Reverse spherification ratios

Water Bath:  .005 sodium alginate to water
Calcium lactate gluconate: .02 to juice Xanthan Gum:  .005 to juice

Asparagus and Egg

Interpreted from Joan Roca of El Cellar Del Con Roca the best restaurant in the world and as taught at the Harvard Science and Cooking on-line class.  Comments in italics.

Ingredients:

1. Asparagus cut into ends and stalk 
2. Olive Oil
3. Salt
4. Champaign or probably Xantham Gum
5. Truffels 
6. oxalis (sorrel)
7. freshly ground white pepper

We're going to see an asparagus and egg dish. And we'll see through this plate two different techniques of cooking. We cook the asparagus under a vacuum looking to protect the product from the water in which we cook it in and to preserve the flavor. In this case, we cooked the 

ends of the asparagus at 85 degrees C for 35 minutes. 

We have interesting texture and interesting flavor since we have not lost its flavor or its juice. It has not been dissolved in the cooking water. This is on one side. With the 

other end of the asparagus, we blended it, we triturated it (juicing, a triturating juicer is a style of juicer used to break down fresh produce into juice and fiber.), and we made an ice cream. An asparagus ice cream. 

Ok, asparagus on one side, the ends with the stalk, and the asparagus.

And now we're going to see another part of the dish. That is the egg. What interests us is to see at which temperature we have stopped cooking the egg, and especially at what time to apply the concoction, especially since we are only using the yolk in this case. We've 

cooked the three eggs at 63 degrees. 

What we are going to see is how time influences the degree of cooking. This one has only been cooked for 15 minutes. We have a fluid texture of the yolk. This is the one we're going to use. I am not going to cut it yet because I need the yolk. But this one has been cooking for 45 minutes. Notice that it is much more dense. This intermediate one is the one we're going to use now. We're going to separate the whites since we don't need it. Only the yolk.  

Notice the sauce-like texture. It's like the sauce of egg yolk. It's what we want to use now, eh? We wanted an egg yolk sauce. We're going to add some olive oil-only a little bit, a little bit of salt. 

And now we're going to put together the dish. We have the texture of the egg yolk. It's like truffle juice that we have texturized with champagne. (the discussion suggests he might have said Xantham Gum which is suggested makes more sense.

First, we'll pour a little of this juice over the base of the plate. Then we'll dribble some of the egg yolk. Then we're going to construct the plate. We're going to sprinkle some summer truffle, Tuber aestivum. We are at the gates of summer. These are summer truffles that have come early in our spring but are very, very tasty.

This asparagus ice cream is really important in that the formula is well stabilized so that it has a very good texture. And we like to place the asparagus hot, straight out of the water bath,
to create a contrast between hot and cold, egg yolk, and truffle flavor. We'll give it a bit of acidity with a few leaves of oxalis. And then a bit of strength with a little bit of freshly ground white pepper.

Calculate Calories from Food Label

From Harvard's on line class on Science and Cooking.

Calories = 4 X number of grams of protein in a serving plus 4 X number of grams of carbohydrate in a serving plus 9 x the number of grams of fat in a serving 

4 x 49 x 18

whenever I find a label in which the number of the calorie reported disagrees with this calculation, I tend to distrust the label. 

So let me just show you how this works. So here is a label which actually comes from my favorite recipe, which is the recipe for Nestle's Toll House chocolate chip cookies. So it turns out that in one serving of a Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie, there are 4 grams of protein, 49 grams of carbohydrate, and 18 grams of fat. So if we want to calculate the calorie content in one serving of the cookie, what we need to do is take the grams of protein, multiply by 4, take the grams of carbohydrate, multiply by 4, take the grams of fat, and multiply by 4. So that's 4 times 4 plus 49 times 4 plus 18 times 9 -- actually sorry, I misspoke. The grams of fat is multiplied by 9, hence the 4-4-9 rule. So we're multiplying 18, which is the grams of fat, by 9. And when we add all of this up, we find that the calorie content of a cookie is 378 calories, which is very close to that which is reported on the label.

Veggie Paella by CARME RUSCALLEDA

Interpreted for use from Harvard Science and Cooking on Line class.  Clarifying notes in italics.  Quantities below and from pictures looks like it will serve 1-2 people.

