Peach "Caviar"

I've had some Calcium Chloride and Sodium Alginate sitting in my home kitchen for a few months now.  Today I dug them out and had some fun.  You may be wondering why I have chemicals in the kitchen.  Cleaning?  Nope.  Preserving?  Nope.  These two chemicals are used for a process called Spherification.

Spherification is a cooking technique invented by Ferran Adrià. It’s the culinary process of taking liquid, which resembles the shape of its container, and reshaping it into a sphere.

In English?  Well the perfect natural sphere is an Egg Yolk.  You break the membrane of an soft cooked egg, and the yolk oozes out.  Same idea, but man-made.

So how does one go about making spheres?  You start off with a flavorful liquid.  Blend in some Sodium Alginate and let the mixture sit for a few hours (or overnight) to remove air bubbles.  Calcium Chloride is mixed into a bowl of water.  You then take your Alginate mixture and carefully add it into the Calcium Chloride water.  After a minute, remove the spheres with a strainer and add to another bowl of water.  What happens is the two chemicals react, and a "Skin" is formed on the outside of the sphere, while the inside of the sphere is still liquid.

Another method is "Reverse Spherification".  This is when you make a bath of water and Sodium Alginate, then make a liquid using something that naturally has a high calcium content.  The calcium in the liquid reacts with the Alginate bath the same way as above, just backwards.

While I'm still an amateur sphere-maker, I just had some great results using up some peaches I got at the farmer's market last week.

1 cup water
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Granulated Sugar
1/4 of a Vanilla Bean, scraped (or 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract)
1/4 TSP Salt
3 Peaches, peeled and pitted.
1 TSP Sodium Alginate

5 Cups Water
1 TSP Calcium Chloride

Combine Water, Sugars, Vanilla and Salt in a small pot.  Heat until boiling and sugar is dissolved.  Add peaches and remove from heat.  Set aside until cool.

Add peach mixture and Alginate to blender, and blend until completely smooth.  Strain and let sit for a few hours to get rid of air bubbles.

Mix water and Calcium Chloride.  Let sit for five minutes or until Calcium is dissolved.

Using a small sieve, a syringe, a steel cannula, or even a spoon, carefully drop peach liquid into Calcium-Water.  If making small spheres or caviar, only do about 1/4 of the mixture at a time. One minute for small caviar sized spheres or a couple minutes for larger spheres.

Transfer spheres to bowl of plain cold water and let sit for a couple minutes, just to wash off the Calcium Chloride solution.

Spheres will keep refrigerated for a couple days, but lose flavor the longer they sit.  Its best to use them within a few hours after making them.

The possibilities of uses for this are endless.  Add a fruit caviar to a cocktail, make "gravy" spheres for a meat dish...I could go on and on.  Whats most important is to have fun with it!