There are a few different ingredients that can be used to stabilize foams made in a whipped cream siphon. Gelatin is one of the easiest and most common, but has the drawback that it must be served cold. If you want a warm siphon foam, you have to base it on something else, such as egg whites, which essentially use the siphon to make instant, flavoured meringue. The microwave sponge cake is simply an extension of this, taking that meringue (with a little flour added) and cooking it.

The result is, like aerated chocolate, a “set foam”: when you heat an egg-white foam, the bubbles in it expand, and eventually the egg proteins coagulate, forming a solid matrix and trapping those bubbles forever. That’s more or less how a soufflé works. Only instead of whipping the eggs with a mixer, this cake uses a siphon, and instead of baking it in an oven, you cook it in a microwave.

Although I’d never used this technique before, I decided to try developing my own recipe with it. I made up a spreadsheet of the ingredients in a handful of other recipes I had, and decided the basic ratio of ingredients is about 20 grams of flour, 100g of egg whites, 80g of sugar, anywhere from 0g to 80g of egg yolk, and 120g of your chosen flavour, preferably something that has about 50% fat. I’ve seen recipes using pistachio, chocolate, yogurt and black sesame. There are, of course, outliers to this, but that seemed like a good starting point.

For flavour, I wanted red velvet cake. I’ve had this popular cake only once or twice, but I’m well versed in its distinguishing characteristics: bright red colour, buttermilk, and a hint of chocolate. I devised a recipe that I thought reflected this and would work with this technique. After mixing all the ingredients, straining them, and charging the siphon, I dispensed some into a paper cup with holes punched in the bottom, and microwaved it on high for 40 seconds. Success!

To round out the dessert, I made a beet fluid gel (since beets are sometimes used in the original cake instead of artificial food colouring, and beet pairs nicely with chocolate), cream cheese icing, and candied pecans. I really wanted a green element on the plate, but I couldn’t find any traditional garnish for red velvet cake that was green. And I’m not a fan of the token mint leaf found on so many different desserts.

The one drawback I found to my recipe is that the cakes, left for more than a few minutes, will harden somewhat. I don’t have enough experience with pastry to know what causes this, though it would be nice to be able to refine the recipe so it doesn’t happen. Now that I’m past my “running before you walk” phase, it may be time to take a step back and make one of the professional recipes as a basis of comparison. In the meantime, here’s what I did.

How to make red velvet microwave cake

This recipe should easily serve 6-8 people

100g egg whites
70g egg yolk
80g sugar
20g all-purpose flour
5g cocoa powder
Pinch salt
60g butter, melted
60g buttermilk
Red food colouring, in paste form, as desired

Combine the egg whites, egg yolks and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Whisk for 1 minute on medium speed to combine. Sift the flour and cocoa powder over top, and add the salt. Whisk again until just combined. While whisking, drizzle in the butter and buttermilk, and add the red food colouring until you get the colour you want.

Strain the mixture, and transfer it into a half-litre whipped cream siphon. Charge the siphon with two nitrous oxide cartridges, shaking well after each one. Keep refrigerated.

How to make beet fluid gel

140g beet juice
55g 1:1 simple syrup
1.95g agar

Combine the beet juice and syrup. You can adjust the syrup to taste; just make sure you adjust the agar to be 1% of the total combined weight of the two. Bring to a low simmer, and sprinkle the agar over top, whisking to combine. Bring to a full boil and boil for 1 minute to hydrate the agar. Strain into a heatproof container and allow to set at room temperature.

Once set, cut the gel into cubes, and puree with a blender until the mixture forms a smooth gel. Transfer to a squeeze bottle and reserve in the fridge.

How to make cream cheese icing

150g cream cheese
75g icing sugar
60 ml whipping cream

Beat the cream cheese in an electric mixer until very soft. Sift the icing sugar over top, and beat again until combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add the whipping cream and beat again until combine. Transfer to a pastry bag fitted with a large plain tip, and reserve in the fridge.

How to make candied pecans
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp. white corn syrup
1 Tbsp. water
25 pecan halves

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spread the pecan halves on a baking sheet, and place in the oven. While they cook, combine the sugar, corn syrup and water in a saucepan. Heat over medium heat until the sugar caramelizes. Immediately remove the warmed pecans from the oven, add to the caramel, and stir to cook. Spread on a parchment-lined baking sheet, keeping each pecan half separate, and allow to cool. Break off any extra caramel, transfer to an airtight container, and reserve.