Ingredients:

Mineral water: about 2 cups

Nyora Pulp substitute large red peppers such as dried ancho chiles: 3/4 handful

onion: 1/3 handful after browning, maybe a whole onion

green pepper: 1/3 handful

snow peas: 1/3 handful

salt

pepper

rice: 80 grams

leek: 1/3 handful

green garlic: 1/3 handful

tomatoe: about 3 oz

sweet cherry wine: about 2 oz

saffron threads

olive oil

Video Instructions

Broth made of browned onions, mineral water and nyora pulp. Nyora is a pepper.  Put the Nyoras in a heatproof bowl and cover with 2 cups boiling water. Set a small plate on top to keep the peppers submerged and let sit until softened, about 20 minutes. Discard the soaking liquid. Set the peppers aside.

Here we'll do another Maillard effect, with a paella, in which the Maillard effect, occurs on the bottom side of the rice. This is a toasted paella. It needs to be very thin and be browned underneath. This is a very quick and very easy veggie paella with very few ingredients. For the paella broth we need mineral water, which we mix with nyora pulp and onion, an onion which again presents a very strong Maillard effect, highly toasted and concentrated, with those elements of nyora pulp and browned onions, mixed with the water, we obtain our broth. A broth that will give this veggie paella its personality. 

Browned onions on left, pepper pulp and water
Let's now begin preparing the paella, we have the pan on the cooker. We always use materials with a neutral taste but that help us achieve the browning effect. We'll start by adding a julienne of green peppers, sliced very thin without the skin together with a julienne of snow peas. 

Sautéed in oil.

Peas and Green Pepper

We'll add them and look for this browning effect. Actually in paella, those Maillard effects that caramelize during the cooking process are those that will later be expressed in the paella, and mostly in that toasted bottom part. 

The cooking time is very short. It takes longer to cook the rice itself, than to prepare the rest. We'll let it golden a little bit. We'll carefully add some salt. Let's also add some pepper. And since those parts release more water, we'll now add leek, and green garlic which cooks much faster and would burn much faster, which is why we add it later. 

Leeks and Green Garlic

Everything is cut very thin, Which is precisely what makes that paella so fast. In a few moments, when this is more golden, we'll add the tomato... 

But as you can see this paella is much faster than, they usually are. This is so much faster. We can see how the product, that thinly sliced vegetable product, gets even thinner as it gets dehydrated and toasted, we'll try to get to the limit...a little bit more... to add a little bit of tomato--a tomato that apart from the color will add humidity and clean, the parts that have gotten toasted. There's not a lot of tomato, but it will add some humidity to the paella which we'll have to reduce. Let's add some more salt, still carefully. I like to add the salt at every step. It's a matter of personal preference. 


We want the broth to be warm but we don't want it to reduce since we measured the right amount.

You can see how the tomato has reduced already, and now would be the moment, once the tomato has reduced, to add some, sweet cherry wine which will both clean again and add some dark color which is what we want to achieve. 

We'll then wait for that little bit of wine to reduce. It's very easy to know when the wine has reduced because the sound of, 
of the oil...now it starts to fry again... 

The liquid has disappeared and we have again the oil and the vegetables, and now is the moment to 

leave fried vegetable mixture from above in the pan and add the rice

fry the rice...In this case we have 80g of rice, we'll also add two toasted safron threads and we also need to fry this rice. As you can see it's a big paella for little rice, obviously, since what we're looking for...is a very, very thin amount in order to obtain that toasting effect. Again we start to hear that sound, that sound of the rice being fried...The rice is almost ready and now we incorporate the broth made with nyora, onion and water. 

Mineral water...It's important to increase...the heat, and we'll do four minutes at a high temperature... 

We'll add a little bit more salt and we won't stir the rice any more. What we will do is to shake it a little bit, for the rice to be really very flat in the paella. Very evenly spread. So let's start and do those four first minutes at high temperature...we'll now do four minutes at a lower temperature and we'll then do 10 minutes at a minimal, minimal temperature. Now we'll do the final ten minutes at a minimal minimal minimal temperature! We'll need two more minutes because now we need to remove it from the fire. Add a little bit of olive oil...

and wait for two minutes because rice always needs to sit for a little bit. It's ringing and now is the time to see if we've really achieved that browning effect we were looking for...

Roasted Beets

Cooking Beets.

Better than boiling.

Roast in oven for 1 hour at 325 degrees F, cut off ends, peel and cut into desired shape

hollandaise sauce

2 egg yokes
add a bit of lemon
400 grams of butter heated to 60C
60C water that could be infused with something

combine lemon and yokes put over double boiler, whisk, add a little melted butter, whisk, more butter...idea is to have yokes and butter at same temperature.  Each time it thickens add a bit of water to thin and then add more melted butter so it doesn't break. As the yoke temp gets closer to the butter the adding can be speeded up.

Finish to taste with green onion, or tarragon or parsley, salt, white pepper, lemon.