Molecular dishes at home. Molecular cuisine: what it is and recipes. Important rules of molecular gastronomy

Molecular cuisine dishes have long become a trend in the world of haute cuisine. The ZagraNitsa portal invites you to prepare several light desserts that are guaranteed to surprise and delight your loved ones!

1

Orange spaghetti

It’s actually very simple to prepare an original dessert and surprise your loved ones! You just need to show your imagination by preparing familiar dishes with a non-standard approach. Be sure to stock up on a syringe and silicone tubes - pharmacy ones are suitable for a dropper.

Ingredients: 400 ml orange juice, 25 ml orange syrup, 75 ml sugar syrup, 25 g agar-agar, syringe

Preparation:

• Mix all ingredients, heat, but do not bring to a boil.
• Take the resulting liquid into a syringe and inject it into a silicone tube, and pinch the tip.
• Place in cold water for 3 minutes.
• Pull it out, connect the empty syringe to the tube and squeeze out the jelly with air.
• When serving, you can garnish with orange slices or chocolate chips.

2

Spicy truffles

The famous chocolate candies were named after the equally famous mushrooms that they resemble. We invite you to prepare this chocolate treat yourself and serve it in an original way.

Ingredients: 100 g chocolate, 75 ml heavy cream, 20 g butter, a pinch of dried chili pepper

Photo: afisha-eda.ru

Preparation:

• Break the bar into small pieces, pour in cream, add butter, a pinch of dry chili pepper and melt over low heat until completely dissolved.
• When the consistency of the chocolate is silky, remove from heat and cool.
• Then put in the refrigerator for 2 hours.
• When the mass hardens and becomes like plasticine, you need to form balls with a spoon and roll them on all sides in cocoa powder.
• Place the resulting balls in the refrigerator for another couple of hours until completely hardened.

Banana candy

Who wouldn't agree that bananas and chocolate are the perfect combination? This is truly a gastronomic match made in heaven! Preparing such sweets will take quite a lot of time, but it’s worth it: the taste of the delicacy is unforgettable!

Ingredients: cocoa butter 250 g, dark chocolate 250 g, frozen dry banana 100 g, powdered sugar 100 g, bourbon or rum 25 ml, banana juice (bananas 350 g, amylase 3.5 g) 500 ml

Preparing banana juice:

• Preheat the water bath to 65 degrees.
• Peel the bananas.
• Blend the ingredients in a blender to a thick, homogeneous liquid.
• Boil over low heat for half an hour.
• Strain the contents through a sieve and pour out the juice.

Preparation of sweets:

• Add bourbon to banana juice.
• Freeze the juice in round molds, but do not fill completely.
• Melt chocolate and cocoa butter in separate containers.
• Hold the frozen banana balls with a toothpick and dip them into the melted cocoa butter.
• Let cool and harden, then place in the freezer for a couple of hours.
• Dip the hardened candies into the previously melted chocolate.
• After this, put it in the refrigerator for another 30 minutes.
• At this time, you need to mix the dried bananas with powdered sugar and beat in a blender until it becomes a homogeneous powder.
• Before serving, dip into this dry mixture.

4

Chocolate mousse Chantilly

It’s not for nothing that Hervé Thys is considered the creator of molecular gastronomy: he has dozens of amazing recipes, which you can read in his cookbook. We invite you to try preparing a couple of desserts from the famous French chef in your kitchen using a detailed video tutorial.

Ingredients: dark chocolate 72% 225 g, 200 ml water, ice.

Meringue “Wind Crystals”

Another recipe from the famous chef is as simple as the previous one - you just need to buy a couple of eggs and a little sugar. Preparing the meringue will take 10 minutes, but you will need to take into account that baking the light dessert takes almost 2 hours.

Ingredients: chicken protein 2 pcs., granulated sugar 60 g, powdered sugar 30 g, cold water 3 tbsp. l.

