Mad Scientists

These guys are crazy. And I mean that in the best possible way. One of the more recent demos at school was a team effort by Dave Arnold and Nils Noren. When you see these two around school, you always know something crazy is going on, and at the same time wondering if you need to put on protective eye wear in case liquid nitrogen comes pouring out of somewhere.

Welcome to the world of molecular gastronomy.

This is the hottest thing in the culinary world these days. Cooking sous-vide (in a vacuum sealed pouch and submerging in liquid), using liquid nitrogen to make your ice cream and even frost your champagne glasses, or taking the mokume-gane metalworking technique and translating that into the culinary world. (What?!?)

This was perhaps the best demo I have been to yet. These guys are serious scientists with an incredible curiosity for what technology can do to the cooking process. It was like chemistry class all over again, but this time, I got to eat in the lab. Not to mention the fact that paired together, they could go on the road and provide comic relief across the world. Truly a dynamic duo.

Anyway, here was our menu for the afternoon. Keep in mind, nothing was cooked in a traditional manner. Take for example the quail egg. This gets poached at 62 degrees in the shell so when you crack it open, it comes out as a perfectly poached egg!

Deep-fried scrapple w/ maple-infused cabbage, sauerkraut, and 62°C poached quail egg



Mokume-gane fish with liquid-nitrogen-powdered dill crème fraîche, pressure-cooked mustard seed, pumpernickel toast, Aleppo oil-infused apple and cabbage salad topped with flash-pickled red onion



Sliders circulated in duck fat and finished over a charcoal grill with pickled ramp and cheddar Mornay sauce, ketchup, and served on toasted brioche bun topped with pretzel salt and caraway seeds



Circulated haggis with liquid-nitrogen-powdered ramp green mashed potatoes, sauteed ramp greens, and sauce made of veal demi and chicken stock



Caramel apple float: dulce de leche ice cream w/ sous-vide creme anglaise base, carbonated clarified fresh granny smith juice



Gin n’ juice cocktail: carbonated clarified strawberry juice, Hendrick’s gin & Solerno blood orange liqueur, lime acid, simple syrup, salt



I encourage you to have a look at all the photos I took from this demo in my album. There are just too many to upload here, but there was a ton of cool stuff going on. I mean, really, is this how you frost your glasses?