In the News: Molecular Gastronomy for the Home Kitchen!

By now, we've all heard of Ferran Adria and his kind of high-tech cooking that uses foamers and thermocirculators alongside pots and pans. Even with new books out by Adria and other food science-y chefs, this kind of cooking is largely inaccessible to most home cooks. Or is it? Take a look at what Andreas Viestad of the Washington Post has been doing...

Running behind schedule on a dinner party he was throwing for friends, Viestad says that he borrowed a few molecular gastronomy tricks to bring everything together. While this is nothing on par with what you might be served at El Bulli, there are some ideas we can take back to our own kitchens!

For a beef filet that he had been hoping to cook slowly, Viestad instead turned to sous vide cooking to get it done a little faster. Normally, you need some pretty hefty (and expensive) equipment for this kind of submersion cooking, but Viestad reasoned that the water from his kitchen tap was hot enough to do the job.

He submerged the vacuum-packed filet in the hot water and by the time he was ready for it, the internal temperature registered at 120°. After searing it over high heat, the temperature had risen to an acceptable 130°, giving him perfect medium-rare beef to serve his guests.

His quick dessert was less food science and more about modifying its presentation. Instead of baking his chocolate custards to firmness, he put them in the freezer. By the time he was ready to serve dessert, the sides had frozen to a pudding-consistency and the middles were still creamy. A bit of espresso poured the middle and he had a four-star dessert with a lot less effort.

Aside from these ideas for kitchen short cuts, one of the biggest things we're taking away from this article is its lesson on flexibility. With guests arriving in an hour and dinner not even started, Viestad was able to let go of his original plan for cooking the meal and come up with new ideas on the spot. We're not sure we'd be quite so cool in the same situation!

What do you think about his last-minute techniques?

• Read the full article: "Invite Science to the Party" by Andreas Viestad, Washington Post, 1/21/09

(Images: Mette Randem for The Washington Post)

Comments (3)

I recently wrote about this trend on several occasions as well.

http://danamccauley.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/molecular-gastronomy-versus-cooking/

http://danamccauley.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/hanging-out-with-feran-adria/

It's interesting to me that people want to 'play' with their food this way since it's really the opposite impulse from the other prevailing trend which is to choose great, simple, local ingredients and do as little to them as possible.

Wacky times we live in!

Andreas Viestad has been a great influence for the past few years now.

He, as well as the other chefs and culinary experts on the PBS series Kitchen of Light or New Scandinavian cooking present Scandinavian cuisine and terroir in an amazing way.

Viestad is my favorite to watch. His enthusiasm for his homeland and zeal for cooking is never ending. He has made it clear that he is not a professionally trained chef but his cooking skills and repertoire could easily qualify him for a Chef's position.

I have taken an interest to Scandinavian cooking for some of the same philosophical reasons I am drawn to Scandinavian design. They are both fresh, organic and minimal. They have many generations of tradition behind them but at the same time seem contemporary in a modern environment.

That contemporary and modern characteristic is apparent in some of Viestad's television episodes when he visits chef friends at their restaurants where they may be making ice cream with liquid nitrogen or like in the article above where he has used the principles of sous vide cooking to make a dinner party quick, easy, delicious and interesting.

He's a smart cook who embraces the organic bounty of his local surroundings and who respects the idea that technological advancement is an inevitable reality that can be brought into a traditional kitchen and used as a tool to create, enhance and simplify the ritual of cooking.

So, to sort of answer the question, I think that these last minute techniques will probably work only if you are already comfortable with certain cooking fundamentals. I guess you have to learn the road before you learn the short cut.

You might want to check out Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection, where he makes updated molecular gastronomy enhanced classic British dishes .. and then he figures out a way that YOU can do so in your own home with equipment that you're likely to have. It's a fascinating and fun show. I believe there's an accompanying cookbook too.