Molecular gastronomy is a separate branch of cooking that appeared only at the end of the twentieth century. It is based on the use of physics and chemistry in the preparation of products. The first dish of molecular cuisine was prepared by Heston Blumenthal, the chef of a famous English restaurant, who prepared a mousse from caviar and white chocolate. It turns out that both of these products have the same amines, so they mix well.

The peculiarity of simple molecular gastronomy recipes is that they include only natural ingredients. Unlike the fast food industry, where the desired taste is given to products chemically, molecular gastronomy, including recipes for beginners, does not allow the use of chemical additives and the desired flavor is achieved by adding ingredients of natural origin.

Cooking molecular dishes seems complicated only at first glance. In fact, if you know the basics of this branch of cooking and use the recommendations of chefs, then you can prepare foamed meat with a side dish of foamed potatoes, cucumber-flavored jelly and even seafood syrup in your home kitchen.

If you want to pamper yourself and your loved ones with an unusual dinner, lunch or breakfast, prepare molecular cuisine dishes - you will find recipes for cooking at home on our culinary website.

Molecular dishes and their names

Over almost twenty years of the existence of molecular cuisine, chefs of the best restaurants in the world have developed dozens of unique dishes, the task of which is not to feed, but to surprise the visitor with an unusual taste and combination of products. The names of the simplest molecular cuisine dishes that can be prepared at home:

• Fudge Egg;
• Orange spaghetti;
• Coffee meat;
• Spicy chocolate and chili truffles;
• Tomato jelly.

Using the tools that every housewife has in her kitchen, you can prepare molecular dishes according to recipes with photos posted on our website.

Molecular cuisine recipes with photos

For anyone interested in how to prepare molecular gastronomy dishes, recipes at home can be found on the Make-Eat culinary website. Especially for users who love culinary experiments and love to surprise loved ones with unusual dishes, we have collected the best and simplest molecular recipes with photos that can be used at home.

Please note the following features:

• The simplest dish can take several hours to prepare;
• Recipes for molecular dishes must be followed literally to the gram, because even a small drop of one of the ingredients, added above the recommended amount, can greatly change the taste of the product;
• To prepare some molecular gastronomy dishes using home recipes, you may need special equipment that needs to be purchased additionally.

Otherwise, to make interesting and unusual molecular cuisine dishes, you only need a set of necessary products and a great desire to experiment. Therefore, if you want to experience incredible sensations, learn many new facts about healthy nutrition and get gastronomic pleasure, scroll through the pages of our website and choose the best recipes with step-by-step descriptions and photos.

The Make-Eat culinary portal is the largest collection of recipes, including molecular cocktails from unexpected food combinations that will allow you to look at cooking with completely different eyes. Try it - and you will be able to see from your own experience how interesting, exciting and tasty it is! The time spent will be more than compensated by the pleasure received from both the cooking process and the food itself!

The staff of our portal make a lot of efforts to publish for you the most interesting recipes, original illustrations and other useful materials related to cooking at home. We sincerely hope that we will become your reliable guide to the world of modern and classic cuisine, and that you will become our regular readers.

If you want to cook something unusual yourself and taste the cuisine of physicists and chemists, then you can start with simple recipes. To prepare these dishes you will not need complex equipment, and the taste can be as close as possible to that of a restaurant. These are the simplest dishes of a seemingly extravagant cuisine that you can easily see in your own kitchen. At the same time, a large amount of nutrients is preserved and imagination is shown. And if you like it, you can go further and try more complex recipes. So go ahead, experiment lovers!

molecular cloud

If you add soy lecithin to lemon juice and water, a persistent foam cloud is formed, which can be either a separate dish or a decoration for another. Masters of molecular gastronomy call this process “emulsification,” but the cloud recipe is not at all complicated: mix half a glass of lemon juice and water, add three teaspoons of soy lecithin. The resulting mixture is whipped with a mixer and a lemon foam is formed, which can be used to decorate cheeses, fish and meat.

molecular egg

Those who want to try a new way of cooking eggs will definitely appreciate this recipe. You can boil eggs not only on the stove, but also in the oven. To do this, you need to take from one to three eggs, place them in a pan with water and put them in the oven for two hours. An important point in this regard is temperature. It should be exactly 64 degrees. Eggs prepared this way will be much more tender and softer.

