Sauce Sheet / Solid Sauce technique

I badly want to know how to do this technique. I've tried quite a lot - freezing, dry ice, agar. But it's very hard to cut the sheet in a nice shape, and keep it that way without tearing. And then, you heat it to melt it over the food (see second picture). Or under the food. Anyway, I want to do a very tidy harlequin pattern of sauce under meat, and I can't figure it out.

Alinea-mosaic used to have a video that didn't tell me much, but it's gone now.

*apologies to Khymos and some random internet for swiping the pix.

Find more posts tagged with

Everything Else

Comments

Lennard__34626

My guess would be agar + gelatin combo. Getting the ratio right would be tricky since it's a balance between being brittle enough to cut but not too brittle that it can't conform to the shape

trev_teich

The Alinea cookbook has a bunch of these recipes. Only gelatin is used. So lets say u want to use cranberry juice. !00% cranberry juice 2%- 3% 160 bloom gelatin. Freeze in a non-stick baking sheet 2mm thick. Cut into shapes and place on warm food or plate to slowly melt.

The first pic you posted looks like it's a combo of agar and gellan gum. In that case, 100% liquid , .4% agar, and .3% high-acyl gellan in cold liquid and bring to boil and simmer for 2m. Cast onto non-stick mate as thin or think as you like and let set. Cut into shapes.

com-chefsteps

Here was my attempt (this was a couple of years ago). This was a tamarind glaze. In retrospect, I imagine tamarind has a pretty high sugar content; maybe enough to throw off the freezing process. I had to gel it up a LOT to get something that wouldn't just shatter if I put a cutter or mini-spatula underneath it. Even with a ton of gelatin (and probably ultra-tex 8), it was hell to work with - often ripping, hard to pick up and lay on the plate, leaving bubbles underneath.

This was a practice run meant for mi-cuit salmon. I ended up ditching the dish entirely.

trev_teich

I would make a tamarind "tea" water and tamarind. The use .9% low gellan.