To plate the dessert

Pipe random dots of cream cheese icing and beet gel onto a plate. Take a 9-oz paper cup, poke four holes in the bottom, then dispense the microwave red velvet cake batter into the cup, filling halfway. Microwave on high for about 40 seconds (you may have to adjust the time, depending on the power of your microwave). Allow to cool briefly, then run a thin-bladed knife around the inside of the cup to loosen the cake. Tear in half and place on the plate. (I cooked 6 microwave cakes for 4 servings, allowing one and a half per person.) Lean candied pecans against the cream cheese icing.

This year, the torch passed from Adrià to elBulli alumnus René Redzepi, as his Noma was honoured with the title of best restaurant in the world for 2010. With his emphasis on hyper-local – often foraged – ingredients, Redzepi is in his own way redefining what is possible in the kitchen today. In this video, you can see an example of how Redzepi draws on his environment to design a dish.

Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine is available from Phaidon.com.

This is another Ferran Adrià invention, and although he makes a strong distinction between “foams” and “airs” (I remember watching him correct his interpreter on this point at an event in Toronto a couple of years ago), airs are in fact a type of foam. They differ from the previous foams I discussed in that they require no special equipment. They do, however, require a special ingredient: lecithin.

Lecithin is a substance found in egg yolks and soybeans that has a hydrophilic end and a hydrophobic end, which gives it powerful emulsifying and stabilizing properties. It is used extensively in the kitchen to emulsify ice cream, mayonnaise, and even salad dressings. As a commercial extract, it comes in liquid, granular and powdered forms, and can be found at most health food and bulk food stores.

The bubbles in a lecithin-based air are relatively large and thin-walled, which gives the air its uniquely light body. This is a foam that disappears the instant you put it in your mouth. If you’re not careful, it can disappear before it even gets to your mouth!

To make an air, simply dissolve some lecithin into your base liquid, usually at a ratio of 0.5% to 1% by weight, then froth it with an immersion blender or – my preferred method – a milk frother. It can take a little practice to do this effectively, since the blender can destroy the foam as readily as form it; just keep moving it around your container until you find the sweet spot and the air begins to collect. (And use a large container; it tends to splash.)

Airs are best when based on an intensely flavourful base, since very little liquid actually reaches the mouth. In this recipe, I used the soaking liquid from dried shiitake mushrooms, which adds a subtle earthiness and additional umami taste to the scallops. Some people complain that airs look like spittle, but I prefer to think that they resemble foam on the seashore.

Togarashi-crusted scallops with shiitake air

Serves 4 as a one-bite course

• 20 grams dried shiitake mushrooms (about 4-5 small mushrooms)
• Water
• Granulated soy lecithin
• 4 sea scallops
• Shichimi togarashi spice blend (available from most Asian grocery stores under the S&B label and called “nanami togarashi”)
• Neutral cooking oil, such as grapeseed or canola

Start by making the base for the air: Place the dried shiitake mushrooms in a bowl and add boiling water to cover. Allow to stand for 30 minutes, then remove mushrooms, squeeze out excess water, and reserve for another use. Weigh the mushroom soaking liquid (you should have about 100 grams), and add 1% lecithin (i.e., 1 gram, or about 3/8 of a teaspoon). Reserve in a tall container.

Prepare the scallops and make the air: Place a layer of shichimi togarashi on a plate, and roll the edge of each scallop in it to coat, adding more togarashi as needed. Heat a small non-stick sauté pan over medium-high heat, and add a film of cooking oil. Sear the scallops, turning once, until just cooked through. While scallops are cooking, froth the air with a milk frother. Plate the scallops, and spoon the air over one edge. Serve immediately.

The idea of using a siphon to make foams other than whipped cream is attributed to, and claimed by, Ferran Adrià and his team at El Bulli. Back in 1994, they used gelatin to make a white bean foam in a siphon and served it with sea urchins, giving birth to the culinary foam as we know it today. Since then, several other techniques for making foams in a siphon have been developed; Adrià classifies them in several ways, including by texture (thick, mousse-like foams; fluid, meringue-like foams; and thin, liquid foams) and by foaming agent (gelatin; fat, such as the butterfat in whipping cream; egg whites; and starch). Certainly these categories aren’t exhaustive, but they are a useful framework for developing a new foam.

