22:18   The decision to do some cuisine moléculaire came suddenly. Due to the fact that the actual decision has happened so late and all the shops are closed by now, I will have to do with what I’ve got.

This book has made me review my own preception of myself as the Evel Genius in the Kitchen and give it yet another try:

22:22   The recepie has been picked purley based on the avaliability of ingredients. The recepie in question is:

Espuma de jambon de Parme

what I will need for this:

100 g de jambon de Parme

sadly I do not have any Parma at home right now. However, I have something much better, which is Jamón Ibérico. Pricewise it is about 5-10 times more expensive. Taste, in my opinion, of the Pata Negra, that I have here, is comparable to a good Parma. The biggest difference is the structure, but let us see what we can do about it.

Poivre noir

well, no surprises there. Every household has propper ungrounded black pepper in the mule.

200 g de crème liquide

another challenge — instead of crème liquide I have crème Normandie, which is kind of the same family (being a fermenting diary product and all), but much thicker. With a little bit of luck it will get liquid enough during the simmering process.

Siphon 0,25 l + 2 cartouches de gaz

Well, I just happened to have a syphon at home, from the time, when our clique where impressed by the German way of drinking wine with sparkling water, but the actual deluting of alcohol with additional water was precieved (by us) as a drawback in the system. So everyone bought a syphon in order to add gas to the wite whine, but keeping the alcohol level to the standard 4.5%. Needless to say, that after the first attempt by the bravest of our group, nobody used their syphons at all. So, I have a new syphon and a bunch of cartriges.

Now, let’s get cooking!!!

1 — Préchauffer le four à 200 °C

OK

2 — Découper 2 tranches de jambon de Parme en petits rectangles et les placer sur du papier sulfurisé.

Well, due to the fact that Jamón Ibérico is fattier than Parma just as much as Otoro fattier than Maguro no Akami, there is absolutley no way to make any kind of rectangular forms. Nevermind. As long as it is tasty, any form should be fine (… secretly praying the excessive fat will not be too much obstacle for those peices to become crispy, yet not burned). Also found out that the backing paper is pre-perforated. Well, found it out the hard way, by splicing a piece of backing paper on the ceramic stove with the super sharp Japanese knife, just to see a piece of paper just next to the cut fall off. Hard way for the stove and the knife that was. Well, nevermind, I am here to do some cuisine moléculaire and not wining around about ruined knifes and stoves, right?

While chips are being made I will jump the step, where I need to take them out, until they are ready to be taken out.

4 — Porter la crème à frémissement

Exciting! Will this make my cream more liquid?

It kind of did. I hope it will be enough.

5 —Hacher grossièrement le jambon restant et le faire infuser dans la crème. Tamiser et laisser fefroidir

Cut — done! While completley fucking up the wrong surface. Well, fuck it, it isn’t my fault, that that place looks like a cutting board, right? Now what? Oh, adding it to my cream? Great! Looks fantastic and as an added bonus, not only the kitchen stinks, but the entire house!!!

Now in order for it to cool down, without me having to I am taking the concoction off the stove and go back to my “chips”

3 — Mettre au four. Cuire jusqu’à l’obtention de “chips” croustillantes.

Honestly, they look nothing like in the book. They are crumpled, obviously due to the higher fat content and because of the “veins”. Also there is some smoke coming out of oven, so, regardless, wheather I think they are ready or not, I have to take them out. The thing is hot and it is stuck to some plastic crap, I didn’t take out before I have placed the thing on the specially designated area (which is pretty much any area outside of the stove of the size approximatley similar to the thing, whatever it is called)

3 —Verser dans le siphon, puis mettre 2 cartouches de gaz et secourier 15 secondes. Mettre au frais en position horizontale.

This is the moment I have been waiting for!!! Finally I can use my syphon and finally I can do some super-sophisticated cookery! Who needs to know how to fry a good stake if molecular biology is at our rescue! Screw cuisine classique — liquid nitrogen is the answer to our prayers!

In with the liquid, which is not really liquid, because firstly of the cream Normandie instead of liquid cream; secondly because of all those pieces of Pata Negra in it. No problem. With a little tweaking the “liquid” is in the syphon.

Now, let’s get a glas and try to foam some of the molecular goodness in to it…

OK, the project turned out to be ultimate cooking FAIL. The espuma turned out to be far too liquid and even being liquid it did manage to keep heavy level of inconsistency of it’s structure. The pieces of ham where on the way not only when I have been pooring the liquid in to the syphon, but also when I tried to get it out with the help of CO2. It was a pathetic sight, when the syphon was making strange noise, but instead of the super white foam, nicley floating in to the crystal glass, that I have prepared for the dish, there was some brownish liquid dripping from the nozzle and, occasionally, the syphon would change the tone and spit out a bunch of crumpled up ham pieces in the whitiesh foamy substance. Usually outside of the glass. The “chips”, at the end, did get burnt and  turned out to be uneadable. The most confusing thing about this cooking session is that I have never used the black pepper!

There is another thing I have noticed — some of the problems, as I would expect from anyone with no experience and in the rush, where self-induced.

The liquid had to be filtered before it went in to syphon. It was actually mentioned in the recepie.

The two cartridges of gas had to be applied to the bottle with the liquid in it before before the first spraying would begin. I never read the second part of the bloody paragraph and went straight on pushing the thing.

The cream Normandie was deffinetly wrong thing to use. It does not matter that it did loose some of it’s thikness during the simmering — it should have been far more liquid, when the gas started to work on it.

I am sure there was something else, but it does not matter now — a fail is a fail and I am still the Evil Genius in the Kitchen.

In couple of days I will be trying another 3 recepies from the same book. Who knows, maybe this time they will be better (which I doubt, but at least I am doing something, no?)

00:11