Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Molecular gastronomy?

Bill Nye the Science guy would be proud of this month's daring cooks challenge. This month's challenge takes us to the world of Molecular Cuisine. What is that you ask? From what I can gather from Wikipedia the definition is as follows:

"Molecular gastronomy is a scientific discipline involving the study of physical and chemical processes that occur in cooking.[3] It pertains to the mechanisms behind the transformation of ingredients in cooking and the social, artistic and technical components of culinary and gastronomic phenomena in general (from a scientific point of view)."

Still lost? Basically you take foods that you love, but you change the cooking methods that produce different texture than normal.

Our challenge was to take a traditional dish of skate and put a molecular cuisine twist to it.
Skate is a type of fish. I was unable to find it, but I substituted orange roughy instead.



Cilantro and parsley was blanched it hot then ice cold water. The herbs were then placed in a oven along with some red chili peppers to dry. Once they were dry, the herbs went into a coffee grinder and blended till it was a powdery.

It was an interesting dish to make. My slight issue was working on the herb powders. I kept sneezing when I was blending these herbs. Don't worry! I did not sneeze into the herbs nor was the fish contaminated in anyway. :)

6 comments:

shen_nanigans said...

ugh! you make me so hungry! that looks amazing!

Anonymous said...

That really does look amazing, and using orange roughy was brilliant, as it's such a lovely, delicious fish (one of my favs). Beautifully done!

Audax said...

Your pix looks like a butterfly wonderful work and this is one intriguing challenge. Love your plating. Cheers

Unknown said...

did you like the taste?!? i had fun making it too.

abby
www.eattherightstuff.com

Lauren said...

Yum! Your fish looks amazing =D. I love the way you plated the powders!!

How To Eat A Cupcake said...

Speaking of skate.... one time when I was younger, I went fishing with my dad... he CAUGHT a skate! It was so scary! Lol