Sorbet

Molecular sorbets are distinguished by a silky structure and a new taste of a familiar product. And it should be prepared like this: dry ice is added to freshly squeezed juice, then the mixture is thoroughly mixed until the ice is completely dissolved in the juice. The secret is that at a temperature of -72 C, the molecular structure of the substance (in this case, juice) changes and instead of liquid, you get a mousse with a creamy texture. This dish is not only unusual, but also saves time: it only takes three minutes to prepare the sorbet.

Strawberry spaghetti

Various fruits and vegetables can be used to make unusual spaghetti. In this case, silicone tubes are used; if there are none, then you can buy ordinary flexible tubes for droppers at the pharmacy. To prepare spaghetti you need: 400 ml of strawberry juice or puree, as well as sugar syrup, thick strawberry syrup and a gelling agent in a ratio of 3:1:1. All products are mixed and heated, but not to a boil. The silicone tube is filled with the resulting fruit broth using a syringe and immersed in cold water for 3 minutes. And the last stage: squeezing spaghetti out of the syringe using the air coming from the syringe.

Carrot oil

If you are already tired of the usual butter for breakfast, you should try carrot oil. It is made easily and from only two ingredients: 6 medium-sized carrots and 500 g of butter. Melted butter and squeezed carrot juice are mixed in a blender until smooth. Next, the mixture is brought to a boil over moderate heat (the foam should be removed along the way), and then poured into a mold and sent to the refrigerator in order to harden. The resulting butter can be melted and used as a sauce.

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A restaurant that offers molecular gastronomy dishes resembles a laboratory where they experiment with familiar recipes, flavors of products and look for new ways to serve dishes.

The goal of molecular gastronomy is not to feed you to your heart's content, but to surprise and sometimes even pleasantly stun. Of course, most dishes cannot be repeated at home. But the simplest ones, without the use of complex devices and special additives, can be prepared in your own kitchen.

website I have selected recipes that can definitely be obtained without a chemist’s degree or chef experience.

Fudge Egg

After 2 hours we get a more delicate and softer taste, slightly unusual, similar to unsweetened fudge.

Beetroot roll with soft cheese

You will need:

• 2 beets
• 1 sachet of agar-agar
• 250 g spiced soft cream cheese

Preparation:

Beat beet juice and beet pulp in a blender. Strain and add 1 sachet of agar-agar. Stir well and bring to a boil.

Pour the slightly thickened beet juice into a thin layer onto a tray with cling film. After the gelled sheet has cooled, spread a thick layer of spicy soft cream cheese on it and roll it into a roll. Cut the resulting roll with a sharp knife.

Orange spaghetti

You will need:

• 400 ml orange juice
• 25 ml thick orange syrup
• 75 ml sugar syrup
• 25 g gelling agent

Preparation:

Mix all ingredients and heat without boiling. We draw the resulting liquid into a syringe. Using it, we fill a flexible silicone tube of the required length with liquid. You can take regular pharmacy tubes for droppers.

Place the filled tube in cold water for 3 minutes. Then we connect the syringe and the tube and, using the air coming from the syringe, squeeze out the spaghetti.

Chocolate mousse

You will need:

• 225 g good quality dark chocolate
• 200 ml water

Preparation:

Break the chocolate into pieces and pour into a saucepan with water. Heat over moderate heat, stirring, until the chocolate is completely dissolved. Pour cold water into a large bowl and add crushed ice.

