I guess half the fun of food is making it look good or giving a twist of the unexpected, this is how I went too far.
After the post on spherification I started thinking about putting things into the larger spheres, and then I wondered – why not flavour my calcium bath and then spoon out a bigger amount, with my smaller sphere inside it, and put that into a chemical bath of Sodium Alginate. That way I will have one sphere inside a bigger sphere.
I could even make a fake egg! So this is what I went about trying to do.
I used the same measurements I had in the spherification post and decided on using an orange blossom flavoured green tea for the yolk and Lapsang Souchong green tea for my egg white.
The kitchen smelt amazing with smokey and fruity smells in the air.
I took a spoon of the orange tea and put it into the Lapsang Souchong and it make a nice little sphere as I’d hoped. Then taking a bigger spoon, and spooning some Lapsang Souchong and the orange tea sphere, I placed it gently into the last chemical bath of Calcium Alginate hoping for a bigger sphere to form. It did not.
One way of stopping this is using the rule of thumb that you have your thickest solutions in the centre and you get thinner as you work your way out. So my egg-white should have been thicker than the chemical bath but thinner than the egg-yolk.
It didn’t look too bad when I took it out and promptly put it in my mouth.
If you get the chance to try this, do yourself a favour and slam your face in a car door instead.
It was “yack-o-rific”!
It seems cold and thick green tea disguised as raw egg isn’t easy to swallow. At least now I know for next time.