A recent addition to my aquarium are 3 new shrimp which just so happen to match with the Pokemon gen1 Pokemon legendary birds.
New Shrimp
Month: February 2023
Spherification and food Chemistry
I have been playing around with more advanced food chemistry and have started to get into spherification. The theory behind it is fairly simple sodium alignate is dissolved in whatever liquid you want to spherify and this is then bubbled into a calcium ion bath (calcium lactate in my case) which causes the alignate to polymerize and make pearls.
For now I am still playing around but I have some plans for the future with actual dishes using this.
Pasta “Volcano” (AKA Cool Spaghetti and Meat Balls)
This has been a fun idea to make a “volcano” spaghetti and meat balls where a volcano would be made from black pasta, a bright red vodka sauce as the lava and meatballs as exploded rocks.
The idea I think is really good but I have issues with giving the volcano height and so it just looks a bit flat… Tasted really good so I guess the rest doesn’t matter.
Homemade Pasta
Though saying “handmade pasta” brings to mind exclusivity and perfection I personally find dried pasta to be more than good enough. The only 2 considerations are that handmade pasta taste like “Angle hair” and is much softer (and therefore lacks the Al-Dente feel) which can be a plus or negative depending on the dish and the other consideration being you can add additional ingredients such as spinach or ink to color the pasta.
It is relatively easy to make just takes time and effort which may be hard to justify when dried pasta is just a couple dollars.
Below is my squid ink pasta used in a separate dish where I use cuttlefish ink to dye to pasta black.
Avocado Salad and Salmon Risotto
A Valentines classic, my avocado salad followed by salmon risotto never fail to impress.
Not much to note but rolling up avocado slices and making tomato roses give a wow factor. I also add a garlic dill sauce that amps it up. Seared salmon on a seafood risotto is classic.
