Cooking with Chemicals

Almond and matcha jelly with lychee and mango spheres

The menu for our second Green@Red&White Vegetarian Supper Club event couldn't have been more different from the first.

For our first event we created hearty yet sophisticated comfort food with seasonal Italian goodies but here we were on a Saturday night, stirring chemicals, cutting mango into tiny, perfect, 3 millimetre cubes, and using tweezers to gently place gold leaf on top of spherified lychee caviar.  We're nothing if not versatile!

To celebrate the return of one of our members from a recent trip to Tokyo, we themed our second event Molecular Japanese.  Hence the Japanese part.  And the molecular?  Hubby bought me a molecular gastronomy kit as a gift and it was just sitting in a cupboard gathering dust, taunting me.  I was waiting for just the right occasion to play with it.  I ask you, what could beat a gathering of foodie friends for its début?

We gathered 'round my laptop to learn a few of the basics and after we dined on bean curd and spinach gyoza followed by a porcini and chestnut soup, we dove right in.

Like mad scientists, but in aprons instead of lab coats, we mixed and stirred and played for hours, feeding off of each other's creative energy, poppity pop pop, our ideas zipping back and forth like spark plugs firing.  We were channelling our inner Hestons and Ferrans and when the evening was over, I finally understood the lure of spherification:  instant, intense, pure flavours wherever and however you want it.

I think the gastronomic possibilities are endless and exciting and I'm certain we'll pull out the kit again.

If you'd like to see more photos of our foodie events and keep track of what we're up to in the kitchen, you can go to the Green@Red&White facebook page here. The more the merrier!

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Molecular Japanese
Supper Club Menu

almond and matcha jellies with lychee and mango spheres

mango pudding in coconut sauce with lychee caviar

bean curd and spinach gyoza

porcini and chestnut soup

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Mango pudding in coconut sauce with lychee caviar

Making lychee caviar

Bean curd and spinach gyoza

Prep for the lychee and mango spheres

Straining fresh almond milk through an ultra fine meshed sieve 

Porcini and chestnut soup