Foams made in a siphon can be served either cold or warm, though warm foams can’t be based on gelatin or fat. The simplest type of foam, if you’re just getting started with a siphon, is flavoured whipped cream. Rest assured that this doesn’t restrict you to only sweet foams; Rick Tramonto offers a recipe for a decidedly savoury goat cheese foam in his book Amuse-Bouche that’s based on whipping cream.

Gelatin-based foams are also quite straightforward, and offer the benefit of remarkable intensity of flavour, since the base isn’t diluted with cream. Gelatin also offers substantially better flavour release than butterfat. Sheet gelatin is preferable to powdered, so that you don’t have to take into account the water used to bloom the gelatin when formulating your recipe. One drawback to using gelatin is that it can be difficult to determine how much gelatin to use; use too much, and you won’t be able to dispense the foam, as I experienced when first formulating the McIntosh apple foam shown here.

How to make a McIntosh apple foam

• 2-3 McIntosh apples, enough to make 200 grams of puree
• 100g water
• 1 sheet gelatin

Quarter and core the apples, and place them in a saucepan with a thin film of water. Cook over medium heat until completely softened, about 15 minutes, then pass through a food mill equipped with the finest disk. Puree the applesauce with an immersion blender, then pass through a fine strainer. (You want to make sure there are no large particles that could clog up your siphon.) Weigh out 200g of apple puree, add the water, and stir to combine. Bloom the gelatin sheet in cold water for 5 minutes, squeeze out the excess water, and place in a small saucepan over medium heat with a quarter of the diluted apple puree. Warm to dissolve the gelatin, then add the remaining puree. Pass through a strainer (really – you want no lumps) into a 0.5-litre whipped cream siphon, seal the siphon, charge with one nitrous oxide cartridge and shake. Chill for a couple of hours (or overnight if using an insulated Thermo Whip), then dispense as desired, following the manufacturer’s instructions.

You could serve this foam as a dish all on its own, dusted with a little cinnamon, or as a garnish on a larger dish. I served it on a butternut squash soup, which I had seasoned with a good amount sherry vinegar. The foam offered a nice contrast, in both sweetness and temperature, to the soup. Note, however, that when using gelatin-based foams with hot foods, you need to serve the dish immediately, as the heat will melt the gelatin and cause the foam to collapse in fairly short order.

You can find more recipes for siphon-based foams on the iSi North America website and in the hydrocolloid recipe collection at Khymos.org, and a complete chapter on foams written by Ferran Adrià in The Cook’s Book.

So what exactly is a foam? At the highest level, it’s a dispersion of a gas in a liquid or solid, in the form of tiny bubbles. Because these bubbles interfere with the movement of the liquid phase, a foam is, perhaps counterintuitively, thicker in texture than the fluids it’s made up of. Different foams have different levels of stability: some are fleeting, needing to be eaten moments after they’re created, while others will last indefinitely. Foams collapse as the liquid in the bubble walls drains downward due to gravity; you can stabilize them by thickening the liquid, which makes it drain more slowly.

Although the term is currently associated with avant-garde cuisine, foams have been a mainstay of Western cooking since well before Adrià: for example, the steamed milk shown above is a type of foam, as are meringue, sabayon, whipped cream, and even bread. Many foams exhibit a couple of properties that make them useful in culinary applications. Because they have copious amounts of surface area, aroma molecules can easily escape, giving them great flavour release; at the same time, their relative fragility gives them a pleasing light-as-air texture, as they dissipate in your mouth. Foams have been around for a while and, like it or not, they’re here to stay.

Are you pro-foam or anti-foam in your food?

For dessert, I made individual tartes Tatin with cinnamon ice cream, apple pâte de fruit and cinnamon fluid gel. Fluid gels are one of my favourite components to plate; I don’t like sauces that run, and fluid gels are very good at staying put. There are a few ways to make them, but this time, I decided to try using the technique outlined in the Fat Duck cookbook, which, broadly speaking, involves blending a liquid with about 1% (by weight) low-acyl gellan gum, and whisking as it sets in an ice bath. (The liquid I used for this cinnamon fluid gel was the “cinnamon tea” from the Alinea cookbook. Kind of a fun avant-garde mash-up!)

