Orange Pearls
I’ve been thinking about this new “molecular gastronomy” concept for a while, and have wanted to take a taste of what it can teach me about food. So many times you see very complicated or very expensive preparations that were beyond my resources. I saw a post on Michael Laiskonis’s blog, Workbook, that convinced me I could at least try something that I’ve seen many chefs do.
The basic idea that I got caught up on was creating little balls of something that tasted good. In this case, the subject is orange juice. Chef Laiskonis’s version seemed so simple, yet so effective. I like orange juice, I could get the necessary ingredients. I’ll give it a try. An image of his little pearls, atop a star anise-infused milk chocolate cream bon bon, is shown above. I would recommend reading his post about the bon bons, titled Star Power, to learn more about the other flavor pairings he made.
The pearls are created when you have a viscous liquid dropped into cold oil. The viscosity in this case is created by agar agar and locust bean gum. Agar agar is derived from seaweed. It’s similar to gelatin, but has a few differences. First, it needs to be heated much hotter to dissolve into liquids, but once thickened, it can withstand heat (gelatin melts). It can also be grainy, instead of silky smooth like gelatin. Locust bean gum (from carob seeds) is also used for thickening and gelling.
I halved the recipe from the original Workbook formula. After lots of measuring and mixing, I had a slightly thick liquid in front of me that I needed to drop into some cold oil. I couldn’t find a syringe, so I scavenged around and found in my daughter’s science kit a pipette (similar to the plastic ones seen on Wikipedia). I tried to widen the opening, but it still made very small drops.
Things were looking pretty good at this point. Once I had a bunch of those little beads at the bottom, I drained and rinsed them. Then I had a spoonful of them to try.
They looked a lot like the original. I was still a little skeptical about what they would taste and feel like. I tried some, and they tasted of pure orange juice, and the texture was soft, but each pearl was well-defined. It’s something that I think could be put to good use elsewhere, but not much more than a bite or two.
I continued with making more little droplets. The pipette I had was just too small to proceed at a good pace, the mixture was already setting and I had only done a few spoonfuls.
I poured the rest of the orange goo into a small dish, covered it, and set it in the fridge. This morning, I unwrapped and plated myself an orange juice breakfast gelée. It was just as delicious, soft but had a slightly coarse texture. Not as appetizing as a soft, smooth gelatin version would be.
Tags: agar, hydrocolloids, orange