Pour the liquid chocolate into a small bowl and place it in a bowl with ice and water. Beat with a mixer until it becomes whipped cream.

coffee meat

You will need:

• 1.5 kg pork neck
• 1 cup espresso
• ground coffee
• 50 g coffee oil
• salt pepper

Preparation:

Preparing a cup of espresso. We prepare a paste from coffee oil (can be replaced with butter), salt, pepper and ground coffee. Using a syringe, inject the cooled espresso into a piece of pork neck. Rub a piece of meat with the resulting paste.

Place the meat in a baking bag and close it tightly. Boil water in a saucepan and place the bag in the saucepan. Simmer over low heat for 2 hours. Cool and cut into portions.

Balsamic caviar

You will need:

• 100 ml olive oil
• 60 ml balsamic vinegar
• 30 ml water
• 1 tbsp. l. Sahara
• 1 sachet of agar-agar

Preparation:

Cool the bowl with olive oil in advance. Mix vinegar, water, sugar and agar-agar in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil, simmer over medium heat for 1 minute. The mixture thickens slightly. Remove from the stove and cool for a few minutes.

We draw the mixture into a syringe without a needle. Hold the syringe horizontally over a container of chilled oil and squeeze the mixture drop by drop into the oil. Drops should not fall on one another. At the bottom of the container, the eggs will form perfect spheres. Strain the eggs.

Carrot oil

You will need:

• 6 medium sized carrots
• 500 g butter

Preparation:

Squeeze juice from carrots. Melt 500 g of butter in a saucepan. Pour hot oil and carrot juice into a blender and blend at high speed until smooth. Bring the resulting mixture to a boil in a saucepan over low heat. Strain from the resulting foam.

Pour into the mold and place it in a bowl with ice. We put it in the refrigerator. Once the carrot oil has hardened, transfer it to a plate. Can be used as sandwich butter, or lightly melted and used as a sauce.

Spicy truffles

You will need:

• 100 g chocolate
• 75 ml heavy cream
• 20 g butter
• pinch of dry chili pepper

Preparation:

Break the chocolate bar into pieces, pour in cream, add butter, a pinch of dry chili pepper and melt everything over low heat until silky.

Cool and put in the refrigerator for 2 hours. When the mass hardens and begins to resemble plasticine in consistency, form spheres with a spoon and roll them in cocoa powder. Place the finished truffles in the refrigerator until completely frozen.

Egg with a surprise

You will need:

• 3–4 eggs
• spicy sauce
• pate
• ground crackers
• deep frying oil

Preparation:

Peel the hard-boiled eggs and cut off the tops. Remove the yolks. We put a little spicy sauce and pate inside each one. Cover with egg caps and place in the refrigerator.

Dip the cooled eggs in flour, dip in a beaten raw egg, dip in ground breadcrumbs and deep-fry.

Tomato soup jelly

You will need:

• 350 ml light chicken broth
• 1 carrot
• 1/2 leek
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp. l. thick tomato paste
• 6 cherry tomatoes
• 15 g parsley
• 15 g green onions
• salt and pepper

Preparation:

Add carrots, leeks, cherry tomatoes and garlic, tomato paste, herbs, salt and pepper to the broth. Place the saucepan on low heat and cook after boiling for 20 minutes.

Puree the soup using a blender and strain. Add 1 sachet of agar-agar, stir and bring to a boil over low heat. Pour into molds and place in the refrigerator until completely set. Place on serving plates.

Pumpkin spheres
For those who move to the next difficulty level

You will need:

For the pie:

• 400 g pumpkin puree (baby food)
• 1 pack of cream cheese
• 2 tbsp. l. corn starch
• 2 tbsp. l. soy milk
• agave syrup to taste
• cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg to taste

For the jelly base:

• 3 glasses of cold water
• 1 tsp. sodium alginate

For sphere:

• leftover pumpkin pie filling
• 1 tsp. calcium lactate

For decoration:

• whipped cream (soy can be used)
• crushed pie pieces for topping

Preparation:

Mix all ingredients for the pie in a blender until smooth. If you don’t have ready-made pumpkin puree on hand, you can make it using a pumpkin blender. You will need approximately 450 g of pulp. Transfer the mixture to the oven dish and bake for about 45 minutes.

