Culinary Spheres

When I started writing this column nearly four years ago, I took an oath not to write about food or ingredients or techniques that either cannot be found locally or be done in the home kitchen.

At the same time, I also promised myself that I would focus on the new, the weird, the interesting and the relevant, and not necessarily in that order.

Over the course of the past month or so, I had the privilege of cooking for the general public at special events. In doing so, I had the opportunity to share with my guests a few modern culinary inventions that they might not have seen or tasted before.

One such item was the culinary sphere. The culinary sphere is nothing more than a flavourful liquid trapped in a gel-like skin, giving it the appearance of a solid ‘bubble’. Once the skin of the ‘bubble’ is broken, the flavourful liquid is released. It is thus a most unique and entertaining manner with which to present an ingredient or combination of ingredients.

The technique for making culinary spheres is pure kitchen alchemy and was patented in Britain in 1942 by William Peschardt, a food scientist working for Unilever.

However, it was only in 2003, when the godfather of molecular gastronomy Ferran Adrià placed the sphere on the menu of his restaurant elBulli, that the culinary world was properly introduced to the sphere.

Adrià’s journey with spherification is closely linked with the growing popularity of modern hydrocolloids or ‘gums’. These gums have the ability to thicken and form gels from liquids. Most commonly, they are used for culinary foams (espumas) or emulsions.

With the exception of gelatin, which is a protein, all hydrocolloids are complex sugars (polysaccharides) and are all natural. Sources of hydrocolloids include: seaweed (carrageenan; agar-agar; alginate); seed (locust bean gum); tree sap (Gum Arabic); fruit (pectin); cellulose (methylcellulose) and microbes (xanthan gum; gellan gum).

Adrià introduced agar-agar onto his menu in 1998. Although agar has been widely used in Asia for centuries, it was not widely known or used in the West at that time. With its high melting point (60°C), agar provided new creative possibilities to innovative chefs.

The spherification processes in use today were developed and refined by Adrià and Pere Castells, a chemistry teacher.

At it most basic, spheres are formed when alginate interacts with calcium ions to form a gel. In basic or direct spherification, the alginate is blended into the flavoursome liquid (eg fruit juice) and then dropped into a setting bath consisting of a calcium salt (eg calcium chlorite) dispersed into water. The elBulli team further refined the process to overcome problems caused by acidity and excess calcium in the flavour liquid.

In 2005, they revealed inverse or reverse spherification. With this process, the calcium salt is added to the flavourful liquid and the alginate is blended with water to form the setting bath. Frozen reverse spherification is a further refinement of this method of (reverse) spherification. It involves freezing the spheres in a (spherical) mould prior to dropping it into the setting bath.

To thaw the frozen spheres, the setting bath must be heated (to around 60°C to 65°C). Of the three, frozen reverse spherification is probably the easiest, especially if larger quantities of spheres must be made.

The chemicals needed to make spheres are not available in retail stores locally; but can be bought over the internet from specialist suppliers such as Modernist Pantry or Molecule-R who also sell ready-made spherification kits for beginners and professionals.

Is it not time for you to relive the glory days of elBulli in your own kitchen? Just think how impressed your kids or grandchildren will be.

Que aproveche!

Beet Spheres with Goat’s Cheese and Rosemary (Reverse Spherification)

Ingredients

• 300 grams beetroot juice (about six beets)

• 75 grams Balsamic vinegar

• 4 grams salt

• 7.5 grams calcium lactate gluconate

• 1.9 grams Xanthan gum

• a/n (as needed) goat cheese

• a/n olive oil, extra virgin, for holding bath

• a/n rosemary sprigs, fresh, finer (younger) needle tips

Sphere Magic Spherification Bath

• 1000 grams distilled water

• 10 grams Sphere Magic (1%) or sodium alginate

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