About the Book
Molecular
Gastronomy, Culinary
Physics, Microgastronomy, Bistronomy, Avant Garde Cuisine, Multi-Sensory Dining
all mean the same thing -- using food science to bring flavor, texture, taste
and aromas to recipes in new ways.
This book teaches the
experienced home cook how to practice dozens of the most common methods used in molecular gastronomy. Clear and
easy-to-follow step-by-step photographs demonstrate each technique so cooks can
practice the unique skills and presentation concepts. Techniques that require
special equipment are shown with their closest
domestic equivalents.
In addition to a brief
history of molecular gastronomy, how it works, ingredients used and important
safety rules, the book includes techniques and recipes as follow:
Sous-Vide -- "Under vacuum"
cooking, e.g., Confit salmon with pomme puree and squid ink
Transglutaminase or meat glue-- e.g., Salmon and lemon sole terrine
Dehydration -- e.g., Beet powder and black
olive "soil"
Centrifugal
Cooking -- e.g.,
Clarified watermelon cocktail
Evaporation -- How to make mouth-watering
syrups and beverages without artificial flavorings
Rapid
Infusion -- How to
infuse flavors into liquids, e.g., Celery ice cream
Adding
Smoke -- e.g.,
Smoked chocolate mousse
Spherification -- e.g., Sweet chili bubbles with
roast duck
Carbonation -- How to intensify the flavors and
aromas of foods
Foams
and Airs -- e.g.,
Shellfish bisque with a lemongrass foam
Hydrocolloids (gels, gums) -- Cured salmon with
cucumber jelly
Liquid
Nitrogen -- For
super-smooth sweet and savory ice creams
Food
Pairing -- An
essential skill in molecular gastronomy
Avant-Garde
Presentation --
Inspiration and tips
Multi-sensory
Taste Perception -
The five senses in molecular gastronomy.
Molecular
Gastronomy at Home
shows how with clear technical guidance, delicious and easy-to-follow recipes plus a generous dose of patience, home cooks
can take culinary physics out of the lab and into their home kitchen.
About
the Author
Jozef
Youssef is a highly
acclaimed restaurant and private dining chef. He started his career working for
Michelin-starred chef Hélène Darroze at the Connaught Hotel in London. He has
since worked with several other renowned chefs and trained in molecular
gastronomy with Heston Blumenthal. Jozef now works as a private chef in London,
Dubai and Tokyo. He develops his menu concepts in his experimental kitchen
called Odyssey and manages www.kitchen-theory.com.
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this book using this link... Molecular Gastronomy at Home and get 28% discount including FREE
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Table of Contents
Foreword by Charles
Spence
Introduction
Equipment
and Materials
Technique 1:
Spherification
Technique 2: Culinary
Smoking
Technique 3: Airs,
Foams and Espumas
Technique 4: Sous-Vide
Cooking
Technique 5:
Transglutaminase
Technique 6: Cold Gels
and Fluids Gels
Technique 7:
Heat-Tolerant Gels
Technique 8:
Dehydration
Technique 9: Rapid
Infusion
Technique 10: Liquid
Nitrogen
Technique 11: The
Anti-Griddle
Technique 12:
Centrifuge
Technique 13: Rotary
Evaporator
Technique 14:
Ultra-Sonic Homogenizer
Technique 15:
Fermentation
Hydrocolloids
Umami
Multi-Sensory
Fluid Perception
Flavor
Tripping
Food
Pairing
Food
Presentation
Glossary
Index
Acknowledgements
Editorial
Book Review
Avant-garde?
Admittedly. Shocking? Often. Head-scratchingly scientific? Sometimes. A whole
new way of looking at food, cooking and gastronomic pleasure? Absolutely!
Youssef elevates all
things culinary to what can only be dubbed a stunningly precise discipline. By
marrying the test tube with the spatula, this
book embodies the ultimate crash course for the amateur chef and home cook in
preparing food using modern scientific principles.
Fifteen
techniques of molecular gastronomy
are precisely explained, often with an illustrative recipe to accompany them.
From smoking, to gelling, to dehydrating, to fermenting, Youssef describes them
all, aiming to teach a genuine understanding of food preparation. He explains
how to pair food, as well as plate it, for maximum sensory impact. The book
itself is a sensory delight with crisp, elegant
photos and an easy to navigate layout. While anyone certainly could master
the techniques with a little practice, this book is not a casual read. Some of
the equipment is highly specialized and/or costly, such as the smoking gun,
rotary evaporator and anti-griddle. Certain ingredients like sodium alginate,
gum arabic and transglutiminase are obscure, at least to the home cook.
For a reader seeking
new and broader culinary horizons just come armed with a dash of patience and a
pinch of scientific interest—the results ought to be astounding.
Users
Book Review
O'Reilly and
Associates came out with their first cookbook a couple years ago in the form of
Cooking for Geeks, and while it's quite an awesome
book, it's a bit of a fire hose. Hervé This' Molecular Gastronomy named the subject, but it's mostly
theory and descriptions. And of course Modernist Cuisine is thunderously huge and beyond the
means of all but the most dedicated of thrifty kitchen nerds (thrifty nerds? do they even exist?).