Pour 3 glasses of water into sodium alginate. Using an immersion blender, mix at high speed for at least 2 minutes. Set aside for half an hour to release any remaining air bubbles.

Combine calcium lactate and leftover cake. Mix by hand until smooth and set aside.

We take glassware no more than 10 cm in diameter. Pour a small amount of water with sodium alginate into the bottom. Take 2 spoons of pumpkin filling mixture. We place it as carefully as possible. Then we tilt the dish at an angle of 45 degrees and slowly pour in the sodium alginate mixture until it covers the future sphere. Then slowly raise the glassware to 90 degrees. The method is similar to pouring beer into a glass. Spin the bowl for 30 seconds to form a sphere. Then set the bowl with the sphere aside for 2 minutes.

Preparation:

In a saucepan, mix sriracha sauce, sesame oil, broth and agar-agar. Place on medium heat. As soon as the mixture begins to boil, wait 45 seconds and remove from heat. Cool the mixture for 2 minutes.

Take the chilled butter and glass out of the refrigerator. Pour the oil into the glass so that there is at least 5 centimeters left to the top. Using a pipette or syringe, draw up the mixture and slowly squeeze the mixture into it as close to the surface of the oil as possible. The resulting granules will fall to the bottom of the glass. We do not make many pearls at once so that they do not stick to each other. We remove the resulting pearls using a sieve and use the oil again to prepare the next batch. We store all the resulting pearls in cold water while we prepare the tofu.

Cut the tofu layer into 6 cubes. Heat peanut oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Drop in the tofu cubes and brown them for 4-5 minutes on each side. If the cubes start to burn, add a little oil to the pan. Once all the cubes are nicely browned, transfer them to a plate while you make the glaze.

In a saucepan, combine sesame oil, soy sauce and mirin and bring to a boil over medium heat. Mix well, add vinegar and sprinkle brown sugar on top. Add the mixture of water and cornstarch, stir and remove the thickened glaze from the heat.

Pour glaze over the rosy tofu, place pearls on top and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Ice cream with mustard or scrambled egg flavors, orange-flavored caviar, pasta in the form of tea, fish with chocolate flavor, green peas in the form of foam... What is this - science fiction? No, this is reality, and its name is molecular gastronomy, a fashionable trend in cooking.

All of the above “delicacies” are only a small part of what can be found in restaurants that treat visitors to molecular cuisine dishes. A hundred or two hundred years ago, chefs amazed guests by combining sweet ice cream with sausage or vegetables, and today they make red caviar from pomegranate juice, and with pinpoint precision, drop by drop... from a pipette. This example is a culinary exotic, but it well reflects the nature of molecular gastronomy - the search for new experiences, non-standard combinations of aromas, tastes and textures of dishes.

Shocking cooking. Author to the studio!

The emergence of a molecular approach to cooking was predetermined by successes in physics and chemistry, which could not but respond to all areas of life. The progenitor of the new method of cooking was a certain Benjamin Thompson, who lived at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. But everything started to turn around in the late 70s of the last century thanks to the efforts of the Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti and the French chemist Hervé Thys. Hervé Thys was interested in such questions as determining the ideal temperature for boiling eggs or the influence of the electromagnetic field on the process of smoking fish. Together with his colleague, Nicholas Kurth, he coined the term “molecular gastronomy”.

"Molecular gastronomy" is a view of food not as whole foods, but as a collection of molecules that have specific physical and chemical properties that can be changed through chemical processes. “Breaking down into molecules” is the key to preparing exotic dishes.

