Better Eating Through Chemistry: Foie Gras Pop Rocks

The New York Times had a fascinating story last week, Food
2.0: Chefs as Chemists
. Cutting edge chefs like Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 in
Manhattan, and Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago are experimenting with
ingredients like hydrocolloid gums to create combinations of flavor and texture
not found in nature, like a fried mayonnaise, or Mexican mole sauce turned into
little lentil-shaped pellets.

I haven’t seen a lot of that kind of experimentation going
on locally, maybe because it runs counter to the whole
natural-sustainable-local-organic ethos that has been embraced by most of the
top local chefs in town, from Lucia Watson of Lucia’s Restaurant, J.D. Fratzke
of Muffuletta (soon departing for the Strip Club), Scott Pampuch of Corner
Table, Brenda Langton of Café Brenda and Spoonriver, Lenny Russo of Heartland,
etc.

But the one local chef I’ve found who seems to enjoy
tinkering with molecular gastronomy is Ryan Aberle, executive chef at North
Coast
in Wayzata. His most original concoction is foie gras poprocks. The
recipe is simple: he starts with unflavored pop rocks, available from
www.chefrubber.com, and rolls them in a mixture of liquefied foie gras and
tapioca maltodextrin. (Kids, don’t try this at home.) And in another recent
experiment, Aberle created a 21st century version of the bacon-wrapped pork
tenderloin – after rolling slices of pancetta through a pasta sheeter, he brushed
them with transglutaminase, an enzyme that chemically bonds proteins together –
and then wrapped the pancetta tightly around the tenderloin. Instead of the
bacon cooking more quickly than the tenderloin, it becomes the outer edge of a
single cut.


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