I read quite a bit
online, and eventually bought a collection of used lab and restaurant equipment
so I could do my own experiments. And I bought a few of the reasonably-priced
books as well. This book -- Molecular Gastronomy at Home by Jozef Youssef -- is
the best of those by an extremely wide margin. This book seems to be the book
for everyone else.
It is an introduction
to the techniques of molecular gastronomy. It is more an instruction manual
with some illustrative recipes. It has example recipes, but it is not a
cookbook per se. It is closer to a college course on the intersection of
physics and food: the subtitle of Youssef's book is "taking culinary
physics out of the lab and into your kitchen."
The book is organized around techniques. Spherification,
sous-vide, centrifuges, etc. Starting with the techniques most easily
accessible to a home chef, it provides a basic background and one or two
recipes showcasing the technique. About halfway through, the book gets into the
realm of techniques that are only accessible to professional chefs such as
reverse griddles. At this point it's just a showcase, there isn't any effort
expended in importing any of these techniques into a home setting.
Jozef Youssef seeks to
fill that gap with this book. Youssef gently introduces the home cook to the
different equipment and techniques used in molecular gastronomy. Each recipe
has icons for the equipment and tools needed, as well as both volume and more
accurate weight measurements.
More
Book Details
The first half of this
book discusses techniques and includes recipes for dishes that do not require
as much in the way of specialized equipment. The topics include spherification,
smoking, foams, sous vide, transglutaminase or meat glue (an intimidating enzyme
name for culinary glue), and gels.
The second half is
devoted to more esoteric (and often more expensive) equipment, and as such is
divided into short discussions on each topic with fewer recipes. The subjects
covered include centrifuging, rotary evaporation, use of the anti-griddle as
well as flavor pairing and presentations.
Some of them may be
out of your range or scope - liquid nitrogen might be a chapter you read but
don't attempt, for instance - but it's still good reading. Think of this text as
a primer with just the level of illustration and technique that you might want
so as not to be initially overwhelmed.
This is a great
guidebook, for the home chef who wants to dip a finger into spherification,
foams, sous vide cooking, and wants to experiment and find out what this new
field of molecular gastronomy is all about. The recipes are usually simple and
are meant to help you learn about the technique, which then allows you to
develop your own recipes.
First of all, if you
are interested in dipping you toe into molecular gastronomy, I would recommend
you buy a kit. I have Molecule-R Cuisine R-Evolution Kit and their cocktail kit. That will
give you many of the chemicals and equipment necessary and some of their
recipes are similar. I wanted a little more of a challenge than those kits
offered. If you have one of the kits, an isi whipped cream dispenser, a blender
or food processor and immersion blender, thermometer, scale, and a seal-a meal,
you have most of the equipment necessary for these recipes. Some call for a
food dehydrator (I use a low oven) and a smoker gun, which I don't have. Other,
more exotic, equipment (like ultra-sonic homogenizers) and techniques are
discussed.
If you're planning on
applying these techniques, here's a rough list of the less common ingredients
and tools you'll need.
Technique
1: Spherification:
Slotted spherification
spoon
Technique
2: Culinary Smoking:
Liquid smoke (Not the
bottled stuff; the book instructs you to pass water through a chamber filled with
smoke or to pass smoke through a tube into a condenser. That seems to be the
function of the next item...)
Technique
3: Airs, Foams & Espumas
Gelatin (plain)
Technique
4: Sous-vide Cooking
(Just search all the items below on Amazon.com.
All is available there and cheaper compared to other store I know.)
Vacuum-packing machine
(An alternative to allow use of home vacuum sealers is offered!)
Water-bath
Technique
5: Transglutaminase
Transglutaminase (meat
glue)
Technique
6: Cold Gels & Fluid Gels
Gelatin
Carrageenan
Xanthan gum
Technique
7: Heat-tolerant Gels
Agar agar
Methylcellulose
Gellan gum
Syringe and plastic
tubes
Technique
8: Dehydration
Dehydrator (One recipe
can be dried in the oven for 24 hours instead)
Teflon mat or
parchment paper
Piping bag
Technique
9: Rapid Infusion
iSi Whipper
N2O and CO2 gas
cartridges
Very fine sieve, iSi
brand recommended
Technique
10-15: Liquid Nitrogen,
The Anti-Griddle by PolyScience, Centrifuge, Rotary evaporator (rotovap), Ultra-sonic
homogenizer, Fermentation
(No recipes included)
You should also have a
food processor, blender, and immersion blender on hand, as well as a scale that
can measure in 1 gram units, and another that can measure in 0.1 gram units.
Thirty-three pages at
the end discuss flavors, food pairing, and food presentation.
If you'd like to know
how the chef at that amazing restaurant did that wonderful thing with a foam or
a gel or spherification, this book is a great place to look. But I look for two
things in molecular gastronomy books--techniques and recipes that make me want
to be in my kitchen, and a solid understanding of the science behind the cool
effect.
Incidentals
I have learned so far:
- Reverse
spherification is more versatile than spherification.
- You can bag liquids
in a FoodSaver plastic bag if you first freeze the liquid.
- Hannibal probably
used "the smoking gun" for one of his dishes.
Watch
Video: Molecular Gastronomy Recipe Clementine Sorbet, Pumpkin Seed Oil, Basil
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