The term “molecular gastronomy” itself was interpreted quite broadly - as “a new field for physical and chemical experiments.” Its main goals were to create new non-traditional dishes, use new devices and methods. The demonstrative, shocking break with traditional cooking methods seemed deliberate, but it was precisely this that determined the style and success of the progressive trend.

In search of the perfect supertaste

Molecular cuisine radically breaks with old ideas about cooking. Her goal is to achieve the ideal supertaste - pure and refined, “distilled” and refined, technologically advanced and beautiful. Molecular cuisine is an appeal not so much to the stomach as to the mind and imagination.

Features of the molecular approach to dishes:

1. Forms. Traditional boiling, baking, frying - something ordinary, routine and boring - are rediscovered in molecular cooking, used consciously and purposefully. Chefs-physicists, chemists and biochemists conjure up new combinations of tastes and textures. The results are impressive: in one plate you can find hard beer, foamy celery and caviar-shaped eggs.

2. Toolkit. The decoration of such a kitchen is not like a typical restaurant kitchen, where everyone is fussing around, and something is constantly rustling, gurgling and bursting with heat. There is no room for an abundance of pots, mismatched pans or frying pans. Instead of traditional stoves, convection stoves often appear. The aromas of some dishes are extracted and transferred to others using ultrasound. Siphons transform food into foam, and generators, lasers and all sorts of parascientific gadgets delight and amaze.

The goal of the creative creators of molecular gastronomy is to surprise the consumer, make his senses work more intensely, and give pleasure more than usual. The molecular chef makes no secret of the fact that he intends to impress you: “Food is not at all what you thought. Food is something you could think of if you let your imagination run wild.”

3. Technologies. Methods of preparing dishes in molecular cuisine are also far from traditional ones. For example, cooks fry fish... on water. This is possible thanks to the addition of special vegetable sugar, which increases the boiling point to 120 degrees.

Liquid nitrogen is in great use, because with its help, at a temperature of minus 196, you can freeze a product in a very short time, so that the aromas and any valuable substances contained in it do not have time to disappear. A common technique here is very slow - many hours - baking at low temperatures.

4. Cooking time. The birth of such dishes resembles magic, but in fact, molecular cuisine is much more labor-intensive than traditional cuisine: the preparation of some dishes can take several days. In order to create, for example, iced beef tea with truffles, it takes 48 hours.

5. Proportions. Molecular cooking requires high precision. Just one drop more or less - and the dish may be spoiled. This is why many home amateur experiments end in failure.

6. Expensive. In addition to practical skills, molecular gastronomy requires sacrifices in the form of serious financial costs. If liquid nitrogen costs a few euros, then the container for its storage, the so-called Dewar vessel, is already about 1000 euros, the reagents used to play with texture will cost at least 20 euros, etc.

Molecular cuisine. Beef and chips

Pipette dishes, or Spherification

Molecular gastronomy may be associated with science fiction, but in reality it has little in common with science fiction. But those who do this have a lot of imagination. Sometimes chefs create such stunning compositions that they can easily be called installations of modern art and exhibited as exhibits in an art gallery.

Chefs make known tastes take unexpected forms, for example, they can serve something that we usually eat in solid form in the form of foam, treat them with hot jelly or caviar... from anything, for example, watermelon or whiskey. This kind of caviar, the creation process of which is called “spherification,” is a real hit, a classic of molecular gastronomy. In fact, it is prepared simply: you need to add a few grams of sodium alginate to the broth or a certain flavor essence (for example, watermelon juice concentrate), and then pour this mixture drop by drop into water with the addition of calcium chloride. Drops of watermelon juice or meat broth turn into colored jelly-like balls that resemble capsules with vitamins A+E and taste like watermelon, ham, etc. The balls are hard on the outside, but soft in the middle and burst in the mouth - like caviar!

Try cooking at home and master the spherification technology:

Coffee with ice cream, molecular version.