Having never worked with gellan gum before, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and I wasn’t thrilled with the results. Instead of the smooth texture I’m used to getting with agar-based fluid gels (what they evocatively call “puddings” at Alinea), I ended up with a slightly chunky texture, even after passing it through a fine-mesh strainer. On the other hand, the flavour release was substantially better than with an agar-based fluid gel, which always tastes a little bit like seaweed. Moreover, low-acyl gellan gels won’t melt once they’re set, so they can be served at any temperature. Agar-based gels, by contrast, will melt at around 85°C, so if you heat an agar fluid gel past that point, it will melt, then reset as a solid gel once it cools.

One of the drawbacks of making such a complex meal for only four people is that you end up with a lot of leftover mise en place; some recipes simply won’t work if they’re reduced to small quantities. So I had quite a bit of leftover cinnamon fluid gel. As I was looking at it, I realized what the texture reminded me of more than anything: applesauce. I also had some leftover tart dough and it suddenly hit me: with a heat-resistant, applesauce-textured cinnamon fluid gel, I could make pure cinnamon turnovers! Now it’s got me wondering what other liquids I could make into a turnover filling…

A balance of sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami is also characteristic of good cooking, so I thought it would be fun to try and reinterpret the drink as a dish. To me, there are four main elements in a Caesar: tomato, clams, vodka and celery. Other flavours, such as Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, lemon or lime juice and, of course, Tabasco sauce, are frequently added to customize the drink.

Starting with the four main flavours, I decided to use tomatoes in three forms: fresh cherry tomatoes, a strip of gelled tomato juice, and a piece of dried tomato. In the drink, the clams are usually a subtext in the Clamato juice, so I thought I’d bring them front and centre by steaming some clams in white wine, chilling them, and plating them as-is. The celery came in the form of celery leaves garnishing the clams, and a celery seed “tuile”. The vodka was the hardest element to incorporate in a natural way; I ultimately decided to marinate one of the three cherry tomatoes in vodka. For the secondary flavours, I spattered the plate with some Worcestershire sauce, placed some drops of Tabasco underneath the gelled tomato juice, and added a horseradish-lemon mayonnaise.

Sometimes it can be hard to name new creations, whether dishes or drinks, but in this case it was easy. I couldn’t call it anything but what it is: a Caesar Salad!

I first heard about René Redzepi and Noma a couple of years ago in a blog post by AJ Kinik at …an endless banquet. I spent a fair bit of time after that trying to track down Redzepi’s first cookbook, to no avail. (The best I could do was whet my appetite reading recipes  by Mads Refslund – who was associated with Noma when it opened, but left early in the project – in issue 88 of Art Culinaire Magazine.) So, naturally, I was thrilled when it was announced that a new Noma cookbook would be published this year.

Now, having read all the non-recipe sections of Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine, plus many of the recipes, I have mixed feelings about it. It bears several hallmarks of being a rush job, with abundant typographical errors, ingredients listed that aren’t called for in recipe directions, and obscure or regional ingredients that aren’t sufficiently explained or contextualized. (The glossary gives entries for “blanch,” “emulsify” and “granita,” but not  “apple balsamic vinegar,” which is ubiquitous in the recipes. “Instant food thickener” is given a uselessly circular definition, and recipes call for pectin without specifying high-methoxyl or low-methoxyl.)

At the same time, I feel like the recipes, as such, aren’t the point. They’re already almost moot, since so many require ingredients that can only be sourced in the Nordic countries. Really, that’s the point: these recipes reflect one chef’s interpretation of the products of his terroir. Rather than a cookbook, Noma should be viewed as a map of a thought process. It’s a thought process that’s lucidly explored in the book’s essays and photographs. And it’s a thought process is definitely not limited to the Nordic countries.

What really excites me about Noma’s approach to cooking is the possibility of applying it right here in Canada. Noma co-owner Claus Meyer’s “Manifesto for the New Nordic Kitchen” could easily be tweaked to become a manifesto for a new Canadian cuisine. Canada and Scandinavia share many features, culinarily speaking: a climate that ranges from boreal to arctic, an unremarkable – or at least unremarked – traditional cuisine, and access to a wide range of underutilized foraged foodstuffs. Reading Redzepi’s diary of his travels throughout the region to source ingredients, I was reminded of Martin Picard’s travels through the Gaspé and the Îles de la Madeleine to source seafood. I think Redzepi’s way of looking at food could easily and beneficially be applied in various parts of Canada.

