Molecular Gastronomy
SO! As an introduction to molecular gastronomy at Saturday Science, we did both caviar and spaghetti, made out of JUICE.
We based the recipe on this sort of genius "non-molecular gastronomy" recipe by SprinkeBakes, which still has a lot of science.
- Oil and water doesn't mix! Compare what happens when you add the juice mix to water and to oil.
- Because of that, droplets of water in the oil pull themselves into balls....
- And the extreme temperature semi-instantly sets the jelly!
- Plus, Agar agar is SEAWEED and noone knew that that seaweed could make jelly. Predictions (seaweed is slimy, and jelly is slimy, so...) abound.
For classroom versions of this recipe, where I didn't have access to a stovetop, and things had to be at safe temperatures for very little ones and hands-on to infinity for the oldest kids, I boiled juice in the kettle WITH the agar. We tried adding agar to the boiled juice, but that didn't work at all.
To make spaghetti, I poured some of the juice mixture into squeeze tubes from Dollarama and let them cool to touchable temperatures before we used them. We'd carefully squeeze the juice into a straw, drop it in an ice bath, then squeeze out the spaghetti a minute later. Worked pretty alright, especially for the 7-10 kids.