Who eats all this? Or about molecular cuisine restaurants

Scientists, even in chef's hats, are a special category, people out of this world, ready to devote all their time to experiments that sometimes have dubious practical significance. What about molecular gastronomy? Who would like to taste its fruits, eat all this omelette-flavored caviar, mustard-flavored ice cream, meat-flavored foam and other culinary “delicacies”? It turns out that there are a lot of them!

Molecular trendsetter El Bulli

Today, restaurants offering molecular cuisine can be found almost all over the world, but there are very few truly famous ones. According to the employees of the most famous molecular restaurant El Bulli in Spain (Spanish Costa Brava), owned by the famous physicist chef Ferran Adria, every year two million people want to become its clients. Meanwhile, he is able to cope with only 8 thousand people per season. Therefore, you need to reserve places here about a year in advance.

Maestro Ferran Adria, sorcerer and magician

The restaurant is only open for six months, with Adria and his colleagues spending the other half in the laboratory developing new dishes to be served next season. Ferran Adria and his team of chefs rely on science and artistic imagination, so they surprise with more and more complex dishes.

The menu includes pasta that looks like whipped cream, capsule olives, scrambled egg-flavored ice cream and marshmallow-shaped salmon steak, almond soup and asparagus bread.

Dinner at El Bulli is distinguished not only by the uniqueness of the dishes, but also by the way they are served. Typically, 20-30 dishes are served, and each of them must fit on one spoon. All of these, as well as the wine, are planned in advance by the chef: the menu of dishes in a molecular gastronomy restaurant provides a certain sequence of culinary experiences. Due to the lengthy production process, selecting dishes on site is not possible. It’s a little strange, but despite this, Adria’s restaurant is considered the best in the world. Some dishes can take several days to prepare, which explains the lack of ability to choose a menu on site and the long wait for an order. And if food is cooked slowly, it's hard to make it cheap. The bill at the El Bulli restaurant can reach 300 or 3000 euros.

The correct portion in molecular gastronomy.

Ferran Adrià calls his work “deconstructionist cooking.” Its goal is to identify non-obvious connections, contrasting textures, aromas, tastes and temperatures. Food for a restaurant visitor should be a provocation and at the same time an amazing surprise. Adria often says that the ideal client comes to El Bull not to eat, but to live a new experience.

One of his most famous dishes is culinary foam, which consists not of eggs and cream, but only of the main ingredient (for example, mushrooms, meat or sugar beets) treated with compressed nitric oxide. Adria made, among other things, almond cheese and asparagus bread.

I don't know what kind of dish this is, but it's very beautiful.

Eccentric The Fat Duck

Almost as famous as El Bull is Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, England. The menu, for example, includes liquid almond gel and snail-flavored oatmeal. The efforts of this adherent of molecular gastronomy, invested in the development of national gastronomy, were appreciated by Queen Elizabeth herself, who awarded him the Order of the British Empire. Heston Blumenthal is considered an eccentric and is known for his innovative approach to gastronomy, called culinary alchemy. It uses primarily very slow cooking, low temperatures, vacuum vessels. Blumenthal was the first to focus on experiencing food with all the senses simultaneously. Among the dishes served at his restaurant are ice cream flavored with bacon and scrambled eggs, and black olive puree that smells like the inside of a new car.

Beetroot and carrot salad with rosemary foam

Culinary alchemist Pierre Gagnaire

Another recognized master in this field is Pierre Gagnaire, a famous French chef who worked in restaurants in Paris and Leon for 10 years. His Paris restaurant was ranked 3rd in Restaurant Magazine UK's list of the World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2008. In March 2010, he opened his first restaurant in Tokyo. Gagnaire collaborates with physical chemist Hervé Thies, and together they pursue their passion for creating gourmet dishes. Another “molecular place,” the El Celler de Can Roca restaurant in Girona, Spain, offers mousse scented with earth and sea foam, as well as cakes scented with Gucci Envy perfume.

