Daring Cooks - Molecular Gastronomy and Vegan Tuesday

This is a two for one post--Daring Cooks and Vegan Tuesday. I love when that happens! This month's DC challenge is an entry into the mysterious world of molecular gastronomy (MG)--the science of food. Though MG was originally conceived as a way to unite the various disciplines of food science, certain avant garde chefs began incorporating MG techniques into their cooking, sort of becoming chefs and food scientists. One of the very famous MG chefs is Grant Achatz, owner of Alinea--one of the most lauded restaurants in the US. This Daring Cooks challenge is based on one of Chef Achatz' recipes.

The actual recipe is fish poached in a butter sauce and served with "powders"--dehydrated flavors ground very finely. Being a veggie, I had to majorly adapt this recipe. Here's what I came up with: tofu marinated in sweet chile sauce and crusted with ground almonds and coconut; edamame; and parsley powder, lemon powder, and pea powder.

I sliced the marinated tofu into 1/2" slices, dipped each slice into sweet chile sauce, and then coated it with a mixture of ground almonds and coconut. I pan-fried the tofu in a bit of oil over low-ish heat until the crust was golden.

For the lemon powder, I sliced off the zest of a lemon and dried it on top of my stove. The kitchen was very warm so the peel dried in a couple hours. I do not have a food dehydrator, or a microwave, and I thought that the oven would end up browning the peel too much. Using the stove-top (heat off) worked well.

For the pea powder, I just ground up dried packaged snap peas--I love these for snacks. I used a coffee grinder to make all the powders.

I dried the parsley just like I did the lemon peel.

This is most defintiely not a recipe I would have ever made on my own. I confess to much ignorance when it comes to molecular cuisine. I don't understand WHY someone would choose powdered lemon over fresh zest. I've always thought that the fresher the better. I must be missing something because just a couple years ago Gourmet Magazine declared Alinea the best restaurant in the US.

How did it taste? The tofu was good; I really liked the almost sweet crust with the sweet-spicy chile sauce. The powders were okay. It was neat to dip the tofu in each powder, but I don't know that the flavors were improved by drying and grinding up. Still, it was a very interesting way to prepare and serve a meal.

Thank you Sketchy and Daring Kitchen for pushing me into trying something completely new. I'm just not sure I'm quite ready for molecular gastronomy yet.

Please visit this month's host, Sketchy, to get the recipe: http://blog.sketchyskitchen.com/

**His blog is having technical difficulties so if it's not working please check back later.

You can find all the wonderful Daring Cooks and Bakers here: http://thedaringkitchen.com/