There hasn't been much discussion about this, but it was a recipe that absolutely got my attention when it went up a couple weeks ago. Between the Blinis and Tartares (both amazing pieces of work), I feel this one got a little lost. There are a number of comments on the recipe page that it's overly complicated or unreasonable to produce in a home kitchen (I'm paraphrasing a bit). That wasn't my impression, but what the hell - Challenge Accepted! I've been planning to give it a try, but needed A) Fitting Occassion and
Locust Bean Gum and C) Quail Egg Scissors. All of those pieces came together yesterday.
Fitting Occassion - Monthly dinner party - This time I'm not responsible for main, free to do whatever I want. Check.
Locust Bean Gum - It's been on my list to pick up for a while now...this just got me going. Placed order with Modernist Pantry. Check.
Quail Egg Scissors - Ok, maybe not necessary, but opening quail eggs is always a pain, so threw these into an Amazon order. Check.
With these three pieces satisfied, all I needed was passionfruit, quail eggs, and lemongrass. Passionfruit proved to be elusive. In a relatively small Wisconsin city, ingredients can be hard to come by. No go at the standard grocers, Asian grocer, and Mexican market. World Market had passionfruit juice (I remembered seeing it there once and figured that may be the best I could do), but when I picked it up, the primary ingredient was pear juice. Still, it was 100% juice, and seemed like it may be my only option. But at the 6th stop (one last grocer), I finally struck gold in the form of frozen passionfruit puree, and headed for home.
I only had about 3 and a half hours before we were set to leave for dinner. No safety net - I didn't have any backup planned. This was either going to work, or I'd be showing up empty handed. Time to get to work.
I started with the passionfruit base. I wanted to get the hemispheres into the freezer as quickly as possible. I pulled out the blowtorch to rid the base of bubbles. First time I tried that technique, and it worked like a champ. I also don't have a sauce gun, so I just used a syringe to fill 3g of puree into each mold. I filled all 24 molds and still had puree left over.
Onto the quail eggs. I had an 18 pack. I figured to lose a few, but with dinner for 6, hoped to have enough for 2 each. I made quick work of the tops and cleaned and sanitized the shells.
Next up...Clarified Lemongrass Juice. I trimmed lemongrass stalks to lose the pink at the bottom and green at the top. Threw the remaining in the blender with 140 g of water and hit go. I was happy for my new Waring blender because it quickly shredded everything to pulp. No centrifuge in my kitchen, so I set up a chemex and wire mesh strainer to clarify the juice. It worked great. I didn't net the 170 g in the recipe, but ended up with 149 g of juice which is more than the original water weight.
I weighed out the dry ingredients...0.01g LBG is a bitch. Increasing everything 10x and then scaling down makes sense, but I didn't do that. I whisked the dry ingredients into the clarified juice and set it aside.
Now it's time for spherification. Frozen reverse spherification is the way to go. I pounded through 20 yolks in no time. A couple weren't frozen through yet and I lost them when I went to unmold, but otherwise they came out great. I've had issues with spherification in the past, but this was a snap. I guess practice helps.
Final Assembly. Everything was in place. Again, no sauce gun, so I used a syringe to fill the whites. A couple of yolks got hung up on the rim of the shell, but I didn't lose any. I found it best to use a spoon with a narrow end and slide them in almost vertically. I topped each with more of the white, and put them into the fridge. About 3 hours start to finish.
They were a big hit at dinner. There was a lot of waiting for someone to go first, smelling, and licking, but ultimately everyone enjoyed them.
FInal thoughts: It would be extremely difficult to scale this any smaller (and why would you want to?) because you
are already working with very small quantities, but you can easily get
more than 10 finished eggs. I had 18 shells, but probably had enough
passionfruit puree to do 35-40 yolks (I was limited by 24 cavities in my
hemisphere mold). The whites were a little tighter, but I made 18 and
could've probably done 5-10 more, even without the use of a centrifuge to maximize juice yield. This is absolutely a recipe that can be done successfully at home. While it is complex, I wouldn't say that it is overly complicated. It is a lot of steps and process for a single small bite, but nothing in the process is superfluous. It is deliberate, and necessary to create the end effect. It was also a lot of fun. And the end result is absolutely delicious.