Egg serving method

Iced green tea with mint cubes and lime

Is molecular gastronomy healthy?

“Take xanthan gum, 10 grams of sodium alginate, 5 grams of calcium chloride...” begins one of the avant-garde recipes from one of the most fashionable chefs of the 21st century kitchen. It sounds, you see, a little intimidating and unappetizing. It is not surprising that there are many who want to try familiar tastes in a new guise: as they say, curiosity is not a vice. But is it possible to eat such dishes every day (we’ll leave the question of how much it will cost behind the scenes) without causing harm to your health?

Many people associate the chemical and physical processes used in molecular laboratories with something artificial, modified and unhealthy. However, anyone who thinks that they are dealing with unhealthy food stuffed with artificial substances is mistaken. Molecular cuisine is not based on adding countless “foreign” substances to products - odor and taste enhancers, dyes and preservatives (the presence of which is found in almost everything that is on store shelves today). The substances used to prepare molecular food are completely natural chemical compounds and natural ingredients, and 100% natural.

Show me the label!

Eg, a liquid nitrogen, used for freezing food. Liquid nitrogen vapor looks impressive, but there is nothing more natural: the air we breathe is almost 80% made up of this gas. Mentioned above sodium alginate is a completely natural substance obtained from kelp seaweed, and its symbol - E 401 - can be found on the labels of jams, for example, as it thickens and stabilizes. Also - although this doesn’t sound so appetizing - it is the main component of adhesives for fixing dentures. A calcium chloride(E509) is a variant of salt, which is added as a binder to milk powder, to ripening cheeses, and in winter is used to sprinkle streets. Molecular chefs are happy to add to dishes soy lecithin or various sugars, seaweed extracts, changing the consistency of food.

This reminds me of something... from Harry Potter...

You are wrong to think that these are caviar or fish eyes. And this is not green pasta. But it's also edible.

The cooking method also demonstrates that molecular gastronomy is a healthy kitchen. An example would be dishes prepared by vacuum sealing. So, the fish is placed in a foil bag, the air is sucked out and boiled in water at a temperature of 62 degrees for 20 minutes. The result is a dish that tastes and looks natural, yet is full of nutrients. Thus, in all these processes there is nothing supernatural, truly revolutionary, which we should really fear, especially if we bear in mind the dominance of all kinds of “chemicals” on our tables and in everyday life in general.

How does eating such molecular monsters affect our health?

Pampering or a bright future for cooking?

The fruits of molecular gastronomy are shocking and leave no one indifferent. Many adherents of traditional cooking consider them a disgrace to true cuisine, but there are also plenty of “molecular” supporters. Adherents of new culinary technologies explain that the attractiveness of their technologies lies in the more advanced processing of ingredients. They claim that rabbit meat, vacuum-sealed and cooked for more than 30 hours at 65 degrees, tastes much better than just stewed meat. The same can be said for ice cream frozen with liquid nitrogen at temperatures below 190 degrees. Rapid and sudden freezing results in the formation of ice crystals that are much thinner than normal ones that occur during slow cooling. Consequently, the ice cream has a more uniform, creamy consistency. Ice cream no longer needs to contain rich cream, because even Coca-Cola cooled with liquid nitrogen and added xanthan gum (the ingredient that maintains constant viscosity and elasticity regardless of temperature) has the consistency of cake cream.

The creators of molecular gastronomy consider it the cuisine of the future. Still, the chances of it becoming commonplace—at least in the foreseeable future—are slim. Molecular gastronomy will most likely not reach the general public, if only because preparing the dishes yourself may be too troublesome. This is a kitchen for snobs and seems destined to remain only an object of culinary curiosity. For now, prices are prohibitively high, and the waiting time for food is so long that if you refuse regular cuisine, you can easily die of hunger.

And some more molecular art

And these flowers...

Edible installation in a plate

Chocolate sphere