It’s an approach that has certainly worked well in other places. Sean Brock, for example, has adopted similar methods at McCrady’s in South Carolina. (See Art Culinaire 97 for more on Brock.) As fine dining swings away from a “caviar, truffles and foie gras” model and toward one of “it’s always advisable to use a very good sardine instead of a not that good lobster,” I’m encouraged by the thought of chefs exploring the ingredients that grow well in their native climate, and creating food that reflects the place where it’s produced, rather than trying to live up to a model created elsewhere, whether it be France or Spain or California. Or even Denmark.

For more on Noma and René Redzepi, I strongly encourage you to read the foreword to the previous Noma cookbook and to watch John Sconzo’s video of his visit to Noma’s kitchen.

The other challenging element of the drink is pimento dram, a rum-based allspice liqueur. If you happen to be in the US, you should look for St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram, the commercial version imported by Haus Alpenz. Otherwise, you’ll have to make your own. I tried a version of this using the nitrogen cavitation technique, but the flavour intensity was lacking, so we’re stuck with old-fashioned infusing for now.

I’ve made this cocktail a couple of times around Thanksgiving. It tastes pretty much exactly like a pumpkin pie, albeit a boozy one. It does require a lot of prep work, though, so plan about a week in advance. (Or a little over a month in advance, if you’re making the pimento dram.) The resulting drink is sweet and rich, definitely more suited to dessert than aperitif.

How to make a pumpkin pie cocktail
Brown butter pumpkin water
One pie pumpkin
Oil as needed

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Cut the pumpkin in half, remove the seeds and strings, and cut each half into quarters. Place in an oiled roasting pan, cover tightly with aluminum foil, and roast until softened, about 1 hour 15 minutes. Allow to cool, then scrape flesh from skin into a bowl. Mash with a fork, then weigh out 200 grams of roast pumpkin puree. Reserve remaining puree for another use.

1 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. skim milk powder
200 g. roast pumpkin puree
400 g. water
Leaf gelatin as needed

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter. Add the skim milk powder and cook until browned. Immediately add the pumpkin puree and water, stir to combine, and simmer briefly. Strain, pressing all of pumpkin through strainer. Weigh the result, and return to the saucepan.

Weigh leaf gelatin equal to 0.5% of the weight of the pumpkin “soup,” about 1.5 sheets. Soak gelatin in cold water for 5 minutes. Squeeze out excess water, then add to the pumpkin soup. Warm gently until the gelatin dissolves, but do not boil. Transfer soup to a container, and refrigerate overnight to set.

The next day, transfer container to freezer, and freeze for 24 hours, until solid. Remove from freezer and transfer frozen soup to a strainer set over a large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until clear “pumpkin water” drains out of solids, up to three days, depending on the temperature of your fridge. (It may look like nothing is happening for the first day or two.) Discard solids. Yields about 8 oz, or enough for 4 cocktails.

Pumpkin pie cocktail
2 oz. brown butter pumpkin water
1.5 oz. Cognac
0.25 oz. pimento dram
Dash of orange bitters

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker. Fill with ice, then stir for a slow count of 20. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with an orange twist.

Gelatin is made up of protein molecules that like to get tangled up with each other. When they do, they trap water between them, turning liquids into solids. When you freeze this gel and thaw it again, the gelatin network allows water, sugars, acids and flavour molecules to leak out, while trapping larger particles.

In other words, it acts like a giant filter, making your liquid crystal clear.

While restaurants like the Fat Duck use this technique extensively to clarify meat stocks (which contain gelatin naturally) it can be used with just about any liquid. Simply weigh it and add 0.5% of that weight in gelatin, warming gently to dissolve. Let it set in the fridge, then freeze it. Once it’s frozen, put it back in the fridge in a colander, with a container underneath to catch the liquid that weeps out. It’s a slow process – depending on the temperature your fridge is set to, it may take a couple of days – but the results are worthwhile.

You can read more about the technique in this eGullet thread. A similar technique using agar (which has the benefit of being vegetarian) is discussed here and here, but I haven’t gotten around to trying it out yet.

On Friday, I’ll show you a fun use for this technique, and explain what I’m filtering in the picture up top.