[playingwithfood]

I'm starting to play with adapting some of the recipes in the Alinea book, and I'm wondering if anybody's got pointers to reference books/web sites/etc. that can help me understand what each ingredient is doing in a recipe, and how to use them properly to achieve desired effects (e.g., ratios, chemical effect, etc.).

As an example, I tried over the weekend to adapt the 'rose water leather' to make a 'green tea leather.' When I was looking at the recipe, though, it was hard to tell what the different ingredients were doing. I get that gelatin and agar are used for form gels. I don't have a good sense of how they differ or why one would want both. There's also citric acid, but I wasn't sure if that was for flavor or to alter the pH (or both).

Rule-of-thumb ratios for stuff like Ultra-Tex, Alginate/sphere stuff, Purecote, etc. would also be amazingly helpful.

My green tea adaptation, btw, didn't work very well. The gel turned out a bit lumpy, it tasted like tea heavily dosed with citric acid, and didn't dehydrate into a smooth film, but rather a sort of pockmarked mess). I'm ok with mistakes, but would love to be able to learn from other people's as well as my own.

Thanks for any pointers anybody has!

[jyee]

for gelatin and agar, you're right that they're both to form gels. the difference is the temperature ranges and rigidity. agar has a much higher temperature range, so you can heat it a bit and it won't melt. The negative effect of that is that often it is too rigid and has an unpleasant mouth feel. mixing it with standard gelatin helps the mouth feel, but lowers the melting point... so it's a balancing game of getting the right proportion to have the properties you desire.

[jlstaatsculinary]

Harlod McGee-On Food and Cooking: the science and lore of the kitchen

I'm also new to this and purchased quite a few books on molecular gastronomy. This happens to be the best reference towards the subject... and is a great book to add to your collection.

Hope it was helpful- Jen