But sodium alginate does so much more severely than those. Basically, the particles on the outside of a lump of alginate powder come in contact with the water and immediately swell up and gel. Once they do that, all the particles inside the lump are then shielded from hydration. To counteract this phenomenon, we blend in the alginate, counting on the shear forces of the blender to break up all the lumps (just like whisking flour into a sauce).
Calcium chloride, on the other hand, is calcium salt, and it can be dissolved the same way you'd dissolve other salt. Just stir or whisk. That way, you save one iteration of blender-cleaning.
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Ya know . . . I'd read that the gelling is progressive, so spherified food should be served immediately . . . but the consistency/density didn't seem to change all that much over the hours that passed from the time I made them until the time that the last of them were eaten. Is this unusual? Thanks for the tip on stirring the calcium chloride . . . I'm always looking for efficiency-increasing, time-saving tips!
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What on earth are you doing out there in DC? I picture smoking test tubes in your kitchen and strawberries with legs walking around. Madness! But so beautiful! I'm WAY impressed.
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Yeah . . . it is a little mad-scientist-like, isn't it? My curiosity is infinite!
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You keep up this caliber of molecular gastronomy and Ferran Adria is gonna come recruit you himself.
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Awesome! I just came into possession of alginate and CaCl2 but I've yet to think of a perfect application for the caviar
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You did this before work! Amazing. If you're leaning to the savory side, I'm wondering if black pepper and balsamic would be good with those? I can't imagine what they taste like, but they sure look interesting.
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I'm fascinated. I recently took my first jaunt into the world of molecular gastronomy though the ingredients I used weren't nearly as exotic. I'm going to have to find some of this stuff.
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I'm super impressed! Nice job giving that a shot and that's so nice of Julie to share her ingredients. I hope to attempt something like this one day, just for the experience.
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i gotta say that molecular gastronomy doesn't do anything for me, but these look awesome and i want to pop a half-dozen into my gaping maw right now.
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