Visualize a ravioli with a filling of fruit juice, encased in a gelatinized version of the juice itself. Picture surf-and-turf with a scallop resting seamlessly within a tenderloin of beef or a noodle made entirely of meat. Finally, imagine eating ice cream served not cold but steaming hot.
While these dishes may seem outlandish, they represent a growing trend in modern restaurant cooking. Many of the world's most creative chefs are employing principles of chemistry and processes traditionally used in large-scale commercial food production to create new and unusual cuisine. Though this movement has no official center or membership, it is collectively referred to as molecular gastronomy.
Xanthan gum, traditionally found in products like bottled salad dressing, is now being used to thicken coconut water as part of carbonated coconut mousse at Room 4 Dessert, a new avant-garde dessert bar in New York City. Methyl cellulose, when dissolved in a liquid ice cream base, gels the mixture into a hot "ice cream" at near boiling temperatures and melts back into liquid as the dessert cools.
Chemicals like these, called hydrocolloids, sound more like something out of a lab than a kitchen, but they are frequently used in cooking for their gelling and thickening properties. And while they may seem unnatural, xanthan gum is derived from bacterial fermentation, and methyl cellulose is a plant compound. Both substances have been used in processed food for years to create richer textures and even mimic higher fat alternatives, Duke University Director of Health Promotion Franca Alphin wrote in an e-mail.
At wd~50, another innovative New York City restaurant, Chef Wylie Dufresne uses hydrocolloids to change the properties, and thereby mouth-feel, of traditional ingredients.
"We're adding texture to things, texturizing them by controlling how water moves around, whether or not the water does move around, whether the water is solid or fluid or fluid gel," he said.
An example of this is the restaurant's fried mayonnaise cubes: the normally unstructured substance is able to take defined shape through the use of gellan, another hydrocolloid.
Dufresne's innovation doesn't stop there. He is perhaps the nation's premier expert on cooking with transglutaminase, an enzyme that bonds proteins together.
The enzyme acts as a contact adhesive for many types of meat, dairy and wheat proteins, said Dr. Tom Payne, associate director of applications development at Ajinomoto USA, the Japanese food manufacturing company that sells various types of transglutaminase under the Activa brand.
"We've taken various species of sushi-grade fish and have made rainbow sushi out of it," Payne said. "It changes your presentation-you can put things together and make them stay together throughout the cooking process."
Dufresne, who has popularized items like Activa-infused pure-shrimp noodles and pasta sheets, said he sees applications beyond the shocking and readily apparent.
"Things like shrimp sheets and shrimp noodles are obvious because they don't immediately correlate to anything or don't immediately made sense when you think of shrimp," Dufresne said. "[Activa] sees its way all over the menu, from a sausage with no casing or a cake of skate [a type of fish] to short ribs beings sliced and rolled up."
Chef at Room 4 Dessert, Will Goldfarb, a 1997 alumnus who opted to travel and work throughout Europe instead of going to law school, uses sodium alginate, another gelling agent, and calcium chloride to form gel capsules commonly referred to as "caviars" and "ravioli." He also offers these obscure products for public sale to patrons of his restaurant.
This is just one of the ways amateur cooks are able to bring hypermodern cuisine home. Online food forums like eGullet.org host discussions where serious cooks share their experiences and experiments when cooking far outside of the box.
Goldfarb is a skilled practitioner of modern cooking but refuses to label his style or his restaurant as trendy. Instead, he takes a more philosophical approach.
"Everything we do here we are attempting to make better by understanding the process that goes into it," he said. "Every component on the menu-every sauce, every mousse, every sorbet, every ice cream, every cake-is based on the concept that a better understanding of what we're trying to do is going to improve the quality and meaningfulness of the products we make."
Goldfarb said he sees both benefits and shortcomings to the dining public's recent interest in all things molecular. "In the public eye this is kind of a new thing, which is a good thing for chefs if it leads to better understanding of the processes," he said. "But just using ingredients to use them is useless."
Dufresne is similarly reluctant to be seen as pushing the boundaries of cooking at the expense of taste. "People often ask, 'What do you see in the future?' It doesn't work like that," he said. "We live in the present; we work in the present. We're not necessarily working on the future; we're working constantly on what's going on today."
Altering foods with new substances might also have serious health consequences, dietician Alphin wrote in an e-mail. "Although our bodies are amazing creations, when you start introducing new 'things,' perhaps we should be cautious and not rush to have lots of that before we can see how our bodies handle it."
As chefs continue to blur the line between science and cooking, both Dufresne and Goldfarb are careful to note that these recent avant-garde trends are only one very small part of cooking, culture and food. "Trying to do things that are new and ususual and interesting is a worthwhile pursuit but not the only pursuit," Goldfarb said.
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